Free salsa nights are still swinging through the food pavilion at Otay Ranch Town Center in Chula Vista, with three concerts left before the summer series wraps up next month. Leading the band each Tuesday evening is Manny Cepeda, a Latin Grammy-nominated salsa and jazz composer whose orchestra has anchored the Salsa Under the Stars series since it kicked off on July 14.
The free evenings run from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., as reported by Fox 5 San Diego & KUSI News, with the Manny Cepeda Orchestra providing the music for each installment. Cepeda has written songs for prominent musicians in San Diego, Puerto Rico and New York, according to his band's website, and has played alongside Bobo Jimenez, Richie Ray and Willie Colon over the course of his career.
A Bandleader Steeped in Puerto Rican Tradition
Cepeda's musical roots trace back to Puerto Rico, where his career began as a drummer and timbale player on the television program Show de Vigoreaux. He also learned percussion from his uncle Rafael Cepeda Atiles, known as the patriarch of Puerto Rican Bomba y Plena, a lineage he later honored on his 2014 album Roots/Raices, according to Segerstrom Center for the Arts.
His 2017 Latin Grammy nomination in the Salsa/Fusion category came for the album Padre Querido, a project dedicated to his father, barber and musician Don Leonides Rivera. Before founding the Manny Cepeda Orchestra in 2004, Cepeda spent 31 years in the U.S. Navy, traveling the world while playing with the Navy Show Band and eventually leading the Navy Steel Band before retiring as the branch's top Enlisted Bandmaster, per the San Diego Reader.
From Seaport Village to a Local Community Center Classroom
Cepeda launched the public Salsa Under the Stars concert series in 2010, eventually expanding it to regular San Diego County venues including The Headquarters at Seaport Village and Little Italy's Piazza della Famiglia. Today the Manny Cepeda Orchestra is known locally as a San Diego salsa band that plays salsa, merengue, cumbia, bachata and Cuban rhythms at its performances, according to the California Center for the Arts Escondido.
Beyond performing, Cepeda also teaches Afro-Cuban percussion as an adjunct professor of music at Grossmont College in El Cajon, where he directs the college's Afro-Cuban Ensemble. He earned a bachelor's degree in music education from Illinois State University in 1973.
Finale Set to Coincide With Hispanic Heritage Month
The Otay Ranch series concludes on September 15, a date that coincides with a larger Hispanic Heritage Month celebration at the mall. That final day will feature folklorico dance performances, food, face painters and crafts alongside the last of the free evenings.
The timing is no coincidence: September 15 marks the official kickoff of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the federally established observance running through October 15, according to Otay Ranch Town Center. The date also marks the independence anniversaries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. The Tuesday salsa nights are scheduled alongside the shopping center's existing weekly Farmers Market, which runs on Main Street from 4 to 8 p.m., giving visitors an easy way to combine both events in one trip.
A Shopping Center Leaning on Community Events
Otay Ranch Town Center is a 600,000-plus-square-foot open-air lifestyle center that opened in 2006 and is operated by Brookfield Properties, housing more than 90 retail shops, dining establishments and entertainment venues, according to Brookfield Properties. Free programming like Salsa Under the Stars also lands in a city where the demographic case for Latin music is strong: roughly 61.1% of Chula Vista's more than 276,000 residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, per U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
The mall itself is also in transition. In September 2024, the Chula Vista Planning Commission approved a rezoning plan that would convert 144,000 square feet of commercial space at Otay Ranch Town Center into 840 multi-family residential units, including 10% designated as affordable housing, as reported by inewsource. The multi-phase redevelopment is designed to weave housing directly into the outdoor shopping property over a 15-year period, a shift that makes free community draws like the salsa series and the Farmers Market part of how the center keeps foot traffic flowing while its footprint changes around it.
