Havana Cultura Live

The new sounds coming from Havana have been hitting Europe’s shores with all the force of a wave breaching the Malecón. To celebrate the release of the first Havana Cultura CD, and to give European audiences a taste of what he discovered in the Cuban capital, globetrotting London DJ and producer Gilles Peterson has brought a few of Cuba’s best and brightest on tour with him. The “Havana Cultura Band” is what Gilles has been calling this first-of-a-kind road show. If audiences in Manchester, Leeds, London and Paris had been expecting Buena Vista Social Club, Danay, Ogguere, Kumar and a host of other young Cuban musicians were a thrilling surprise (not dissimilar to those Malecón waves). This was new Havana in the house.

To Gilles, the Paris show at the Elysée Montmartre concert hall November 26th was “a kind of opening and closing party”, marking the launch of the CD and the last stop on the tour. The concert opened with an inspired set by DJ Rémy Kolpa Kopoul, a prime instigator of the “World Music” movement and a fixture on Radio Nova, which broadcasts Gilles Peterson’s syndicated Worldwide show in France. The crowd got its first taste of young Havana as Kumar took to the stage and rapped over a horn-accented salsa backbeat. Danay asked the Paris crowd (in English) if they liked hip-hop but she didn’t wait for an answer. She turned the question into an a cappella Cuban rap, with Edrey and Ulises from Ogguere backing her on “La revolución del cuerpo”. The live show ended around 2 a.m. with a rousing version of Fela’s “Roforofo Fight,” but the evening wasn’t over yet. Gilles Peterson himself stepped behind the turntables and nudged his Parisian audience in a more Latin-jazzy direction with “Irakere” by Chucho Valdés and other choice cuts from his vast vinyl collection.