In the previous post, I talked about Kalunga, formerly of Klimax and Manolito y su Trabuco, who is now singing with Orquesta Buena Vista. I mentioned, in the update at the bottom, an album of Arsenio Rodriguez songs he'd recorded with trumpeter Mirabal, and mentioned my favourite, Me boté de guaño. Well of course, it's on youtube. And so I've embedded it for your listening and viewing pleasure. It's a little smoother than Arsenio's version - it's like the difference between Parliament and Luther. But it's still great.
Below is another Rodriguez song, Pa Morón no vuelvo más. On the album, Kalunga duets with Tirso Duarte. Both of these are great dance songs. Arsenio really knew how to get hips shaking.
Quite psyched for this tour now. Details are in the post below.
When news of the Bluesfest and Womadelaide line-ups was announced some months ago, I was disappointed to see among the artists Orquesta Buena Vista and Eliades Ochoa. Not that these guys aren't estimable musicians - they most certainly are - but both have been here before, the former in a slightly different form. But it's essentially the same product: Cuban music from the first half of the last century.
We've also had, on one more than one occasion, Cubanisimo and Afro-Cuban All Stars. Again, great bands, but ones with roots firmly in Cuba's past. The inclusion of Tirso Duarte on the latter's last tour was the closest we've come to having a bonafide timba star in Australia; the closest Australian promoters have come to acknowledging that Cuban music didn't come to a standstill after the '50s.
Having seen all of the above before, I wasn't particularly interested in seeing either again, but I decided to do some digging around anyway. The guys trumpeted as being the stars of the show on the Bluesfest and Enmore Theatre web sites are the usual line-up of elder statesmen, with the addition of Barbarito Torres on laud.
(I'm not sure he's been here before - I saw him play with a septet in New York in 2000; they kicked arse. Then Bamboleo - with Vania - came out, and kicked theirs.)
But I remembered that Havana D'Primera guitarist Napoles had told me he sometimes played with Buena Vista, and I wanted to find out if he would be joining them, so I dug further - and was rewarded: in their rush to trumpet the old guys of the band, the publicity has completely ignored the two most likely to get me into their audience: Karlos Kalunga and Rolando Luna.
Kalunga sang on Klimax's first three albums - check out his amazing performance on Juego de manos - and one of Manolito y su Trabuco's best, Se rompieron los termometros. He also worked with Bill Wolfer's Mamborama, giving a lovely performance on Mi bailarina.
I saw Kalunga sing with Trabuco twice in 2002. As well as having an outstanding command of melody and wide range, he has a beautiful stage presence.
Above, he is singing Quien manda en el cielo, from Se rompieron los termómetros.
The other drawcard is pianist Rolando Luna. He is one of Cuba's ridiculously talented prodigies. He's still young (about 30 I believe) and has already become one of Cuba's most respected jazz pianists. He has played with Paulito and Issac and was an original member of Havana D'Primera, before Tony Rodriguez took over. I saw him last year at a jazz concert in Havana during Cubadisco and he was also involved in CarHabana, the Gitano-influenced project I saw in 2007.
Above is a clip of him playing with bassist Pedro Pablo, who will also be on the tour. As there are a bunch of Pedro Pablos in Cuba, and I'm not sure which one this is, I can't add anything else here.
Update: the trumpeter with la orquesta is Manuel Guajiro Mirabal who, I've just discovered, put out a fucking kick arse son album in 2005, with, not only Kalunga on vocals, but also Tirso. Even better, it's all Arsenio songs. Recently I was lamenting that there were no DJ quality versions of some of Arsenio's more kicking songs around - I was playing one of his '40s songs Me boté de guano, an awesome track, full of grunt and swing. But I knew it wasn't good enough quality for the dance floor. I'd heard a Sierra Maestra version, but the singer gave me the wiggins. And now, here it is, with Kalunga, one of my all-time favourites on vocals, in a beautiful production. The rest of the album isn't exactly chopped liver either. There are a couple of ballads, but it's mostly pretty lively. You can buy it at Descarga, but as it's on the World Circuit label, you should be able to get it just about anywhere.
