El Tumbao Cubano - El Blog de Cuba en el Exilio

The Music of X Alfonso

Not all Cuban musicians are into salsa. Some play rock and roll. Others are into hip-hop. Still others prefer classical music. Then there's X Alfonso. He plays a mixture of many musical styles. The World's Marco Werman has his story.

The neighborhood of Vedado is filled with crumbling old mansions built before the 1959 revolution when families possessed massive wealth.

X Alfonso and his band rehearsing inside the synagogue.

One of the buildings on this street corner is an abandoned Sephardic synagogue. There aren't enough Sephardic Jews in Havana to keep the temple busy. Today, musicians use it as a rehearsal space.

The artist occupying it right now is well-known in Havana. Few Americans have heard of him. And it's too bad, because if you want to know who hip Cubans are listening to, you need to know the music of X Alfonso.

Listen @ The World.org

Film Screening: Inventos - Hip Hop Cubano

"Inventos Hip Hop Cubano"

Cuban Hip Hop provides a unique insight into the realities and politics of contemporary Cuba. Experience this as Inventos follows the pioneers of this musical movement to their homes, the stage and as they travel abroad for the first time.

Inventos features, Anonimo Consejo; Grandes Ligas; Obsesion; Havana Hip Hop producers Pablo Herrera and Ariel Fernandez; U.S. Dead Prez,Tony Touch and many others.

Cuba has this strange hold over people’s imaginations and their emotions — the romance, the music, the tropical life of the island makes mouths water and then there’s the politics of course: Castro, Che, the US and embargoes. In the dust clouds all this churns up, we somehow lose sight of the fact that people live, work, and create there. That Cubans have a culture and world view that actually exists — not a reaction against the USA, not a reaction against anything — just Cuban.

Jacobs-Fantauzzi has made a film with love and respect for the Cubans he films — young hip hop artists who have thought and worked out what it is they feel about the world they live in. They have an almost tangible identity and there’s nothing self conscious or fake about it. The documentary follows them in their daily lives of writing, performing and discussing hip hop in Cuba and then as they go to the USA for the first time to record an album and perform.

Hip hop in Cuba is a movement — an awakening for young people and a place to discuss the realities they live in. The scene is informal and grass roots — performances take place in the back yard of someone’s house or on a stage with a couple of mics. The style is old school — scratching and fabulous mixing goes on and the words just fly.

This documentary has been seen as a ‘social’ film highlighting issues we’re all focusing on these days: globalisation, world politics, development, poverty, identity and of course the USA. But behind all this, is a film about a group of young people clued up and sure of themselves — artists with total faith in what they are doing and their potential to make change happen.= Inventos: Hip Hop Cubano the album is available to buy, as is a copy of the documentary for screenings on: www.clenchedfistproductions.com

Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos

PAQUITO D'RIVERA AT CARNEGIE HALL

January 10, 2005: With Bebo Valdes, Yo-Yo Ma, Michel Camilo, Rosa Passos, Las hermanas Marquez, Dave Samuels & Andy Narell, The New York Voices, Brenda Feliciano, Claudio Roditi, Pablo Ziegler, The Youth Orchestra of the Americas and more !

PAQUITO D'RIVERA is celebrating "50 Years and 10 Nights" of show business at CARNEGIE HALL on January 10th with a star-studded program packed with his musical friends !

Candido: Hands of Fire

A documentary by Ivan Acosta

This just-released documentary by renowned filmmaker Ivan Acosta focuses on the life of famed Cuban percussionist Candido Camero. Hailed as one of the greatest Cuban musicians of all time, Candido's music is a powerful, driving force that demonstrates a technical virtuosity rarely seen in music. Born in Havana, Cuba in 1921, Candido has played with some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, including Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Charlie "Bird" Parker, Duke Ellington, Chico O'Farrill, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Celia Cruz, and several of today's most popular Latin American artists.

The Cuba Project/Bildner Center would like to invite you to attend the following film screening:

Monday, December 20 at 6:00 PM. Elebash Recital Hall. The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. 365 Fifth Avenue (Between 34th and 35th street) New York, NY, 10011.

