Danay Suarez: Pioneering Cuban Hip-Hop

Article published by L.A. based music online magazine Timba.com

by Eva Silot Bravo. 

(All photos supplied by Eva Silot Bravo). 

In her first visit to Miami, Cuban singer Danay Suárez made ​​her club debut at the Blackbird Ordinary (formerly Transit Lounge) to a sold-out room. In this concert, the audience was moved by her songs, and it hummed and applauded with visible enthusiasm. Danay has shared the stage with urban artists in Miami and in other states like California. In Black Bird, Danay provided an overview of the discs she has recorded as a soloist so far: Polvo de la Humedad ( 2007 ), which moves between urban and underground; Danay Suarez Havana Cultura Session (2008 ), more fused with traditional Cuban music and jazz, and Palabra Manuales, a CD on which she is working and that in her opinion reflects the full range of musical references she has cultivated so far. Danay recently had a cameo in the first Cuba Un-Wave festival at the Olympia Theater in Downtown, in which she deployed her special flow between hip-hop and jazz.

Danay studied computer science in Cuba, but she was interested in approaching musc professionally at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Cuba.  However, she this unsuccessful because they told her that she "tended a lot towards the popular", which is especially ironic in an island that is known perhaps most of all for the power of its music and popular culture. So, she decided to be self-taught.  She worked in a place known as the Opera de la Calle, which accepted her vocation for lyric singing. At the same time, she was recording her first underground tracks in Estudios Real 70, a small Havana room that produced much of the early Cuban hip-hop of the late twentieth century, and she became a regular in the alternative scene in places like the Anfiteatro del rio Almendares y La Madriguera. 

Her music has spread via several Youtube videos made by filmakers of the island which have won awards in art competitions such as Puños Arriba, Cuerda Viva and the Lucas Prize. The production and curatorship of the Havana Cultura project - and in paricular of the DJ and Producer Gilles Peterson - have catapulted her internationally, taking her to participate in several festivals in Europe and in emblematic clubs such as Ronnie Scott's Jazz Cafe in London as well as BBC Radio 1's Annual Awards.  In addition to the talent and serenity she projects in her music, Danay has had the experience of working with musicians such as Equis Algonso, Roberto Fonseca and Robertico Carcasses, which obviously contributed to her maturity as an artist.  She received rave reviews, especially amazing reviews in France, which refer to the effects that her music can provoke in audiences that go beyond even what she could imagine when she is creating. Within the world of Cuban Hip-hop, Danay is distinguised by the reflexivity of her lyrics as well as the flow of her wide-register voice which risks complicated harmonic improvisations with touches of scat and hip-hop, and above because her music resists being pigeonholed in generic categories.  She identifies with the lyrical force and beats of Rap and Hip-Hop, which have have provided space to learn and find herself, at the same time loving and cultivating traditional Cuban music, Reggae, Classical, Fusion and jazz.  In her performing and improvising, you can perceive influences from singers like Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Jill Scott.  However, Danay evades such comparisons and instead repeats a phrase that I think illustrates her musica being:  "Instead of focusing on a genre as such, I try to understand the strength and energy of the music.". 

More information about Danay Suárez can be found on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram and Soundcloud. 

Sunday, 20 October 2013, 10:11 AM

Roberto Fonseca, Pedrito Martinez looking to move Afro-Cuban music forward

Published by The Washington Post

By Chris Richards, Published: October 3

Roberto Fonseca

For so many American eardrums, the story of Afro-Cuban music begins and ends with “Buena Vista Social Club.”

The beloved 1997 album — and the 1999 documentary about the unlikely studio sessions that birthed it — transformed a crew of forgotten Cuban maestros into world-renowned players whose songs would cast an immense, singular shadow.

Roberto Fonseca is quite literally stepping out of it. His new album, “Yo,” lunges in fantastic and unexpected directions while remaining rooted in Afro-Cuban musical traditions — traditions the 38-year-old Havana pianist became highly fluent in during the years he spent performing alongside Buena Vista alums, including the late vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer.

“For me, playing with them was like going to the son montuno school,” Fonseca said, referring to the percolating style that forms much of Cuba’s sonic DNA. “I was trying to learn how to play and how to feel.”

Across “Yo,” Fonseca’s touch ranges from lightning-lithe to thunderously heavy, often holding the music’s melodic and percussive center at once. He comes out swinging with “80s,” a thrilling album-starter that resembles Ni­ger­ian Afrobeat, with chattering rhythms and vintage jazz fusion in its oily electronic timbres. Dizzying and dazzling, it sounds like falling down the stairs and landing on your feet.

“To me, music doesn’t have frontiers, doesn’t have borders,” Fonseca says over the phone from a tour stop in New Orleans, perhaps the only city in this hemisphere crammed with more musical magic per square foot than Havana. “When people listen to my music, they feel good, even if they’re not from Cuba.”

Fonseca has helped push Afro-Cuban music further into the 21st century on other recordings, too — his work with British dubstep pioneer Mala produced an intriguing 2012 album called “Mala in Cuba.” But, Fonseca said, his desire to move Cuban music ahead feels more personal, almost internal.

“It would have been easy to name myself ‘the Buena Vista Social Club new generation,’ ” Fonseca said. “But now it’s my career, and people are really accepting. We are starting from zero here, and I’m feeling really good. My music is my life, and my life is my music.”

New from Pedrito Martinez                                                               (Martin Cohen) - Artist Pedrito Martinez.
New York percussionist and singer Pedrito Martinez seems to be following similar impulses on the excellent, eponymous debut album from the Pedrito Martinez Group, out Tuesday.

The album grinds the band leader’s original compositions up against tunes made famous by Led Zeppelin and the Jackson 5 — all played with a zeal that should burnish Martinez’s reputation as one of the most vital and charismatic Afro-Latin percussionists on the planet.

The 40-year-old conga player first learned Cuba’s rhythmic dialects in the streets of Havana, but he said his curiosity is continuously stoked by the music of New York City.

“Everything comes from tradition, and what you do is add,” Martinez said over the telephone. “It’s Afro-Cuban music interpreted by someone who’s been in the United States for 15 years.”

Martinez first left his native Cuba for a tour of Canada in 1998, and in 2000, took first place at the Thelonious Monk International Afro-Latin Jazz Hand Drum Competition, held at the Kennedy Center. Since then, he’s appeared on more than 100 recordings, all while performing regularly at private Santeria ceremonies at apartments across various New York boroughs.

His group — an ace quartet that includes keyboardist Ariacne Trujillo, bassist Alvaro Benavides and percussionist Jhair Sala — still maintains a weekly residency at Guantanamera, a Cuban restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. Martinez said the gig has helped him learn to a play with a dynamism and intensity that can rip across rooms of any size.

“We made this band in a little restaurant where people are eating and talking,” Martinez said. “You don’t know how they’re going to react when you start getting loud and excited. But I get up there and do what I know how to do. I do it from the bottom of my heart. And that’s what they feel.”


Roberto Fonseca performs at Artisphere in Arlington County on Friday. The Pedrito Martinez Group performs at the Weinberg Center in Frederick on Thursday and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park on Oct. 18.