The Havana Cultura Album 2009

Back in the days before YouTube and iTunes, our ancestors roamed the Earth in search of a music-sharing community, huddling together for warmth in underground clubs, listening to pirate radio stations. Gilles Peterson was their high priest, leading them out of the primeval darkness to “the perfect beat”. If you were one of those early hominids dancing to “acid jazz” in a London club in the late-1980s, you probably nodded your approval to Gilles Peterson in the DJ booth. If you spent the ’90s attending raves in Ibiza (or listening to them from a safe distance on BBC Radio 1), there was Gilles again — dishing up his soul-funk-hiphop-disco-jazz-electro-stew, prepared with choice ingredients from his own record collection which, like the universe, is understood to be constantly expanding.

Today you might call him a DJ, but you might also call Usain Bolt a jogger. Gilles Peterson is a world-renowned tastemaker who has helped launch careers (Jamiroquai, Erykah Badu) and who entertains millions. Entertains may be the best word for what he does, because while he still plays the role of musical priest, he never gets preachy; that’s one reason why radio listeners and clubgoers have never tired of hearing him. And he champions the cause of good music wherever it may be found, with his own record label (Brownswood Recordings), and a syndicated radio show called, appropriately, Gilles Peterson Worldwide. Not to mention his blogs, podcasts, tweets and every other means he can use to spread the gospel.

His never-ending quest for the perfect beat led him recently to Havana — or rather, Havana Cultura led him to Havana. It was an experiment. We wanted to witness the effect new Cuban sounds would have on Gilles Peterson and vice-versa. Not surprisingly he wound up “discovering so many great up-andcoming musicians who can have a big effect on world music over the many years to come.” The obvious next step was to gather those musicians in Havana’s EGREM studio — yes, where the Buena Vista Social Club album happened — and make a record. Gilles saw it as a “great opportunity to do something that was really a musical melange — something new, something fresh, something not just Buena Vista Social Club…. Bringing together the street, the urban and the more traditional.”