Gilles Peterson was sent to seek out the young, urban sounds of Cuba, and the result is a record featuring some of the finest unsigned talent in the rapidly changing communist country, writes KEVIN COURTNEY
YOU'D THINK Gilles Peterson would have seen enough of the world by now. The globetrotting DJ has travelled to the four corners of the planet, bringing his passion for jazz, soul, world music and what-have-you to numerous far-flung places, but still the 45-year-old can't seem to get enough of the world at large. One day he's playing in Coachella for a crowd of loved-up Cali kids, the next he's getting his freak on in Rio or Sao Paolo, or spinning future jazz for bright young robotniks in Tokyo. Even when he's on home ground in the UK, he's still circling the globe via his BBC Radio 1 show Worldwide, which is syndicated to a dozen or so countries and also available anywhere there's an internet connection.
So when he got the call to come to Cuba and check out the music scene there, he could easily have said, been there, done that, got the T-shirt. But Cuba was one of the few places Peterson hadn’t visited, so he jumped at the opportunity and hopped on the next plane.
He's used to being flown off to exotic locales to play DJ set. This time, however, his brief was a little more demanding: to seek out the young, urban sounds of Havana and record them for a double CD. The people putting up the funds for the project – drinks company Havana Club, part-owned by the Cuban government and part-owned by French drinks giant Pernod-Ricard – wanted the next Buena Vista Social Club.
Gilles would give them a Buena Vistafor hipsters, showcasing the bright young talent working in Cuba today, and covering a range of styles including hip-hop, rap, reggaeton, rumba, son, salsa and timba.
With just four days to find his cast of musicians, there would be precious little time for sightseeing.
“When I got there, I didn’t actually discover old Havana, which is the touristy bit, the part of town which has been done up nice, I didn’t discover that bit until the last day of my second trip there,” recalls Peterson. “All I was doing was going straight to people’s houses and apartments and studios.”
During his four-day fast-track artist round-up, Peterson met some of Cuba’s finest unsigned local talent, including singer Danay, who Peterson describes as the Cuban Jill Scott, hip-hop duo Ogguere and reggaeton trio Genta De Zona. He also met pianist Roberto Fonseca, who became his musical guide for the project, lending Peterson his band for recording sessions in the city’s legendary Egrem studios and generally organising things on the ground in Havana.
“I don’t quite know how we would have got this project done without him,” says Peterson. “He was the key to us being able to deliver a project in a short space of time, and literally we had four days in Egrem studios and he booked that. Luckily he knew everyone, and he managed to hook up all that side, and I got his band, and his band are obviously very tight, really good rhythm section. And he speaks great English, so all my ideas got through, And he’s quite well travelled.
“He understood and got me and obviously I get him. So it was cool. It’s funny, because you can be close to a project when you’re doing it and you never quite know how it’s going to come out, but I heard the album a bit more recently. My wife’s been playing it a lot and I’ve just heard it around. And I’m actually quite happy with it. It’s turned out well.”
THE ALBUM IS divided into two parts. CD1 is a selection of classic Cuban sounds, performed by Peterson's Havana Cultura Band, led by Roberto Fonseca and featuring percussionist Yaroldy Abreu, drummer Ramses Rodriguez, sax and flute player Javier Zalba, bassist Omar Gonzalez, trumpeter Yelfris Valdes and DJ Vince Vella. Together they interpret some very recognisable Cuban standards, including Pa' Gozar, Chekere Sonand Afrodisia. This gets the listener nicely warmed up for the edgier sounds of CD2, a compilation of young, modern Cuban artists including Danay, Ogguere, Kumar, Yusa, Diana Fuentes and Doble Filo.
Peterson's keen to avoid inevitable comparisons with Buena Vista Social Club, the 1997 album that introduced the world to such veteran Cuban musicians as Ibrahim Ferrer and Compay Segundo. And he certainly wouldn't class himself as a new Ry Cooder – "I'm not even a musician".
Rather, he’s the curator whose name and face on the album cover is as sure a stamp of quality as you can expect.
"I wouldn't mind taking a tiny element of the record sales of Buena Vista," laughs Peterson. "But I've tried not making any of those comparisons myself. To some people Brazilian music is The Girl from Ipanema, and to some people Cuban music is the Buena Vista Social Club, and I wanted to go, forget about all that, I'm just gonna come here, hear some great music, and put it down. And that was it really. There were no thoughts of anything else. I wanted to make a record that incorporated the energy of now but also the traditions and influences that I've had with Cuban music.
“At the end of the day I think we’ve been very lucky to have an investment into a record like this. These days, you just don’t get records like these made. They’re either compilation albums or they’re just likenesses of records that have already been done. But to make a sort of concept project like this just doesn’t happen any more. In the old days, you’d have labels like Island doing albums like this, or people like Bill Laswell, or American Clave, those kind of more experimental labels, but nowadays it costs so much money to do something like this, all the travel and making sure that everyone is looked after.”
Where Buena Vistawas all about old Havana, this double CD is firmly rooted in the new, urban sound of Cuba, a country fast losing the decades-long battle against change and the influence of the outside world. The artists featured have been strongly influenced by rap, hip-hop, soul and funk, but far from watering down their authenticity, it gives them a gritty edge. The fact that they are working in a country that is outwardly stuck in a time warp makes their modernity all the more remarkable. For Peterson, meeting these musicians on their strange home ground was somewhat disorientating.
“The thing about Cuba is that it’s such a lot to take in if you’re going there for the first time. Because you are going into a communist country, which feels a bit strange in 2009, then you’ve got a bit of time off and you’re lying on the beach, and you look out and there are no boats in the distance because people would go off on them, so there’s no sailing boats.
“That’s really weird. And then other things, the food, and the place is really rundown – that really takes you by surprise. And the fact that people are living on top of each other . . . you’ll go to one musician’s house and he’s got this really old Spanish 1930s yard, and he’s living there with his mum, and you’ll go to another musician who’s living in a tiny bedroom with six other people.
“But the thing I thought was the most interesting was just the sheer brightness of the people, how much intelligence there was around me and how clear the people were. That was great. But what struck me was how hard-working and how keen the musicians were to work on this project.”
Since he founded the Acid Jazz label nearly 20 years ago, Peterson has been a tireless musical explorer, and an unerring guide through the tricky terrain of world music. Now married with kids, Peterson has commitments that keep him at home, but he’s still passionate about discovering new sounds in new places, and he’s still in tune with the times. His BBC page is one of the most-visited on the site, and his podcasts (downloadable at gillespeterson.com) are firmly on the musical money.
“At the end of the day I’m in a very privileged position where I find myself having a job which most men and a few women would find it hard to turn down. I have a show on the BBC and I get the chance to play great music to people and this show can be heard around the world online. For me it’s all about still enjoying what I do, and luckily I’m still getting a huge kick out of music.”
Havana Cultura is out now on Brownswood Recordings; havana-cultura.com