This screening is free and open to the public. Seating is general admission. Please reserve to cubaproject@gc.cuny.edu

Cuba's free spirit

ARTURO SANDOVAL'S ECLECTIC TRUMPET EMBRACES JAZZ, LATIN, R&B AND POP By Buddy Seigal. Special to the Mercury News.

Arturo Sandoval is one intense musician. In his work, conversation and life, the ferociously gifted trumpeter is a personification of the ardent artist. His music can be breathtaking, feral, seemingly super-human.

One root of Sandoval's intensity is his upbringing in Fidel Castro's Cuba. A free spirit long restrained under a dictatorship, he felt stifled and frustrated both personally and musically.

Mentored by the bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, whose furious, upper-register blowing Sandoval absorbed, the Cuban musician defected to the United States with Gillespie's aid in 1990. His liberation has been bittersweet, though.

When it comes to Cuba, musicians are quick to weigh in pro or con Fidel Castro.

Across the Florida straits, bands like Los Van Van and singers like Ibrahim Ferrer are quite content in one of the two last bastions of communism in the world.

Here in the US, Cuban refugees like trumpeter Arturo Sandoval doesn't hide his dislike of Castro. The anti-Castro people probably would like more classically trained artists like Sandoval on their side. But for right now, they'll be happy with anyone they can get. Which brings us to the subject of today's Global Hit.

He was born Armando Christian Perez, and grew up in Miami. Drugs and violence were as common in his childhood as the palm trees where he lived. It's not surprising that Perez would adopt the stage-name Pit Bull.

This is Pit Bull's music...

Urbane Urgell

Young Cuban classical pianist heads to two-year perfection course at Paris conservatory.

By Vanessa Arrington / Associated Press Writer. Sunday, October 24, 2004.
HAVANA -- For years, Cuban classical pianist Gabriel Urgell Reyes played chords on an old upright piano in his native Havana.

Now, the young talent will play on a brand-new Bluthner grand worth tens of thousands of dollars -- in Paris.

Urgell, 28, was one of six pianists and the only Latin American granted entry to this year's perfection course at France's prestigious Conservatoire National Superieur de Danse et Musique in Paris.

"He is brilliant, and could likely be someone very famous in the future," said Herve Billaut, in charge of piano pedagogy at the conservatory. "It's surprising that he stayed so long in Cuba."...

CUBA'S CACHAO IS KING OF TUMBAO

Chuy Lopez. Sunday, October 24, 2004
"The bass is an instrument that in one word describes itself," says Israel "Cachao" Lopez, a virtuoso Cuban bassist considered the grandfather of salsa -- and creator of the mambo. "We're the depth of the music."

The role that the upright string bass plays is pivotal. When the instrument is plucked, the resulting deep resonant tones can swing a jazz rhythm section; when it's bowed, the sounds produced fill out a classical symphony. In Afro-Cuban music, the bass binds a complex polyrhythmic mesh of horns, strings, piano, guitars, voices and percussion that dance within a two- bar pattern called clave.

Cuba 21

Darsi Fernández welcomed me into her house in downtown Havana.
It was our first meeting. Singer/songwriter Julieta Venegas, a mutual friend, had encouraged me to contact Darsi. I was in Cuba with the Mexican director Juan Carlos Rulfo to film the Havana Hip-Hop and Rap Festival for a movie project. The festival was a disappointment and a disaster. But meeting Darsi opened us up to a new world of musicians who were underrated, ingenious, and immensely talented. From the first time I stepped into Darsi’s house and I saw Haydeé Milanes and Yusa sitting in a corner on the floor, rehearsing “Tanto Amar” – one of the breathtaking songs from Descemer Bueno – I understood that I was witnessing a new generation in the long line of serious Cuban musicians. They’re aware of their place in history and committed to their art and their times...

Cuba 21 Web site

Ay! Que Rico - José Conde Y Ola Fresca

"Mi mamá es la mejor cocinera de La Habana a la sagüesera!"

Ay! Qué Rico is a quintessential Cuban phrase for anything delicious -- whether music, sensual pleasure, food or good times. And it pretty much says it all about this unexpectedly captivating, independently produced gem from Miami-raised Jose Conde!..

New Fusion Spices up Salsa on Every Beat!

Order Record at Descarga.com