APRIL 13, 2013

When Portsmouth first hosted the Caribbean Nights Dance Party in 2010, just about everyone was thinking about Haiti. The country had just been devastated by an earthquake and the world was focused on helping. Today, other catastrophes have taken center stage, but residents of the Seacoast continue to eat, mingle and dance up a storm as part of their all-out effort to continue educating children at a small school in northern Haiti. (Continued below) 

The fourth annual Caribbean Night Dance Party will be 7 pm Saturday, April 13 at the VFW in Portsmouth. And once again, Combo Sabroso, making its first Seacoast appearance of the year with its newly formulated band, will bring its Latin vibes to the dance floor.

Local food and local restaurants, which have become increasingly important to the success of this dance, will contribute Indian and Mexican food, as well as chowder, baked goods, meatballs and flatbread pizza. And this year the dance will include a photo exhibit by local photographer Mary Dolan, who attended a trip to teach quilting in May.

When the first Caribbean Nights Dance Party was held in Portsmouth to benefit the children of Milot, Haiti, the school had only 100 students and four classrooms. Since then it has grown three-fold. Dozens of families in the Seacoast area and beyond have signed up to sponsor students at the school, and with the dance provide the operating funds that allow the school to continue.

The Dance Party begins at 7 pm with a slide show of the school and a talk on the progress made thanks to the hundreds of seacoast residents who have been involved, including about a dozen who have been down to the school in Milot, Haiti.
Dancing starts at 8 pm to the great beat of Combo Sabroso, which plays a variety of Latin music, including traditional Afro-Cuban music.
We love playing this gig which brings together people who love to dance, eat and have fun together,” said Matt Jenson of Arlington, Mass., band leader and University of New Hampshire alumnus who is currently on the piano faculty at Berklee College of Music. “But it also brings together people who feel great about helping to build a school in Haiti.”

Combo Sabroso was formed in 1998 when keyboard player Matt Jenson, then living in Portsmouth, assembled the best Latino musicians he could find in Boston. The band’s main influences are the ensembles of Latin piano icon Eddie Palmieri and the grand percussionist, Tito Puente.

Jenson said the band follows in the tradition of venerated maestros, but layers its own jazz solos over energetic dance rhythms. They play anything from Cha Cha to Danzon, from Bolero to Salsa, from Latin jazz to Plena.

The line up for this year’s event include Manolo Mairena of Costa Rica on conga and vocals, who recently performed at Carnegie Hall, It also includes is Jason Davis on bass,  David Rivera, a recent Berklee grad, on drumset and vocals, Mondongo on trombone, and on trumpet Yaure Muniz of Cuba, who is touring with the Afro-Cuban Allstars.

The lineup for the short slide show will include Brian Lenzi of Barrington, a former National Guard commander, who was in Haiti in February check out a building site for a guesthouse to help the school create its own income and train vocational students. York Rotarian Paul Salacain will report on his second trip to the school representing the local Rotary.

And several women who went to Milot in May to start a quilting program will report back on that effort, and will have small quilts available made by the women and teenagers of Milot.

While in Milot, Lenzi explored the cost and availability of materials for building the guest house. In the past Lenzi has built structures in the Caribbean as well as South and Central America. The guesthouse is being designed by Mike Lassel of Lassel Architects in South Berwick

Salacain explored water tanks in Haiti, helped build solar lamps out of water bottles and create charcoal out of agricultural waste.

The Cap Haitien Rotary has agreed to partner with the York Rotary as well as the South Berwick-Eliot Rotary on two grants. These grants will pay for vocational supplies, a water tank, a generator, solar panels and the shipping a container with the materials to Haiti.

The Eben Ezer School was started by Lucia Anglade, a Haitian American woman living in Long Island. It is operated by the non-profit Life and Hope Haiti. More than six dozen families and individuals, most of them in southern Maine and New Hampshire, sponsor children in Milot in the name of the school. These donations of $220 a year to keep the school operating.

Tickets are being sold at Black Bean in Rollinsford, Ceres Bakery in Portsmouth, Nature’s Way in South Berwick, Full Circle Community Thrift Store in Eliot and Fair Tide Thrift Store in Kittery. Checks, made out to Life and Hope Haiti, can also be sent to 37 Highland Ave. in South Berwick. Tickets cost $20.