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Features, July 09 12/6/09 11:11 Page 20 Features, july 09 12/6/09 11:11 Page 20 SPIRIT OF CHANGO Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca cuts quite a dash with his contemporary montuno stylings. First spotted touring internationally with the Buena Vista Social Club after appearing on disc 10 years ago. On new album Akokan he moves from Ibrahim Ferrer-inspired son to Coltrane-inspired improvisations and beyond with a few additional tracks featuring singers Mayra Andrade and the highly-rated Raul Midón. Interview: Jane Cornwell ondon’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, May: Where Zamazu included cameos from a range of perhaps too smooth for a musician who lists John Roberto Fonseca is leaning away from his big name talent from Brazilian percussionist Coltrane, Miles Davis and Arsenio Rodriguez among L piano, head tipped back like a lizard in the Carlinhos Brown to Buena Vista stalwarts Omara his major influences. “The record company,” he says sun, fingers kneading a sound that’s muscular, Portuondo, the late Cachaito Lopez and the late when asked how their collaboration came about, swirling, percussive. His long-time quartet – including Ibrahim Ferrer (along with a cover of Abdullah before stepping away to pose for photos alongside bassist Omar González, drummer Ramsés Rodriguez Ibrahim’s ‘Ishmael’), Akokan leaves off the elder Andrade. Asked about Midón, he lights up: “Amazing. and collaborative partner Javier Zalba – keep up a states people in favour of two special guest vocalists: I hope we can work more together.” fierce, self-assured groove, underscoring just why Cape Verdean chanteuse and rising world music star Back home in Havana – the capital of a country this Cuban phenomenon has been compared with Mayra Andrade and the hugely talented African marking 50 years of revolucion – Fonseca has long the likes of McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. American/Argentinian singer-songwriter Raul Midón – been regarded as the future of Cuban music, ever Thirty-five-year-old Fonseca has been dazzling who lends his Donny Hathaway-influenced voice and since he made his live solo debut at Havana’s Jazz Europe for a while now. All the extensive touring on Plaza International Festival aged 15. His musical the back of his album from two years ago, Zamazu, leanings were nurtured early, legacy of a family with along with regular local performances at venues rhythm in their DNA and a Castro-implemented including Havana jazz club Zorro y el Cuervo (‘The education system that identifies talent at a young age Fox And The Crow’), has lent the celebrated pianist and channels them into performing arts schools further depth and texture. While still very much an (where, sadly, termites have chewed their way ensemble player Fonseca seems to be stepping up through many a baby grand). Roberto Alain Fonseca his solos, revelling in his gifts for melody and Cortés studied at the Guillermo Tomas School of lyricism, form and timing, for subtlety, intimacy and Music in the Guanabocoa municipality, before going innovation. on to complete a degree in piano and musical All of which are evident on his new album composition at the National School of Art. Akokan, a self-produced affair that was recorded late “I was born into a musical family and my first last year in Havana’s legendary EGREM studios. maestro was mi casa [‘my home’],” says Fonseca, Like the earlier album, it manages to be eclectic and whose father Roberto Fonseca Senior played the adventurous while still boasting tunes you can drums and whose mother Mercedes Cortes (whose a whistle. Like it – and indeed, Fonseca’s oeuvre – the cappella voice opens both Zamazu and Akokan) was new album comes to jazz via soul and funk and the a professional dancer and singer – and a woman Afro-Cuban rhythms of his country. “Jazz lets me who was briefly married to none other than Chucho stretch my imagination,” he says. “Music should Valdés, the great Cuban pianist bandleader and never be confined.” founder of jazz supergroup Irakere. His two elder Akokan brings the magic, strength and half-brothers, Emilio and Chuchito, are a drummer improvisation from a Fonseca live show to the studio. and pianist now based in America and Mexico. “My band and I have been together for 12 years now “My older brothers used to play a lot of funk and and our relationship is telepathic, I swear it,” Fonseca soul and my mum used to sing bolero and son says, in halting English the day after the show. montuno all day. I had so much fun. It all happened “We’re going further all the time. The chemistry we very naturally. I started playing drum kit at the age of have really does encourage creativity. The hardest bit fine guitar skills to his own ‘Everyone Deserves a four and my first job was as a drummer.” A drummer, for me was choosing which tracks to include.” He Second Chance’, deftly arranged by Fonseca. as it happens for a Beatles cover band. “I began pauses and sighs. “All the music I compose is a part Twenty-four-year-old Andrade wrote and sings studying piano when I was eight. It’s a more of me,” he says with a shrug. “It’s like having to the lyrics to the beautiful, hymn-like ‘Sieta Potencias’, complete instrument. You can use it to make choose between your children.” a song dedicated “to the saints, to those who have melodies or harmonies or as the rhythm section. The new album moves from pretty lullabies and passed away, and to Mother Earth, where we all Once I realised that there was no stopping me,” says soulful Ibrahim Ferrer-inspired son to Coltrane come from.” Despite living and working in Paris and Fonseca, whose percussive style links back to these freefalls and shimmying, thundering dance music; at growing up, variously, in Senegal, Angola and formative years. times Fonseca uses his voice – seemingly Germany, Andrade was actually born in Cuba; here “I wasn’t a great student, though,” he continues involuntarily – to emphasise a particular emotional her playful, caressing voice is the perfect with a grin. “I didn’t do my homework and my parents highpoint. “I’d like to go back in time and change the accompaniment for Fonseca’s inspired harmonic were always pushing me, until the day I realised that mistakes I made so that those who love me could be structures. music was really my thing. Then I got more serious.” even happier,” writes Fonseca, who dedicates a Two nights previously, at a small showcase for He studied Beethoven and Bach but along with his couple of tracks to his beloved mother Mercedes – Andrade at Le China in Paris, Fonseca is fellow students became obsessed with American with whom he still lives in a modest three-bedroom namechecked (“I am so grateful he is here”) but jazz. “The one album that was life changing for me house in Vedado, a pleasant neighbourhood of spends much of her set looking bored. Andrade’s was Standards Vol 1 and 2 by Keith Jarrett. I Havana. golden tonsils and dreamy, sambafied sound are remember that cassette was regarded as something 34 JULY09 // Jazzwise.
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