I started it, but didn’t finish. I love Buena Vista, and I’ve seen them in every available way. Cubans are raised on that music, Compay [Segundo]. Omara [Portuondo] was part of your family. Ibrahim Ferrer is like a great-uncle.Unreal, his voice. A lot of popular Cuban acts, as soon as he puts out a song, they cover it. Kids, grandparents, parents, they all sang Eliades. Salsa, reggaeton, doesn’t matter. They play it, because he’s the sound of Cuba.
Straight from the Moody Theater, and South by Southwest before that – following their official debut at the March fest in 2019 – myriad homegrown witnesses enthused a stateside shorthand for Cimafunk: the Cuban James Brown. Rap to rhumba, the bandleader also injects Marvin Gaye. “I’m a fan of everything James Brown did, but our music’s more like Irakere, Chucho [Valdés],” details Rodríguez. “Closer to the mambos of Benny Moré, closer to Arsenio Rodríguez. A little bit of Perez Prado. Rhythmically, it’s more that older generation: a performance, the movement.
“Remember Machito and those murderous New York machines, Chano Pozo! That music is in all music today. Same as hip-hop in that James Brown, B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, Sam Cooke are all in there.Saturday, 2pm, Tito's stage Indie-pop quartet makes “Commitment" to very-much-online Latinx audiencesBY RAOUL HERNANDEZ, KEVIN CURTIN, Oct.