El Curi

Songwriter, singer, and guitarist El Curi is actually named Antonio Curiel, a Spaniard who has lived in Cuba since 1994. His tourist visa expired in 1995, but it hasn't stopped him. His lifelong dreams are tied up with the island and its people, and he will never leave of his own accord. Curiel makes his living mainly on the streets, using his wits, selling cold drinks, working at a tobacco stand for a little change — whatever it takes to get through another day. And that passion for living shows up on his debut album recorded with the backing of the awesome, renowned Septeto Santiaguero.

These deep, blues-laden habaneras and boleros are full of a modern sense of life in the throbbing, shambling metropolis of Havana's Old Harbor district. The music found on El Curi's record is not the romantic sound of old Havana, the traditional music of son. Instead, it is composed of traditional song forms, but carries within it the bustling, hustling modernity of a generation of musicians who respect their tradition while intending to preserve it by expanding its reach.

Hence, there are a slew of electric guitars here and the slightest touch of drum programming to accompany the harmonicas, guitarrons, accordions, brass, bass, and, of course, the chorus-style singing indigenous to Cuban song forms.

Along with the habaneras and boleros there are transmuted sambas and sons processed by passion rather than imitation or an attempt at fusion. En la Habana is perhaps the only project of its kind, delivered by a wandering Spanish heart passionately possessed by a foreign country while remaining true to its own roots and obsessions. —Courtesy Calabash Music