Cafe Cubano

Café Cubano

New Putumayo CD Celebrates Acoustic Cuban Music

    During the 1950s, Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack hung out in the nightclubs and casinos in Havana and basically transformed Cuba into America’s playground. All that abruptly changed when Fidel Castro took control of that island and any cultural exchanges became clandestine, at best.

     In 1996, the American guitarist and musicologist Ry Cooder put modern Cuban music on the world map with his production of The Buena Vista Social Club. In the ensuing twelve years, Cubanismo has seeped into the musical mainstream. As an indication of its cultural wealth, Putumayo Music, the label responsible for coining the phrase “World Music,” has released no less than four compilation CDs dedicated to the music of that small Caribbean island. Make that five compilation CDs. This month, Putumayo unveiled “Café Cubano”, a collection of mostly acoustic music, presented as a collage of legendary Cuban performers and some of the newer names of that scene.

     The album kicks off with “El Chacal” by Ola Fresa, a band founded in 2000 by singer/composer Jose Conde. Originally from New York, Conde moved with his immigrant parents to Miami, where he was exposed to his Cuban roots. The song is lilty, danceable with a distinct Afro-Cubano beat, a great song to start the disc.

     Ignacio “Mazacote” Carrillo was born in Guanabacao, Cuba in 1927 and moved to Havana at the age of twelve. He had an eight year stint singing with the well known band The Afro-Cuban All-Stars and is currently the lead singer for La Sonora Cubana, who is represented on this CD with their song “Lagrimas Negras”, a sweet bolero.

     Born on the eastern side of the island in 1944, Felix Beloy went on to become a member of the Cuban All-Stars, as well. His contribution to this CD, “Despues de Esta Noche” is from Baloy’s first solo project, which was released last year.

     Fidel Castro is not a fan of Pedro Luis Ferrer. His music has been banned from Cuban radio, although he has released three underground albums there. “Rustico”, his first CD to be released in the U.S., offers “Como a Cada Manana”, an acoustic number in the Cuban style referred to as guajiras.

     Armando Garzon was born in Santiago in 1948, where he received classical voice training in his youth. He has been nicknamed “The black angel with the velvet voice”, a long-winded moniker. But he backs it up on “Escandala” with his countertenor voice that climbs the ladder to its ultimate crescendo at the end of the song, from his album on the Cuban label Corason.

     Asere was the name taken by five young Cuban musicians in 1998 for their new band. Over the next decade, the band has become a voice for its generation. “Corazon”, a traditional son, is presented acoustically, in a recognizably Cuban sound.

     All told, Café Cubano presents ten songs on this forty-five minute CD. Putumayo does a very good job of offering a generational cross-reference of the current explosion of Cuban music, presented on this CD in an acoustic format. In Playa Tamarindo, Café Cubano is available at Jaime Peligro Book Store, where they will gladly sample the music for their customers. All comments concerning this article are welcome.