“He mentioned, ‘Dude, please be stationary – I’ve acquired lots of people attempting to succeed in you,'” recollects Cuba, whose title is Alexis Puentes. Then, he says, he requested the publicist, “Why?”
“And he mentioned, ‘Dude, you do not know?'”
The musician’s self-produced album Mendo, created through the pandemic, had simply received a Grammy for “Best Latin Pop Album.”
“It was intense, exhilarating, unbelievable,” says Puentes, 48. And yet one more milestone for the Cuban musician who’s created a uniquely unbiased but world-spanning musical identification from Smithers, British Colombia, a mountain city of just a little greater than 5,000 individuals 14 hours north of Vancouver. He has lived there since 1999 together with his Canadian spouse, Sarah Goodacre, of 28 years, and their three youngsters.
He loves Smithers, the place they put up a mural honoring his Grammy win in the midst of downtown. “To some individuals, it might sound not possible to have a profession from such a distant place,” says Puentes, who’s launched a number of albums on his label, incomes 4 Latin Grammys and quite a few Canadian awards. “To me, it reveals that I’m ok to do something from wherever. I like how I can quiet my thoughts; I can focus one hundred pc. There aren’t any excuses right here.”
Now Puentes involves Miami, the capital of Cuban exile. On Saturday, March 4, his trio and company Kelvis Ochoa, Luis Enrique, Munir Hossn, and Robert Vizcaino Jr. will play the lone live performance of Global Cuba Fest 2023. The celebration of Cuban music throughout the diaspora is marking its quince this yr on the Miami Beach Bandshell.
Although Puentes performed Global Cuba in 2009, he hesitated at returning, involved whether or not Miami Cuban audiences would settle for his music, which ventures far past the island’s typical common types. “I focus so much on crafting music with an enormous selection; it is exhausting to pinpoint me in a particular style,” says Puentes. “For Cubans, that is typically tough. But my group — that is Sarah, my spouse — mentioned that is precisely why it’s best to go.”
Indeed, Global Cuba Fest celebrates how Cuban musicians, whether or not from the island or worldwide, constantly reshape their wealthy musical traditions. It’s a creative mission that acknowledges the truth that political shifts in Cuba and the U.S. imply artists usually to migrate, and it isn’t all the time attainable to current artists from the island in Miami.
“What we got down to do, no matter political social gathering is in workplace, is put the best musicians from Cuba onstage,” says Beth Boone, inventive and govt director of the Miami Light Project, which coproduces Global Cuba with fellow Miami presenter FUNDarte. “As we needed to navigate completely different political realities, we expanded the mission and imaginative and prescient. That was the very best factor that might have occurred. Because it pressured us to have a look at Cuban musicians residing in Spain, Morocco, Brazil, Miami, New York — and British Colombia.”
The competition has featured groundbreaking fusion acts, like Nineteen Nineties icons Habana Abierta and influential Havana collective Interactivo. Dafnis Prieto, the sensible jazz drummer who now teaches on the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, made his Miami debut on the first Global Cuba in 2008. Stellar jazz acts like Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Yosvany Terry have been regulars. The competition launched Miami to Cuban funk sensation Cimafunk in 2019. South Florida-based acts have included Albita and Tiempo Libre.
FUNDarte founder and govt director Ever Chavez says the competition additionally showcases how the island’s musical diaspora adjustments music elsewhere. “Cuban artists who go away intoxicate individuals with Cuban music and affect different musicians world wide with their virtuosity, excellence, and strategy,” says Chavez, a producer in Havana who emigrated to Miami in 2000.
Puentes is a major instance of that world affect — a results of love and probability. He grew up studying bass and guitar in Artemisa, a small metropolis in Cuba. He adopted his father, revered musician Valentin Puentes who was a guitarist and instructor of conventional Cuban son and guajiro (nation) music. On tour together with his father’s band in 1995, he approached a lady working at their Vancouver Island soundcheck and mentioned, “I such as you” in halting English. Luckily, she spoke Spanish. Within a yr, they had been married.
But it wasn’t till they moved to Smithers, Goodacre’s hometown, that Puentes started to seek out his inventive identification, he says. He blended Cuban son and nueva trova — the Latin American, socially acutely aware singer-songwriter custom — with pop, rock, and jazz to create an indefinable, charming, sweetly reflective, and melodic sound, recording two unbiased albums within the 2000s that received Juno Awards, Canada’s prime music prize. U.S. file labels circled, however as a Cuban nationwide, they would not contact him till he acquired his Canadian citizenship.
The 48-year-old Cuban musician has created a uniquely unbiased but world-spanning musical identification from his base in British Columbia.
Photo by Christina Woerns
So Puentes and Goodacre went out independently, with their very own label and manufacturing studio. While he is not a industrial star, he is financially snug, extensively revered, and has lived precisely the private and inventive life he needs.
“My greatest success is to have created a music profession and raised a household,” he says. “Creatively, I’m a wildflower. I am unable to have anybody telling me what to do.”
He usually makes use of that freedom to collaborate with different artists. For 2020’s Sublime — on which, for the primary time, he performed all of the devices and produced himself — he additionally went again to his Cuban roots. He filmed a video in Havana of “Ciudad Hembra,” a craving ode to the town, with Habana Abierta cofounder Ochoa. He recorded with childhood idols like legendary diva Omara Portuondo and Pablo Milanes, a pillar of Cuban nueva trova.
For years Puentes had longed to file “Hoy Como Ayer,” which he wrote with Miami-based songwriter Fernando Osorio, with Milanes. “It got here so quick and fantastically, like thunder,” Puentes remembers. “When we completed, I began listening to Milanes.” They by no means met — Milanes recorded his half in Spain and died at 79 final November. But they spoke briefly through FaceTime. “Pablo mentioned the artwork of being a singer-songwriter is at risk, and it is as much as your era to maintain it alive. He gave me a objective for the remainder of my life.”
For Mendo, caught in pandemic lockdown with the remainder of the world, he collaborated with Latin music mainstays like salsero Gilberto Santa Rosa and flamenco artist Antonio Carmona. He first approached famed Mexican singer-songwriter Lila Downs for the quietly luminous “Mundo Nuevo.” “It was so empowering as a result of her reply was, ‘Alex, I’m so grateful you considered me,'” he says. “I assumed, possibly we’re all bored at residence ready for one thing to do.”
Mendo’s most sudden collaboration is with Cimafunk, identified for his fiery stage reveals. “I used to be all the time intrigued with how Cimafunk would behave in a quieter surroundings, aiming at deep musicianship, not essentially to make you dance,” Puentes says. The consequence, “Hablando X Hablar,” options the 2 singing over jazzy, tautly syncopated bass and handclaps, with lyrics like “do what you need, nobody right here can criticize” that appear to problem preconceptions.
“Mendo taught me to not be scared,” Puentes says. “Funny how one thing that appears horrible might be your greatest blessing. I do not remorse something — all of it occurs for a cause.”
– Jordan Levin, ArtburstMiami.com
Global Cuba Fest 2023. With Alex Cuba Trio. 8 p.m. Saturday, March 4, at Miami Beach Bandshell, 7275 Collins Ave., Miami Beach; fundarte.us. Tickets value $20 to $40.