{"id":1338945,"date":"2018-08-15T15:15:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T19:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/?p=1338945"},"modified":"2018-08-15T15:15:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T19:15:24","slug":"alive5-la-unica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/2018\/08\/15\/alive5-la-unica\/","title":{"rendered":"Alive@5: La Unica"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1170\" height=\"658\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GFosZlVtYGQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It was around 2007 when Neil Reedy and Gonzalo Bernal joined their first band together, a salsa group called Movimiento. Bernal had just moved from Venezuela to the United States, and Reedy had recently moved from Philadelphia to the D.C. area. The two lived in Northern Virginia, and Reedy would occasionally give Bernal a ride home after band practice.<\/p>\n<p>On the way back, the two sometimes discussed music (as musicians do). Reedy, a trumpet and tin whistle player, decided to play Bernal a sample of Irish music one day in the car.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought, \u2018Well, he\u2019s from Venezuela, so maybe he hasn\u2019t heard of it before,\u2019\u201d Reedy said. \u201cBut he was very familiar with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So familiar, in fact, that Bernal threw Reedy a curveball. \u201cI said, \u2018I know a Panamanian musician who did a cover of \u2018Danny Boy\u2019 in salsa,\u2019\u201d Bernal said. \u201cI think his brain totally twisted. Then I said, \u2018Would you like to start making music together?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Movimiento eventually disbanded, but the two came together to form La Unica, one of the area\u2019s only Irish-salsa bands. Or, at least, that\u2019s one way the group describes itself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve been fighting on how to describe our sound forever,\u201d Reedy said. \u201cIt sounds clich\u00e9 to say we can\u2019t be defined, but it\u2019s true that we incorporate a bunch of different elements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCeltic-Caribbean\u201d is the latest descriptor adopted by Cory Padin, the lead guitarist for the band. He joined the group in 2011 after spotting an ad recruiting a guitarist for \u201cLa Unica Irish Band,\u201d a cultural amalgamation that caught his attention.<\/p>\n<p>Padin had been playing the guitar since he was 11 years old, graduating from the Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts in New York and attending Berklee College of Music in Boston for a year before switching to business school. But like most of the band\u2019s other members, he had stuck with more traditional genres \u2014 jazz, funk, R&amp;B, and soul \u2014 before auditioning for La Unica.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think I kind of wanted something different,\u201d Padin said. \u201cSomething completely unique. But Irish music was completely different for me. I had no foundation in it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, Bernal viewed Padin as a bit of a miracle. The band\u2019s original drummer and guitarist had left a few months earlier, and they still didn\u2019t have a bassist. He and Reedy were limping along, struggling to keep La Unica alive. Bernal put out countless Craigslist ads, he said, but no one responded. Finally, Reedy suggested he try writing an ad in Spanish and seeing what happened.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd this crazy kid responded to the post in broken Spanish,\u201d Bernal said with a laugh. \u201cThat was Cory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Padin eventually helped recruit Matt Tredwell, the band\u2019s current drummer, and TJ Turqman, its current bassist. Bernal also described Padin as the band\u2019s \u201cmusical director,\u201d an informal title that mostly involves juggling ideas from each of the four members and uniting musical styles in a way that doesn\u2019t feel clunky.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s surprisingly easy to do with Latin and Irish music, Padin said, genres that tend to share a 3\/4 time signature. It\u2019s not as easy when the band incorporates songs by other artists. One of its most popular covers is \u201cWake Me Up\u201d by Avicii, a song they\u2019ve adapted to include the fiddle and tin whistle. Most of the band\u2019s other cover songs include just as many modifications. The goal, Padin added, is to adapt the music so that it\u2019s almost unrecognizable from the original.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe kind of try to breathe new life into it,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that makes it more musically interesting, and it\u2019s something the crowd can connect with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luckily, the band is blessed with a roster of performers who can play a variety of different instruments. Reedy plays the trumpet and tin whistle along with the bodhr\u00e1n, a traditional Irish frame drum. Bernal is an accomplished vocalist and relearned the violin after being classically trained on the instrument in his native Venezuela.<\/p>\n<p>The band is also looking forward to its tenth anniversary in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>At this point, Bernal said, the group is so close that he once offered to donate a kidney to Reedy while his bandmate was dealing with an extended illness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re brothers now,\u201d Bernal said. \u201cWe trust each other. Really, it\u2019s like a marriage. The trick is to keep things fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was around 2007 when Neil Reedy and Gonzalo Bernal joined their first band together, a salsa group called Movimiento. Bernal had just moved from Venezuela to the United States,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1338946,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1338945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alivefive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1338946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}