Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca

Thursday, August 20

Salsa music works because it follows a formula, but after a couple hours, that formula can sometimes be a bit much, even for the diehards that frequent Century Ballroom’s regular salsa nights. Ricardo Lemvo’s band gives you the best of multi-worlds, mixing salsa motifs with a pan-African sound that is both varied and uniformly irresistible. Afro-Cuban connections have been explored by many, many artists in recent years, but few have done it with as smoothly ingratiating a feeling as Lemvo (whose band’s name is an Africanized misspelling of “crazy machine” in Spanish). He goes down easy, like much of his Putumayo-style world-music brethren, but when you’re trying to execute those steps, rough edges aren’t what you need. Dance lesson starts at 9. (Note: show is NOT all ages as originally indicated.)

Thu., Aug. 20, 9 p.m., 2009