Photos - Cubanismo Concert
Variaty Playhouse - Atlanta June 18, 2001

Image Slideshow There are 32 good images

Cubanismo 1 Cubanismo 2 Cubanismo 3 Cubanismo 4 Cubanismo 5 Cubanismo 6 Cubanismo 7 Cubanismo 8 Cubanismo 9 Cubanismo 10 Cubanismo 11 Cubanismo 12 Cubanismo 13 Cubanismo 14 Cubanismo 16 Cubanismo 17 Cubanismo 18 Cubanismo 19 Cubanismo 21 Cubanismo 22 Cubanismo 23 Cubanismo 24 Cubanismo 25 Cubanismo 26 Cubanismo 27 Cubanismo 28 Cubanismo 29 Cubanismo 30 Cubanismo 31 Cubanismo 32 Cubanismo 33 Cubanismo 34

Jesús Alimañy's Cubanismo

Initially founded as a kind of studio supergroup around the making of their 1995 debut, this orchestra, led by London-based Cuban trumpeter Jesús Alemañy, became one of the surprises of the 90s.
Producer Joe Boyd had wanted to make a Cuban-music recording inspired by the spirit of the Monday night Salsa Meets Jazz jams at New York's Village Gate. Boyd found that musicians in Havana weren't recording in the most natural way, with all the musicians together at the same time. Lack of equipment in the city's only studio, tight time budgets, and perfectionism made this approach unworkable. But Boyd pushed Alemañy to make a record using the old, live approach.
Alemañy, who had been trumpeter with early-80s Havana son-revival Grupo Sierra Maestra, recruited a first-call group of players that included pianist Alfredo Rodríguez, conga legends Arístides Soto (better known as Tata Güines) and Miguel Díaz "Angá," young flute lion Orlando Valle "Maraca," and singer Rojitas, the group in its first incarnation was a curious Havana mixture of traditional son and contemporary Latin jazz.
The album was the runaway hit of Cuban music in 1995, selling some 150,000 copies, which seemed like a lot until the following year, when Alemañy's old Sierra Maestra bandmate Juan de Marcos González assembled the Buena Vista Social Club, whose recordings followed to some degree the blueprint Boyd had established with Cubanismo. The Buena Vista Social Club's album had sold 5-million copies worldwide by the end of 2000.
In the intervening years, Cubanismo has solidified and through hard, constant roadwork has become a very serious band. While they have little identifiable repertoire of their own--they're a sort of jukebox of Cuban hits from various eras--and are a strictly for-export phenomenon that does not perform in Cuba and has no street reputation to speak of in Havana, their musicality is impeccable, featuring truly impressive players and pulling sizable crowds worldwide.

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