When the Buena Vista Social Club CD became a worldwide hit in 1997, it opened the gates to a flood of music made in or derived from Cuba. Not all of it is of the highest quality — but these four CDs don’t fall into that category. Each of these recordings is a good ambassador of Cuban and Caribbean music.
Various artists’ Santeros y Salseros
Santeros y Salseros is the perfect primer for anyone interested in the various threads that make up modern Cuban music.
On the Swiss label Real Rhythm, this disc in 12 tracks covers the 10 major styles of Cuban music. The excellent liner notes (in an unfortunately tiny typeface) explain each genre or style, give a little of its history, and show how each fits in the complex mosaic of this island nation’s musical heritage. A “family tree” on the back cover shows the major roots and branches of the styles and their influences, which include West African, Spanish, French dance music, and U.S. big band, jazz, rock and hip-hop. The notes also give a brief biography of each performer or group.
The music is uniformly well chosen for this kind of collection. It includes santeria, rumba, danzón, bolero, campesina, son, mambo, cha-cha-cha, salsa and conga, ranging from the oldest and most primitive to the most modern. The careful listener can pick up common threads that run through the music, including complex polyrhythms, call-and-response vocals, and an emphasis on emotion in the lyrics. And of course, it’s all great dance music.
Some of the stand-out tracks (although all are good) are the opener, a santerian sacred drum piece with prominent African roots, led by the septuagenarian Carlos Aldama; the lush danzon and cha-cha-cha numbers by the Hermanos Izquierdo Orchestra; the son selection by the Septeto Nacional (with a sound that will be familiar to fans of the Buena Vista Social Club); and Perez Prado’s “Mambo No. 1,” by La Sonora Sotanera.
Salsa is represented by three separate tracks, in the traditional, ballad and modern styles. If your feet remain still during these pieces, you’re probably dead.
The only criticism I have of this package is the minute typeface used in the liner notes; it should come with a magnifying glass. Otherwise, it’s an excellent overview of Cuban music, which has borrowed from many traditions and has in turn influenced the music of many other cultures and countries.
(Real Rhythm, 1999)
Las Cecilias de Cuba’s ¿De Que te Quejas?
Another release in the Real Rhythm series, Las Cecilias de Cuba is an absolutely charming set of modern salsa by a large all-female group, Las Cecilias. With 11 tracks that last just shy of an hour, it’s another quick trip through various salsa styles. This group just oozes with style, charm and wit, as well as musical talent.
The opening track, “Todo el Mundo” (“The whole world”), starts off with a verse of rap over salsa rhythms, then segues into a mid-tempo salsa. The rhythm is set by percussive piano, backed by horn accents. This song, as with nearly all the other tracks, includes some jazzy improvised singing in the final section, after the main verses are over. It’s an impressive mark of the group’s sophistication and credibility — this is no bunch of pretty faces fronting a band, but professional jazz musicians and singers in their own right.
An hour of straight salsa can get a little tiresome unless you’re out on the floor in a big crowd dancing, but this disc contains enough variety to keep it interesting. There’s a beautiful bolero-type ballad, “Mi Ayer” (“My Yesterday”), with some expecially nice piano work; “El Manisero,” an example of son; “Popourrit de Cha-Cha-Cha,” (which is self-explanatory); and the final track, a high energy merengue/conga, “El pato ye la pata” (“The drake and the hen”).
As with “Santeros y Salseras,” this release has excellent liner notes, including beautiful photography. The notes include song lyrics, and the vocalists sing clearly enough that you can follow along easily.
Overall, this is an impressive release, a good example of modern Cuban salsa — sultry and swinging, simple but sophisticated at the same time. It may be a little bit too slick and over-produced for my taste, but that doesn’t detract at all from its musical qualities.
(Real Rhythm, 1997)
Various artists’ Salsa
Salsa, a benefit for the U.K. charity Oxfam, contains 14 tracks of modern salsa from all over Latin America. Culled from a variety of salsa and world music labels, it’s a pretty good sampler of the current state of the world of salsa, from New York to the Caribbean to South America.
Like mariachi, a little salsa can go a long way unless you’re a die-hard fan. So it helps if you can spice it up a little bit with something unusual. There are a few good examples of both kinds of salsa on this disc — the run-of-the-mill and the genuinely interesting.
