The chronicles of Fania (Records, that is) stretch back to 1964, when the label was founded in New York. The chronicles of “I Like It Like That”, the Fania Records tribute night curated by DJs Russ Dewbury and Man About Town, stretch back to November 2008, when the party was founded in Sydney’s Basement. Having missed the first edition, and having finally finished kicking myself for that error, I was determined not to make the same mistake twice. And so it was that I slid out of a cold Sydney night into a warm Basement.

You’d expect excellent timing from two gentlemen with the DJing pedigree of Dewbury and Town, and so it is with the concept of a tribute night to a label that is to salsa what Stax and Motown are to soul. After languishing in a New York warehouse for many years, Fania’s catalogue was sold in 2006 to Emusica, who have been busily remastering and reissuing, with a compilation from Gilles Peterson, a mix CD from DJ Format, and a remix album (also called I Like It Like That – the title comes from a Pete Rodriguez boogaloo classic released in 1967) amongst the treats on offer. For those who, like your humble correspondent, are relative newcomers to salsa (and boogaloo, for that matter), the rebirth of Fania has been a wonderful way to find great examples of those genres, and others, to wrap your ears around.

Of course, this is music to wrap your hips and feet around as well as your ears, and thus we have “I Like It Like That.” It was the ears that started the evening off, however, with DJ Diego Lenis playing to a mix of early arrivals and those lingering over dinner (and over one another). Russ Dewbury replaced Lenis on the decks and announced his arrival with a searing trumpet line which, together with a little more volume (and a few less diners) started to fill the dancefloor, and even prompted a the formation of a conga line. As it passed me on one lap, I heard a girl asking the dancer in front of her, “Where are we going?”, err, it’s a conga line – it is better to travel hopefully then to arrive, my dear.

The conga line broke up just as the conga players arrived on stage, in the form of the Afro Cuban Percussion Ensemble (who numbered two conga players, drum kit, bass guitar, vocals, and a man playing the shekere and cowbell, who also contributed dance moves able to render any need to ask the question, “So you think you can dance?” wholly superfluous). As you’d expect from an act with “Afro Cuban” in its name, there were Latin flavours, and jazz, but most of all, raw percussive energy, lead by Watussi’s Vincent Sebastian. The half hour set was over much too soon, and although there were a few people still not dancing during the set, they were probably either dead or at least well on the way.

Dewbury returned to the decks and kept the grooves flowing, obviously relishing the records he was playing and the response he was getting from the crowd. All of the flavours of the Fania sound were on show, from the soaring trumpet and trombone lines, to the bedrock of the Cuban rhythms, via the improvisation and big-band borrowings that all went into the pot that simmered and bubbled in 1960s and 1970s New York.

Music this good can never get old, a point which was hammered home by the headlining “I Like It Like That” Orchestra, put together for the first party (although based around Reyes de la Onda, a band featuring Watussi’s ebullient Oscar Jiminez, and Son Veneno’s Merenia Gillies). With the addition of Gonzalo Porta, the Orchestra featured a three pronged vocal line, trumpet, trombone, bass, keyboards, drums and percussion, with Vincent Sebastian doing a double shift on congas. There wasn’t much room on stage, but there was even less on the dancefloor for the next two hours as the Orchestra delivered a set that can only be described as jaw-dropping. If the Orchestra don’t get booked all up and down the country for festivals this summer, then I’ll start putting on festivals all up and down the country this summer to remedy that deficiency. Of course, I’ll want to see them booked plenty between this and then as well – that their joyous music would sound sublime in the sunshine takes nothing away from how sublime it sounded in the confines of the Basement.

Why was it so good? Well, for starters, it had me dancing properly. Your humble correspondent is not renowned as a dancer; “ecstatic stumbling” is usually a more common descriptor. But as the Orchestra played on, the ankle bone actually was connected to the knee bone, and to the hip bone in a way that made sense. It probably didn’t hurt that everyone in the room seemed to be feeling the same way – there were plenty of couples dancing salsa together in a way that made you think that they’d done a bit of that before, and one gorgeous blonde girl in a black dress whose Charleston moves were so liquid that all I could think of were the first rays of a summer solstice sunrise sliding skittishly, alliteratively, across a field of the agricultural commodity of your choice.

What defined the set was the love with which the Fania classics were brought to life, which came out in the musicianship, and the palpable enthusiasm of the Orchestra. This music, this time, this place; it felt that the Orchestra members had found what is was that they had been put on the planet to do (and I say that with absolutely no disrespect to the very strong body of original work that the Orchestra members have amassed in their other bands). Many bands have difficulty finding one vocalist with enough charisma and poise to grab hold of the audience; in Jiminez, Gillies, and Porta, the Orchestra have three, and they grabbed hold of us turn and turn about, and then all together, throughout the course of the set.

So, do we like it like this? Emphatically, yes we do. This is currently sitting at the top of my “Best Local Gig of 2009” list – I’m hoping that there is another this year to give it some competition, and I certainly expect to see the Orchestra booked again or I will be having harsh words with someone. If you have so much as a molecule of rhythm anywhere in your body, I’ve no doubt that you, too, will like it like this.