Charliesax >Charlie Hearnshaw's Munjenta Café Latin Jazz Quintet
Charlie uses Munjenta Café as a vehicle for his own compositions alongside familiar latin and swing tunes
Charlie Hearnshaw’s Munjenta Café Latin Jazz Quintet plays tunes composed by Charlie alongside Bossa Nova, Tango, Samba, Swing & French chansons.
With such a wide repertoire the band can choose to be chilled or up-front and dancy, as the occasion requires.
They play at low volume.
Scroll down to listen to some tracks.
The name "Munjenta Café" name is taken from a bossa nova that Charlie learned in Paris from a Venezuelan clarinet player in the early eighties. It means "The Coffee Grinder".
In the mid-eighties, Charlie lived briefly in Paris and made several trips to Munich.
He hand copied scores of some fairly obscure latin american tunes (bossa nova, samba, choro) that he played with some excellent musicians he met on his travels.
On returning to Devon he used some of those tunes, alongside his own compositions, as a basis for the initial repertoire of his new latin jazz band.
Albeit with some fairly drastic changes of personnel, Munjenta Café has been going strong ever since.
Below are some tracks from a 2012 live album.
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sax/clarinet
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guitar/vocals
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double bass
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congas/percussion
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drums