The standout tracks all offer something more than blaring horns, pounding piano and pulsing rhythms backing call-and-response vocals; the rest are more or less variations on that theme.
Jimmy Bosch, from Puerto Rico via New York, is a supple and engaging trombone player. His track, “La Cacharra,” has a lot of sonic variety and humor in it. The warm tenor vocals highlight are reminiscent of Tex-Mex Freddy Fender’s, and the band is sharp and tight.
Puerto Rican Rodolfo Barrera, aka “Nava,” presents a real ear-catching song, “Cuando Se Ama.” His smooth vocals are sung to a zydeco-salsa tune over a swinging funk beat; with accordion instead of piano teamed with the trombone, this track has a true World blend sound that’s miles beyond standard salsa.
Two of the most popular bands in Puerto Rico, Truco and Zaperoko, team up for “Vamanos p’al Carnaval,” and you’d think the sound of two salsa bands would be overpowering, but it’s not. It’s light, subtle and melodic while remaining firmly within the salsa tradition — further proof that this genre can be more than volume and muscle.
The Septeto Nacional de Cuba is an old band with many young members, and their acoustic “son” number, “La Chica de la Calle Madrid,” immediately stands out. I wasn’t surprised to see that this band is in the Real Rhythm stable. The Septeto is testimony that acoustic-based music can still swing and carry a big beat.
Ibrahim Ferrer’s track from his post-Buena Vista solo debut is likewise strong, but seems buried amid the brass and drums of the other tracks. It’s instructive to hear the influence Ferrer and other old-school singers had on today’s salsa vocalists.
Artists on the other tracks come from Cuba, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, mostly filtered through New York. Even though not all the tracks live up to the standards set by those I’ve mentioned, this is a generally good sampler, and not a bad place to start if you’re interested in exploring salsa.
(World Music Network, 1999)
Los Jubilados’ Cero Farandulero
Given the immense popularity of Cuban jazz in the 1950s and 1960s, it’s hardly surprising that the so-called Buena Vista Social Club is not the only group of senior citizen musicians still active in the island nation. Los Jubilados (The Pensioners) are based in Santiago, the port city at the eastern end of Cuba, and play a lively version of the traditional acoustic son form first popularized 50 or more years ago.
This group is more strictly traditional than the Buena Vista group, which merged son with other Cuban jazz idioms, and added some blues influence from its American producer, Ry Cooder. Even so, it’s not entirely traditional, having nine members instead of the standard seven.
The band is centered on a trio of vocalists: Hermelino Bizet, who sings a robust tenor lead; and Mario Carcasses and Bebeto Ferrer, who sing a first- and second-voice (tenor and baritone) duet, usually behind Bizet’s lead. It’s an effective hook to hang the group’s music on; all their voices have mellowed and roughened with age, but they haven’t lost anything in technique and precision. More often than not, Carcasses (the group’s director) and Ferrer sound like one voice, their vocals are so tight. No surprise, since they’ve been singing together off and on for 30 years.
The music is anchored by the sprightly rhythm section, which includes the usual conga, bongos, claves and other hand percussion; and by a solid bass. Rafael Lafarguez and Elpidio Toirat fill in the middle on the Cuban tres and standard guitar, respectively. Topping off the sound is the youngest member, Anibal Pacheco on trumpet, a mere kid in his 20s.
A typical song in the son style has three or four sections: an introduction that establishes the themes and which may be a little slower than the main part; one or two that develop variations on the themes; one or more sections of instrumental solos; and often a restatement of the main theme in a final section. Los Jubilados seem particularly good at highlighting the energy and drama of these transitions, one mark of a top-notch band.
There aren’t any real standout tracks here, by which I mean that they’re all good, although the title song, “Cienfuegos,” and “El Dulcerito” caught my ear as particularly lively. Throughout, the playing is tight, tight, tight. The whole band attacks every entrance, indeed every note with gusto and precision. They also have an awareness of the use of the quiet spaces between notes that is the real hallmark of professionals.
The world may have latched on to the more energetic and lively salsa, one of the offshoots of Cuban son, but this band of “pensioners” proves that there’s still plenty of life left in the old acoustic music, as well as in its aging players.
(Corason, 1998)
