Changuei: The Sound of Guantanamo is a lavishly designed, three-disc set from
Petaluma Records that presents music fans with an increasingly rare opportunity in the 21st century: to hear music from a rural Cuban culture virtually undocumented until now. Journalist, producer, and radio host
Gianluca Tramontana has been visiting Cuba since the 1990s. He spent the better part of three years (2017 through 2019) traveling the Guantanamo province located in the extreme eastern part of the country, far from Havana. Armed with a high-quality digital recorder, he captured these performers in the streets, at home, on porches, and in backyards. He took more than 200 field recordings to New York and played them for friend and Grammy-winning archival producer
Steve Rosenthal. He heard the intensity, energy, and raw, deep sense of physical presence (as well as more than a little virtuosity) in the music
Tramontana captured. With assistance from mix engineer
Ed McEntee, and mastering engineer
Michael Graves, they culled the selection to 51 tracks -- three-and-half-hours of music. This obsessively detailed three-disc collection provides a heady aural portrait of the region's deeply organic party music. (The word "changuei" translates as "party.")
Tramontana's field recordings offer a fantastic sampling of joyous, foot-stomping, largely improvised music, a seldom-heard, 150-year-old link to the evolved styles of danzon and son.
The instrumentation used in changuei revolves around the tres, a bare-bones guitar-like instrument with three or six strings. It is accompanied by marimbula, a box-like instrument that physically resembles a kalimba played with the thumbs, taking the place of a bass. Add to this congas, bongos, guiro (a hollowed gourd with notches, played by rubbing a stick across them), shakers, and more. Vocals are sung in multi-part harmonies and chanted in call-and-response, creating hooky refrains that can be sung by one person or dozens, adding to the music's celebratory feel. The interplay between the melodic tres and complex rhythmic interplay is remarkable; it emerges as a grooving whole from seemingly contradictory parts. Check disc one's anthemic opener "Changuei en Yateras" by
Grupo Estrellas Campesinas, or disc two's "Guajira Cubana" by
Las Flores del Changuei and "La Rumba Te Llama" by
Grupo Familia Vera, as well as disc three's "En Casa de Bella-Changuei como Yo" by the irrepressible
Mikiki with his Brothers. All display almost kaleidoscopic variations in texture, melody, harmony, and of course, rhythm. The gorgeous cigar box design contains a hardbound, 128-page book with an introduction by
Chico O'Farrill, a liner essay, and copious notes, lyrics, and translations by
Tramontana, plus essays from historians
Jose Cuenca Sosa and
Gabriel Rojas Perez,
World Circuit's
Nick Gold, and musician/professor
Benjamin Lapidus. There are dozens of photos, map illustrations, and artist bios.
Changuei: The Sound of Guantanamo is arguably the global roots music release of 2021. It's an irresistibly listenable, infectiously danceable musicological document that will keep listeners engaged and returning for more. ~ Thom Jurek
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