Cuadernos de la Habana (Notebooks of Havana)

by CUADERNOS DE LA HABANA / VARIOUS

Overview

This five-CD project is something else (typical of the Winter & Winter label). The reclusive Italian poet and painter Mario Luis Malfatti has assembled a very personal soundtrack for an aural film, a soundtrack for the mind. These five-plus hours of music and fetishistic package recorded by Malfatti on a DAT recorder are very much field recordings adorned lovingly with his drawings and paintings in the accompanying booklets. Musicians of all types were caught live, without advance notice, in cafes, on street corners, in ballrooms, and in clubs, performing for audiences of everyday people. All Cubans, it seems, at least in Malfatti's view, take part in music as a part of everyday life. "Music here is therapy," he writes, "the most handy way to forget, to feel alive." And what is there to forget? Plenty. The pervasive poverty is one thing according to Malfatti: "These streets ooze poverty, but it would be difficult to bear poverty with more dignity," he writes in the liner notes. This collection is set up as a tour, an experience encountered aurally, but it's also designed to affect the other senses. The listener first encounters the wistful piano stylings of Frank Emilio Flynn at the Miramar. His "Midnight Theme" is just that. Gentle, long melodic lines spun out to the sounds of people drinking and talking in the background. Seemingly out of time and space, it's gorgeous in its evocation of romantic yet melancholy memory. Next, at the Central Railway Station, one can hear traces, ever so faintly, of the Buena Vista Social Club and children's voices before checking in at the Valencia Hotel and encountering Cuarteto Tradicion for 20 minutes of exquisite son with three-part harmonies, violin, maracas, guitar, and bass. And, yes, then we're on to the Velado where Olga Gonzalez Cordo sings a short song of longing and sadness a cappella. And before departing disc one, we are treated to 20 mind-blowing minutes of the Duo Cachibache whose guitars, percussion, and vocal duets are stunning in their complexity and interplay. Here is Cuban music as it touches and is in turn kissed by Brazilian song forms and scat singing. Before we depart entirely, though, a mechanical player piano sends us to our good night with "Aquelle Boca." Cars whiz by in the night, and it's time to stumble back to the hotel to recover from this overwhelming night of wine and song. Disc two begins lazily with the sounds of Quarteto Carenas rehearsing at someone's house. A knock on the door, and we are admitted to this Caribbean quartet whose rhythms are as infectious as their four-part harmonies and knotty song lines. After 20 minutes, it's time to catch a ride to central Havana for a set by Clave y Guaguanco. Like their more famous counterparts, Los Munequitos de Matanzas, this is a percussion and vocal group; the sound of the ancient Cuba as it moved west from Africa. The songs tell stories and legends, the dancers whirl and egg on the musicians, who do their best to respond and pick up the tempo. Call and response chants bring even the most cynical or shy observer into the party. This is communication from the netherworld transformed into music. It's a deadly, heady mix as El Transformador churns on for almost 12 minutes: the rhythms shift, change, and turn in on themselves before hypnotically calling the singers out to join them. Thankfully, there's Frank Emilio Flynn again at the end of disc two with a minuet that's equal parts Haydn and Stephen Foster played to a trademark Jay McShann Kansas City stomp tempo. As disc three opens with a children's choir and ends with another son duo, one begins to get restless and tired. Not that there's anything wrong with the music, but something's missing. That "something" is answered in spades on discs four and five. Opening disc four, Andres Allen's piano playing offers all the intimacy musical history has to offer -- from a Cuban perspective, of course -- and Orquesta Sublime rips through a short set of Cuban jazz. Next, on disc five, a player piano greets us before we are ushered into the languid sounds of Trio Tesis and the Duo Sincopa. Exhausted, after having traveled all over the island, it's time to attend a carnival and dance to the thunderous Afro-Cuban big band Tambores de Bejucal. For 15 minutes the earth shakes, laughter is only sound heard besides the music coming from the bandstand, and the floor may cave in, but who cares? It's the final evening, a time to celebrate for tomorrow as we say goodbye. As if in anticipation, our old friend Frank Emilio Flynn is waiting for us, with a short serenade before dreams overtake us. As a way of easing the transition he whispers Gershwin's "Somebody Loves Me" across his keyboard. His final notes echo long into the night, and our journey enters into the sacred halls of memory, just as it had for Malfatti's parents whose Cuba he sought to find with this truly moving and beautiful project. Whether he succeeded or not is not for us to know; but in the process he has done as much, if not more than the producers of the Buena Vista Social Club, to open up the magical, tragic, and dignified world of Cuba's culture to the rest of the world. ~ Thom Jurek

