CUBA L.A. / “Siboney”

Our music is unique, filled with African polyrhythmic textures and wonderful Spanish melody lines. And it’s interesting when these elements are reversed, when beautiful African melodies are graced with European harmonies and rhythms. This hybrid of Spanish and African idioms is a reflection of what Cuban music is.
—Danilo Lozano, music director of Cuba L.A.

If you do any serious investigation of so-called Latin music, you’ll repeatedly hear about this hybridization of African rhythms and European melodies. Usually, it’s a conceptual thing – something that no one except for musicologists and the musicians themselves can understand. On the self-titled CD by Cuba L.A., it’s something anyone can hear for themselves.

Cuba L.A. is a collective of West Coast musicians who share an interest in Cuban music, and, most of them are of Cuban descent as well. Their leader is Danilo Lozano, a classically-trained flautist and a professor of music. As you might except given Lozano’s background, Cuba L.A. plays with precision and accuracy. They aren’t like the wild and loose salsa bands of New York City that I usually prefer. But, they also aren’t stuffy or preachy and they aren’t playing some sanitized version of the music that you might hear, say, on “Latin Night” in a Vegas nightclub. Their style falls somewhere between the two extremes. The Cuba L.A. sound is clean enough to be pleasant if you’re not really paying attention, but also soulful enough to be moving and meaningful once you really tune in.
danilo lozano 01.jpg
I like the entire Cuba L.A. CD—it’s perfect California roadtrip music—but the slower songs are where they’re at their best. The band’s version of “Siboney,” a decades-old Cuban composition, has been one of my favorite pieces of music for a few years now. It’s little more than a groove and melody line, but the groove (laid down by the famed Cuban percussionist Luis Conte) has a spiritual depth while the melody (played on flute by Lozano himself) is achingly mournful. “Siboney” reminds me a lot of some of some of the slower work by Afro-Peruvian chanteuse Susana Baca as well as the spiritual ballads of my man Gil Scott-Heron.
luis conte 01.jpg
A close second to “Siboney” is “Bruca Manigua,” where Conte is joined by two other percussionists to form one of those hypnotic sorts of rhythm beds where every drum seems to be sounding at once and repeatedly. Besides the rhythms, this piece is interesting because of the strange, almost atonal harmonies. Lozano describes the harmonic approach this way:

When you listen closely, certain elements of [the] composition are extremely modern – one wonders, “Was Thelonius Monk listening to Arsenio Rodriguez, or was Rodriguez hearing Monk?” because the music is that rich harmonically.

Rodriguez, the liner notes explain, was a Cuban composer of Congolese descent who helped to ‘Africanize’ the sound of Latin dance music in the 1930s and ‘40s. I doubt that I would’ve come up with the Monk connection myself, but listening to “Bruca Manigua,” I’ll be damned if I can’t hear a little “Epistrophy” or “Crepescule With Nellie” in there. Interesting….

—Mtume ya Salaam

           The Spanish Tinge          

1.
Sooner or later we should do a critique of this African rhythms/European melodies & harmony conception. I’m not feeling it. I mean, I feel the music, but the explanation is lame. I think it’s really a backdoor attempt to claim ownership of Black music as if our music could not have ever existed without European melodies and harmonies, and all we bring is the boo-tay, the bump, the hot-ass rhythms. I don’t think so.

I am not saying that there has not been a merging of musical traditions. For sure Black music as we know it today is an amalgam of diverse musical forms and genres, nevertheless the real question is: "is something what it is because of the form it takes?" The separation of form and content is a major mistake.

Plus, it’s just not true. Sure we used a lot of European forms but we were forced to do that and beyond what we were forced to do, we also did our own thing, had our own musical heritages which inform and influence if not outright identify our music.

Everybody knows the blues when they hear it, those kinds of harmonies: the so-called “blue note.” That’s not European. The blues is a significant harmonic and melodic development defining and identifying significant aspects of twentieth century Black music.

And don’t get me started on gospel.

I think it’s a bit too late in the game to try to credit different racial groups with different aspects of any one music form although it is clear that in some musical forms, one or the other aspect is dominate. I mean if I’m listening to Muddy Waters, I’m not going to look for an opera influence.

But anyway, I think Cuba L.A. is pleasantly attractive music. Cruising down the highway music. But as for two components (i.e. melody and harmony) being Euro (or white) and one component (i.e. rhythm) being Afro (or black), I think that’s some racial essentialism (i.e. blood being the ultimate determinant), some specious ca-ca that sounds good on the surface but is nothing but racism in disguise regardless of who utters it.

I understand what folk mean when they say it, but it’s just plain wrong to try and define culture and cultural production as racial. Besides as the old bluesmen said long time ago: it ain’t what you do but the way that you do it!

2.

klazz brothers.jpg
With that said, let me drop this on yall. The Klazz Brothers. Three German cats (Tobias Forster - piano, Kilian Forster – bass, and Tim Hahn - drums) who got together with two Cuban percussionists/vocalists (Alexis Herrera Estevez and Elio Rodriguez Luis) and have released a handful of albums, which are mainly classical music interpreted via Afro-Cuban jazz.

The tracks included in the jukebox are from two of their albums: Classic Meets Cuba and Mozart Meets Cuba.

They are not the first to do this. In fact, there is a long tradition in Cuba of using classical music in popular forms, plus many of the Cuban musicians are conservatory trained in Cuba regardless of what type of music they play.

Just listen to it. Call it want you want. No matter. Ask yourself is it still classical music? Is it jazz? Is it Cuban? If so, by what criteria do you judge what it is?

It ain’t just music with a Spanish tinge, this is the whole damn enchilada! Salud.

—Kalamu ya Salaam




This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 12:12 am and is filed under Contemporary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


2 Responses to “CUBA L.A. / “Siboney””

Marian Says:
August 31st, 2007 at 10:59 am

You guys are making my wish list at Amazon get longer and longer………..


Electro-acoustic Music Site Says:
July 28th, 2015 at 12:41 pm

cool site. I’ll be back for more.


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