Ever since Ry Cooder broke the rules and went to Cuba to record the first Buena Vista Social Club disc, here has been a resurgence of interest in that country's music. He ended up having to pay some sort of astronomical fine as a result of that first visit and was only able to return for his second go round because the last official act Bill Clinton did as President was to sign a special permit giving him exemption from the embargo imposed on Cuba by the United States. While the music that Cooder and company recorded, and the subsequent tours that those recordings spawned, were undeniably of the highest quality, there have been quite a few releases since then that have looked to merely cash in on that success without seeming to care about the quality.
Historically Cuba was the gateway for ships crossing the Atlantic coming to the Caribbean. Originally a Spanish colony, the island country saw its fair share of slaves deposited on her shores. It doesn't require a great deal of imagination to see how what we know today as the Afro/Cuban sound developed out of that history. Contact with both South and North America in the first half of the twentieth century continued the evolution of the sound that is now so familiar to our ears.
While the Afro/Cuban big band sound has attracted all the attention, other performers do exist and have continued the evolution of the Cuban sound by drawing upon much the same influences as young musicians the world over, while holding on to their original foundation. One of the effects of the American embargo on Cuba was the impression that there has been no new music developed on the island since the hey-day of the ladies and gentlemen of The Buena Vista Social Club.
Nothing could be further from the truth of course, and as Cuban musicians begin to circumvent the embargo by signing with labels outside of their own county American audiences are going to realize that there's more to Cuban music than they first thought. One of the rising stars of the new music scene is Yusa, and with the release of her latest disc on June 10, 2008, Haiku, on Britain's Tumi label, the world should begin to notice the new direction Cuban music is taking.
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