Word: cuban
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What's the attraction? "Cuban jazz differs in that it incorporates the Cuban rhythms, but it has a complexity, a rhythmic complexity, that hasn't hit the U.S.," says Jimmy Durchslag, president of Bembe Records, an independent record label in Redway, Calif., that distributes Cuban music. "It tends to be pretty high energy and frenetic. They have monster chops; they are outrageous performers. The best of the music is incredibly technical and wonderfully creative stuff...
...Cuban artists are taking advantage of the crack in the embargo door. Over the next few weeks, Valdes plans stops in Philadelphia, Washington, Los Angeles and St. Paul, Minn. Earlier this year, La Charanga Habanera, a hard salsa act that is considered one of Havana's hottest bands, played its first-ever show in the U.S., at a festival outside Boston. Three years ago, pianist Ruben Gonzales, 79, considered himself retired and didn't even own a piano. This summer he has a solo album out (the smoothly accomplished Introducing...Ruben Gonzales on Nonesuch), and in October and November...
Mainstream awareness of Cuban music has been raised in other ways as well. Buena Vista Social Club (Nonesuch), an album that features American guitarist Ry Cooder jamming with Cuban musicians, won a Grammy this year and sold 250,000 copies in the U.S.; on July 1, Cooder's outfit will play Carnegie Hall. Trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, who defected from Cuba in 1990, has a new album out titled Hot House (N2K). Cuba is also going Hollywood. In August, Columbia Pictures will release Dance with Me, a salsa-spiced love story about a Cuban immigrant (played by Puerto Rican singer Chayanne...
American record companies, always hungry to latch onto trends, and currently ravenous to get chunks of the emerging Spanish-language entertainment market, have been sending scouts and emissaries to Cuba in search of new acts. U.S. law prohibits American companies from hiring Cuban musicians directly, so when European and Japanese labels sign Cuban performers, the American companies sometimes step in as Stateside distributors. In other cases, the musicians are signed by the American companies' foreign subsidiaries--Valdes, for example, is technically signed to EMI Canada, making it possible for EMI's Blue Note label in the U.S. to release...
...Cuban government, eager for cultural visibility and revenue, is pumping up its music scene, which is state controlled. In May the country staged its second annual music-industry trade show, Cubadisco '98, and the event drew crowds of American record executives. Ned Sublette of Qbadisc, a small, six-year-old label based in New York City that specializes in distributing Cuban music, says many American music executives he had never seen before (some of whom knew nothing about the music) attended the event. "Everybody's there because they hear that's where the action is," says Sublette. "It's close...