APRIL 12, 1999
CUBANISMO! Jesus Alemany and band serve up their pressure-cooked musical stew.
LEAH McLAREN, Arts Reporter
The Globe and Mail,
Canada
Saturday, April
10, 1999
For trumpeter and band leader Jesus Alemany, growing up in the isolation of post-revolutionary Cuba may well have given as many career opportunities as it took away. For one thing, it enabled him to study at a music conservatory, and later to attend music college without paying for tuition. It also created an artistic pressure cooker, in which the musical flavours of his native island were able to simmer together and intensify over decades.
"Because of 30, 40 years of isolation, and lack of ability to promote music, this is what's happened," Alemany said in a phone interview from his Vancouver hotel room. "We grew up with this music, and now other people are showing interest. We can show our audience how to dance, how to understand the history of our music -- the mambo, the cha-cha-cha."
It was 1997's platinum Cuban all-star album The Buena Vista Social Club, masterminded by Ry Cooder, that roused the current North American fascination with Cuban song and dance. But now that the rest of the world has finally had a chance to catch the Cuban wave, it wants more -- and Cubanismo!, Alemany's traditional 15-piece outfit, is happy to supply it. Last September the band released Reencarnacion,its third CD in three years, and it is now on tour in Canada.
Alemany expressed enthusiasm about the growing appetite for all things Cuban. Though the new audience, as he freely admitted, is not made up of world-music aficionados, they are regular people who hunger to learn more about Cuban culture. "We're looking for what our audience wants. We're bringing them the history of Cuban music," he said. "When I started Cubanismo!, I tried to create a balance between singing and instrumental music that is more directed to people who don't understand Latin music."
On Reencarnacion, Alemany -- who wears the multiple hats of frontman, composer, arranger, trumpet soloist and percussionist -- layers rolling piano lines and bursting brass over hip-tickling congas, bongos and timbales. The result is almost certainly destined to become the soundtrack to countless mojito-drenched North American barbecues this summer.
Asked whether he thinks the international success of Cuban roots music will prove to be a passing trend, Alemany scoffed: "We haven't shown you everything yet! There is so much history, so many roots, so much music coming from different parts of the island, from different cultures -- we've got Chinese, African, Haitian, Jamaican communities all making their own music."
Yet as a teenager growing up on the island in the 1970s, Alemany acknowledged, his primary passion was not for roots music, but for U.S. pop. Though acts like Alice Cooper, Michael Jackson and the Bee Gees were not promoted in Cuba, they could easily be picked up on the radio. In rapturous tones, Alemany described attending, at 17, a rare live concert featuring international musicians.
"It was the 20-year celebration after the embargo, and I went to Havana and saw artists like Billy Joel and Kris Kristofferson perform," he recalled. "I was amazed." Now, he's returning the favour.
Cubanismo! performs at Massey Hall in Toronto today and at the Riverrun Centre in Guelph, Ont., tomorrow. The group will also appear in the Montreal Jazz Festival this summer.
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