Jazz Fest 2010 has featured numerous acts whose connection to the genre is, to be generous, a loose one. Hip-hop, R&B and funk are more like cousins of jazz than siblings. But at least there is a familial bond, some shared musical DNA that links, say, De La Soul and Alex Cuba to Charlie Parker […]
Alex Cuba
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Jazz Fest: Word Power
As a very wise fellow listener pointed out during Monday night’s Alpha Yaya Diallo show, there’s something freeing about listening to lyrics sung in a language other than your own. Without having to focus on the words and their meaning, you’re left to appreciate the voice as an instrument and the idiosyncratic rhythms of an […]
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Alex Cuba’s code
Alex Cuba has taken a break for lunch. The Cuban-born-and-raised singer/guitarist is between two workshops on Sunday at the Stan Rogers Folk Festival in Canso. He’d already worked on two others the day before and played the festival main stage on Friday night. “They got me working,” he jokes. Along with Kieran Goss and Lynn […]
Posted inArts + Music
Alex Cuba
From the west coast—Smithers, some 14 hours north of Vancouver—Alex Cuba returns with his third solo album. And he still hasn’t quite solved the riddle of his own sound. Is his heart in the rock tune, “Que Pasa Lola” or the jump-up, “Tierra Colora”? Perhaps it’s in his funk innovations, the jazzy “If You Give […]