In a van packed with Afro-Cuban percussion, a trumpet, bass and a mountain guitar known as a tres, I'm talking with five straight-out-of-Havana musicians while crawling through Prague's late Friday afternoon traffic. "Sometimes we do two concerts in a day," boasts Mario Herrera Marsillan, percussionist and manager for Son Caliente.

My original intention was simply to meet Marsillan for a quick drink and discuss the band's upcoming concerts. Instead, the entire band arrived and insisted I jump in the van to get a taste of their life on the road.

Since their arrival in Prague last December, Son Caliente has been busy with as many as six concerts a week. Starting with weekly appearances at Dinitz Café, they've built an impressive track record of venues, including Prague's Febiofest and Club Tropizon, and ongoing engagements in various Czech cities such as Brno, Ostrava, Poděbradý, Pardubice, Plzeň and resort towns in the Krkonoše mountains.

"The group started at sessions on Pedro's roof in Havana's Barrio Miraflores," Marsillan explains as the driver turns the van onto E-50. Pedro, whose full name is Pedro Argelio Guevara Torres, is the statuesque lead singer, whom Marsillan proudly says "brings years of experience with African rhythm, gained during his military service while in Angola. Pedro not only moonlighted in Cuban music ensembles, but his immersion in the local musical culture inspired him to start an African folklore performance troupe when he returned to civilian life in Havana."

In 2000, when Torres found his rooftop sessions returning to the more Latin side of the Afro-Cuban sound, he caught the ear of Marsillan, who was actively scouting and managing bands and orchestras for Havana's live music venues. Over the years, the two men refined the group's lineup by adding members who shared their passion for the full heat of Cuban traditional and contemporary music.

"Manuel Guara Colas, our trumpeter, brings years of working with some of Cuba's best groups and dance orchestras," Marsillan says. "Our bass player, Amador Julian Hernandez Ordonez, brings a solid reputation from Cuba as a salsa musician. Roelis Matos Aguire plays the resonant Cuban mountain guitar known as tres. He provides a singular rustic flavor that can only be perfected by a musical life in Aguire's native western province of Guantanamo." Although Son Caliente's lineup is nothing short of deep Cuba, Marsillan insists, "We don't have a problem with Europeans. When we work with Italian or Czech percussionists, it only adds to the heat, a heat we would like to increase by adding a couple of Czech sopranos to the band."

For a band of any genre to transplant itself from one continent to another and hope to survive takes considerable courage. But Son Caliente's risk-taking didn't end at the airport. Some of the band's best moments are during tricky solos, when Colas' trumpet paints pictures of dancing beneath palm trees, or Aguire's strummed tres invokes mountain reveries.

Some of Son Caliente's magic went unnoticed at the corporate party the van finally delivered us to. The occasion was fine enough, and the band certainly did not miss a beat in doing their part to reward the mingling employees with a good time. Several days later, though, Son Caliente packed Prague's Chateau Bar as tight as a sardine can and set the crowd on fire, which is more typical of what the group does.