Syndicate of Rhythm: Poems of Taste from Havana | Culture

The brass line—trumpet, trombone, or tenor saxophone—has come into play MTV. Syndicato del Ritmo, a band recently formed by top Cuban musicians including Miguel Núñez, the arranger of Pablo Milanes or Alexander Abreu, the last defender of timba, of the best Latin pop/rock stars, especially Mexican and the elegance of the result reminds us that the ways of combination are never ending.

The project has just started There areAnthem of Café TacvbaAnd Emmanuel Del Real in the video, Meme, sings from an analog television set in an apartment in Old Havana. They will continue, for the next few weeks, Palm», from Caloncho; Brown eyesFrom Lasso; praiseby Danna Paola; Endangeredfrom intoxication; I enjoyBy Carla Morrison; feverof Joe And The perfect girlFrom Kurt.

A love rock gradually turns into a son, a ballad into a bolero, and a northern region into a turn-of-the-century salsa, though the most surprising thing is the mambo bars channeled into a snare and some guaracha tones. A happy memory of self-reliance “The relationship between the ports of Havana, New Orleans, and Veracruz was crucial to the development of the sonic matrix of 20th-century popular music, including son, salsa, jazz, and rock. And Mexico has always been a bridge between Cuban artists and the international public,” says Project. Fabian Pisani, one of the managers.

A filmmaker, producer and agitator of ideas, Pisani is associated with German producers Frank and Christian, the Berman brothers, who published in 2006. Rhythms of World Cuba, a hit album past Buena Vista Social Club with top Anglo-Saxon rock bands like Coldplay, Sting and U2. In these cases, usually, the new arrangements are adapted to the original voices, which is possible because the versions maintain the same melodic structure, but the Mexican artists in the Syndicato del Ritmo decided to re-record their songs, excited with the result obtained. .

Maestro Demetrio Muniz, who organized the nights of the famous Tropicana Cabaret in the 1990s, is responsible for the musical direction. Rhythms of World Cuba. “You have to have a certain abstract power to move a song from one song to another,” he says, “but I always thought that all music. Heavy, anything, even if it is very difficult, we can take it to our landscape, because our music uses all scales. There was a series of seemingly contradictory directions mixed up and culture found a way around them.

Demetriou talks about ethics and imagination. Ethics respects the meaning of the original subject matter and imagination circumvents it, finding an unexpected way to do so. “In this case it’s about the music of the American continent. We’re very close, so it’s very difficult to categorize the versions. They can be confused or the same. I had to think more. For example, in the case of Sting, the connection was too distant and shocking. And those songs are still There was little harmony, these are less harmonious, some are made of only four chords, so you have to embroider it.

Both Pop and the Caribbean depend on rather than fear temptation. Syndicato del Ritmo takes this opportunity to find a sensitive link between the different forms, giving each song its close relationship in the recording of Cuban rhythms. Salsa, an unusual afterthought running in the background of much of the populous Mexican neighborhood of craft markets, taco stands, bus terminals, and taxi stands, is now reaching the masses through Vive Latino or Arena CDMX performers.

“Cuba and Mexico are very connected culturally and intellectually, both cultures have a mutual respect, but the music scenes are different,” says Frank Berman. “There’s a classic Cuban sound, son, bolero, mambo, in Mexico we have banda, mariachi and a big movement. Pop Ind. We wanted to combine these two worlds to create a unique new language that is a fusion of both traditions.

Nor does the preposition have a definite mood. It runs through her, let’s put it that way, a dancing melancholy. The art of fusion is that the end doesn’t seem cohesive, and the classic arrangements of these songs give it an exceptional property: they seem to have been recorded before the originals. “For arrangers we have the courage to do something different, you change a chord and the song grows,” says Demetrio. “Nothing is fixed, nothing is, everything is a wonderful mechanism that even musicians sometimes cannot understand.” Before versions of these iconic songs, an eager Pisani waits for the reaction of Cuban music’s natural public from Paris to Hong Kong. There will be tours, presentations and concerts. Meanwhile, the group is already preparing the second album.

Almost a decade ago, in 2014, it was produced by the Berman Brothers Presented by Studio Rio: Brazil Connection. The album translated major themes of American artists such as Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone into Brazilian music. Rhytms del Mundo Cuba, Studio Rio and now Sindicato del Ritmo have a common principle: the African base. It’s a project that recognizes that Latin pop can come from there, too.

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