Son Venezuela

Son Venezuela is a Latin dance band based in Lawrence, Kansas that has worked the Lawrence and Kansas City area for more than thirty years. Its repertoire spans the dance music of the Caribbean and northern South America: salsa from Puerto Rico, merengue from the Dominican Republic, cumbia from Colombia, tambora from Venezuela, murga from Panama, calypso from the Antilles, and Afro-Cuban rhythms. The band has released two albums, the self-titled Son Venezuela in 1994 and Don't Stop Me Now in 2005, and has played clubs, festivals, concert halls and private events across Kansas, Missouri and the wider Midwest. Its lineup has changed remarkably little over that run. The original bassist was Stanley Sheldon, who had played in Peter Frampton's band and was inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame in 2012, and the current conga player, Fernando Reynoso, came from Caribe, a pioneering Kansas Latin group inducted in 2017. The Pitch, Kansas City's alternative weekly, called Son Venezuela the premier Latin groove ensemble in the area, and its readers voted the band the best Latin or world music act six times. In 2024 Son Venezuela was itself inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame, whose induction writeup describes the group as a Latin music ambassador in America's heartland and notes that it has been among the biggest-drawing bands of any genre in Lawrence and Kansas City. Its sets are built around getting an audience dancing rather than listening.

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