7th National Changüí Festival

Changüí dancers in Guantanamo

Announcement of the 7th National Changüí Festival

If Cuba is a global reserve of music, then Guantanamo is one of the reservoirs of Cuban music. In this region you can find almost all genres on the island and some that are unique to Upper Eastern Cuba: changüí, nengón, kiribá ... primal musical forms that are only found in Guantanamo and that remain as alive as the first day.

To know and enjoy Cuban music, Guantanamo is a compulsory stop . If you arrive there you will experience the pleasure of feeling the magic of the authentic. - José Cuenca Sosa

The 7th National Changüí Festival "Elio Revé Matos" will take place in Guantanamo from May 29 - June 1, 2014. The event includes music and dance shows of changüí as well as other music and dance styles unique to the province of Guantanamo such as nengón, kiribá and tumba francesa. In addition there are concerts by timba bands such as Orquesta Revé, although note that at this point I have seen no list of participating timba bands for 2014. The festival features contests between treseros, bongoceros, marimbuleros, dancers and singers as well as a more scholarly segment of conferences. This year the topic is "Origins, Parallels and Projections of Changüí". Events will be held throught the city and in changüí areas such as Casa de Pipi in Yateras. The fee to sign up is 50 CUC for foreigners and 50 CUP for Cubans. To participate or for more information, contact General Coordinator José Cuenca or Ernesto Chacón.

Below is a video I put together where Cuenca tells us about the plans for this year's festival and I threw in a little changüí footage from Guantanamo and from a changüí party at Casa de Pipi in Yateras from the 2007 festival.

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domingo, 16 febrero 2014, 04:17 pm

CUBANEO - Pedrito Calvo Jr.

Pedrito Calvo Jr. is about to releases his second full-length CD, "CUBANEO". It contains ten tracks which range from salsa to timba to timbaton and even one mambo-son, appropriately titled "Mamboson". The album was recorded in Havana and Italy, and mixed and mastered in Italy. We took the opportunity to ask PC about the new project.

Well CUBANEO comes at a necessary for me, after almost 3 years spent between composition, arrangement, recording in Cuba and Italy, and time mixing and mastering. It's CD designed for various audiences where I enjoy moving from salsa to timba, and also what is called timbaton plus as son with mambo where I have in mind a performance dancing.

You collaborated a lot with Juan Kemell on the CD. In addition to arranging five of the songs and singing coro, he was co-musical producer together with you and Azaris Pijuan. How did the working relationship function?

Look, with Kemell there has been a chemistry since the last record, because his arrangements reflect each note or chord in my mind and he always manages to capture it with his expertise. Kemell also followed much of the recording and mixing process with great professionalism. Azeris Pijuan, bassist and musical director of the orchestra, was involved in Italy with all the putting together of arrangements and the other parts of the recording process. It has been a very good combination that has resulted in the album that I dreamed of.

The single that you have released to DJs is called “Ready Pa’ Mí” and is a timbatón that you recorded with Super Joe El Mayoral. What was it like collaborating on a sing with himl?

The song READY PA 'MI was co-written by Joel Gonzales "EL MAYORAL" and myself. Joelito has a million fresh ideas for good songs and one day commenting on how everything moves around an artist, we started writing the chorus and that's how the whole song arose, then the arrangement and midi+demo was made by Oldrich thinking only about reggaeton. Joe and I proposed to do timba version which is what remained.

Do you notice any differences between the musical preferences of the dancers in Cuba and in various cities in Europe?

Surely everyone has various answers, but from what I have seen, the musical preferences do exist but are reduced more each day, and it may be a small thing, but new technologies (if we think 80-90 years) have helped greatly to further promote our music. The European audiences follow more and more the work of all the artists, and as a consequence, the musical patterns of the fans change more easily. I marvel at how people dance in several European countries, they know the Cuban bands, it is really impressive to see how it is promoted and how they have that unbridled passion.

The official release date may be announced as soon as next week, so stay tuned!

Track list:
Burundanga
Se Acabó
Con Fe
Cuba Mía
Ready Pa'mí
Felicidad
Chica Mala
Salsa Salsita
Mamboson
Ya Llegué

Arrangment	Track
Juan Kemell	1-3-4-6-10
José Ramón Núñez	2-9
Oldrich González	5
Juan Carlos Ávila	7-8

General Direction: Pedro José Calvo

Musical Production: Juan Kemell, Azaris Pijuan, Pedro José Calvo
Executive Production: Christian Madera

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sábado, 15 febrero 2014, 03:19 pm

Mayito Rivera @ SF Salsa Rueda Festival courtesy of Mayito @ Facebook

Mayito Rivera and Timbalive perform tonight at the San Francisco Salsa Rueda Festival. They will play two sets: 10:30-11:30 and 12:00-01:00. The concert will be preceeded by dance performances and DJ Walt Digz will be spinning in between. Click here for the full festival schedule.

Mayito will continue to perform in the US with concerts in New York and again in San Francsico.

February 15, 2014 - San Francisco, CA. - San Francisco Salsa Rueda Festival
February 22, 2014 - Rego Park, NY. - Rumba night club
February 23, 2014 - New York, NY. - Gonzalez y Gonzalez
March 1, 2014 - San Francisco, CA. - Teatro Brava

Click here for the current list of Mayito's concerts in the US and Europe. More updates will be forthcoming so stay tuned.

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domingo, 09 febrero 2014, 01:18 pm

Israel Rojas - director and lead vocalist of Buena Fe

I believe it is safe to say that Israel Rojas is one of the busiest men in Havana, and I want to thank him for inviting me to the show "Motivos Martianos", which took place at Teatro Mella on January 21, 2014 and for taking time from his schedule to talk to Timba.com. The interview is in video format and in Spanish. I haven't had time to subtitle or to transcribe and translate. Hopefully I will be able to get around to that soon, but for now I have so much video from my recent trip to Cuba, that it is keeping me quite occupied. Meanwhile, for those who don't speak Spanish let me just mention a few key points.

Israel mentioned that in the first quarter of 2014, the band will launch it's new official homepage buenafe.cu. Up to now, the various homepages the band has had have been in domains outside of Cuba. The band has not always had access to the sites, on ocassion they have been hacked and the domains have been stolen, but above all, Cubans have not had access due to the rquirements for broadband. The new page will be a simpler design, but will now be accessible to all their fans, including Cubans with access to an internet connection.

At the beginning of March, probably in conjunction with the band's 15th anniversay, Galician singer/songwriter Andrés Suárez will perform with Buena Fe at Teatro Karl Marx where he will present his CD "Moraima" (highly recommended!). As for tours, the band plans to tour the US in April and Venezuela in May. They are also trying to arramge a major tour of Latin America for the second half of 2014. This is still in the development stage and we'll update you with more information as son as we have it.

For the rest of the interview we talked about the "Motivos Martianos" project and show, about what it was that caused Israel to become such a devoted follower of José Martí (part of which he attributes to the Cuban special period) and how he views the art of songwriting.