Cuban music out now ...

VARIOUS

Gilles Peterson Presents Havana Cultura: New Cuban Sound

Brownswood ***

If the Buena Vista Social Club project was about saluting and honouring Cuba’s musical past, this double-CD is about the present and future. Helmed by BBC Radio One DJ and globetrotting club DJ Gilles Peterson, it’s a health check for the island’s current musical crop and spreads the net wide to bring in those shades of hip-hop, funk and r’n’b that are as much a part of the new lexicon as rumba or salsa. The first CD features recordings from Havana’s Egrem studios, with the Havana Cultura Band fronted by jazz pianist Roberto Fonseca; the second CD has Peterson’s choice cuts from recent releases. The Egrem recordings that are the more intriguing proposition of the brace, with Fonsceca and accomplices producing a bunch of sturdy, shimmering, often bold backdrops (Arroz con Pollo is as tasty as the name suggests), and guest vocalists and MCs flitting in and out between the grooves. www.havana- cultura.com

Download tracks:Arroz con Pollo, Individual