Product Details

Release Date:	09/01/2017
Label:	WINTER & WINTER
UPC:	0025091703012

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Roxana Bringuez   Primary Artist,Vocals
Orquestra Sublime   Primary Artist
Cuarteto Tradicion Cubana   Primary Artist
Duo Sincopa   Primary Artist
Sound Ambience   Primary Artist
Andres Alen   Primary Artist
Clave y Guaguanco   Primary Artist
Duo Cachibache   Primary Artist
Manuel Suarez Silva   Primary Artist,Guitar,Vocals
Olga Gonzalez Cordo   Primary Artist,Vocals
Cuarteto Carenas   Primary Artist
Tambores De Bejucal   Primary Artist
Cuarteto Fenix   Primary Artist
Duo Enigma   Primary Artist
Frank Emilio Flynn   Primary Artist,Piano
Eusebio Delfin   Primary Artist,Piano
Orquesta Sublime   Primary Artist
Ernesto Lecuona   Primary Artist,Piano
Trio Tesis   Primary Artist
La Cantoria Coralillo   Primary Artist
Carlos Fogueras   Tres,Vocals,Bass
Reynaldo Quiros   Campana
Diosdado Zamora   Guiro
Diego Acosta Martinez   Vocals,Requinto
Bernardo Vigil   Conductor
Santiago Garzon Gill   Vocals,Percussion
Julio Martinez Frometa   Tres,Vocals
Eugenio Carbonell   Vocals,Percussion,Guitar
Patricia Horta Bertran   Vocals
Joaime Jaime Allen   Vocals
Santiago Barbon   Piano
Nivaldo Quiros   Cencerro
Raul Fernandez Torres   Bass,Vocals
Jose Luis Estrada   Guitar,Vocals,Percussion
Amado Dedeu Garcia   Vocals,Percussion
Alfonso Teijelo Zamora   Guitar,Vocals
Tomas Ibanez   Bass
Maria Dolores Novas   Piano
Martin Coyado   Pailas
Rene Mateo Lugos   Guitar,Vocals
Ruben Corrales Correa   Bongos,Vocals
Cindy Cabadilla Damas   Vocals
Roberto Mainegra   Bass,Guitar,Vocals
Amado de Jesus Dedeu Hernandez   Vocals,Conductor
Damaris Driggs Rodriguez   Vocals,Percussion
Fidel Hernandez   Vocals,Percussion
Geraldo Velez   Violin
Alberto Guerrero   Trumpet
Dayana Carracedo Urrutia   Vocals
Arturo Martinez Cabrera   Vocals,Percussion
Tom Gonzalez   Guitar (Bass)
Alexis Hernandez   Vocals
Andre Allen   Piano
Jorge Luis Alvarez   Trombone
Mario Facundo Rodriguez Pedroso   Vocals,Percussion
Leonardo Planche Lara   Percussion
Antonio Fidel Azan   Guitar,Vocals
Alejandro Trellez   Vocals
Pedro Francisco Almeida Berriel   Vocals,Percussion
Ismael Quintero   Tumba
Robelio Perez   Vocals,Conductor
Fernando Velazco   Guitar,Vocals
Coralia Arregoitia   Tres,Vocals
Alex Alvarez   Quinto

Technical Credits

Santiago Garzon Gill   Dancer
Eugenio Carbonell   Composer
Chico Cesar   Composer
Efrain Rios   Composer
Celia Romero   Composer
Frank Emilio Flynn   Composer
Eusebio Delfin   Composer
George Gershwin   Composer
Jose Luis Estrada   Composer
Jose Antonio Mendez   Composer
Ruben Blades   Composer
Nico Saquito   Composer
Richard Eguees   Composer
Nicolas Guillen   Composer
Orquesta Sublime   Performer
Miguel Matamoros   Composer
Pedro Junco   Composer
Amado Dedeu Garcia   Dancer
Pablo Milanes   Composer
Ernesto Lecuona   Composer,Performer
Alvaro Carrillo   Composer
Ballard MacDonald   Composer
Bola de Nieve   Composer
Anonymous Composer   Composer
Hector Lavoe   Composer
Buddy DeSylva   Composer
Agustin Lara   Composer
Isolina Carrillo   Composer
Andres Alen   Arranger
Frank Dominguez   Composer
Fabio Zambrana Marchetti   Composer
Emilio Rios   Composer
Francisco Repilado   Composer
R. Junco   Composer
Oscar Hernandez   Composer
Compay Segundo   Composer
Marcelino Guerra   Composer
Enrique Jorrin   Composer
Luis Pena   Composer
Jose Urfe   Composer
Damaris Driggs Rodriguez   Dancer
Manuel Saumell   Composer
Cesar Portillo De La Luz   Composer
Oscar Rodriguez   Supervisor
Carmen Lopez   Composer
Jose White   Composer
Mario Facundo Rodriguez Pedroso   Dancer
Leonardo Planche Lara   Dancer
Manuel Suarez Silva   Composer