Review: Though Late, Joan Sebastian Pleases Audience at Nokia Theatre

By Ramon Aviles on May 12, 2014

Joan Sebastian celebrated Mother’s Day with his fans at Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles during a magnificent concert – but this concert almost never happened.

As part of his international 2014 tour, Sebastian was scheduled to perform in LA as customary, but this time around, something caused “the people’s poet” to delay his start by almost 3 hours.

The concert opened with the Mariachi Divas, which is comprised of extremely talented young women, who sang and performed classic mariachi songs for nearly 2 hours. They performed well, but the crowd began to scowl and became restless, waiting for Sebastian to arrive.

The wait continued for another half hour while a regional Mexican band performed, and they did the best they could to appease the situation, asking the crowd for a bit more patience and assuring them Sebastian would arrive soon.

Speculation surrounding his absence began to brew, mainly because he’s still fighting cancer that was discovered years ago. Speculation about his health also grew because no one was clarifying any reason behind his delay.

Finally, around 11 p.m., Sebastian mafr his entrance to what had become a somewhat chaotic situation. Without a word, he performed two of his greatest hits. After finishing “Mas Alla del Sol,” he addressed the crown and explained what happened.

“I woke up this morning to the ridiculous yet enormous problem of having been double-booked for Mother’s Day. Our genius promoters had scheduled me to perform both in Queretaro and Los Angeles today,” he said. “It was a simple fix, we just sent my clone here. In all honesty and with great embarrassment, due to legal reasons we were unable to cancel the Queretaro show, so I just performed there and travelled to be here with you tonight as well.”

Having laid all rumors and speculation aside, he warmly thanked his fans for their patience and congratulated all the mothers in the audience.

He then began his full show, and joined by his ensemble and his guitar, performed some of his greatest hits such as “Secreto de Amor,” “Me Gustas,” “Un Idiota,” “El Primer Tonto,” “Tatuaje,” “Gracias Por Tanto Amor,” “Gloria,” and “Estos Celos,” among others.

At first, he seemed exhausted from his mad dash to get to LA, trying only to fulfill his obligation. But little by little, he finessed the crowd with jokes about the ordeal, and soon all was forgotten, and the fans enjoyed what otherwise was an excellent performance.

It’s easy to blame the artists when these types of ordeals occur, but most of the time, it’s management’s fault. He could have cancelled the show in LA, and it would have been justified, because having two performances in two different countries on the same day is no easy task.

Without a doubt, Sebastian is very widely loved and admired, mainly because of his humility and integrity. By the end of the night, the moms were happy to have seen one of the greats in Mexican music history work his magic.