AM:PM playlist - GRLPWR
Because the 2022 edition of Music Meeting Festival is partly devoted to Cuban music and culture, Music Meeting All Ears has entered into an exclusive co-production with digital Cuban music magazine AM:PM. This playlist is one of the results of this collaboration.
GRL PWR in 20 Cuban songs
Every March 8th many women in the world stop. They go out to the streets to demand rights and justice and respect and common sense. Unfortunately, it is not enough, and there are still many reasons to demand a more just world for women all over the planet.
In Havana, as in other places, music is an essential part of these encounters. With this playlist, we want to pay respect to all women and join them in their travel. From Celia Cruz to Elena Burke to Eme Alfonso, this is a list that resumes the voices of artists with a clearly feminist voice, or with work that has built a path, expands boundaries, and has served as an inspiration to many others behind them.
1. Químbara - Celia Cruz
Few songs exude more Caribbean soul than this anthem by the Queen of Salsa: Celia Cruz. From exile, and as part of the Fania Records label, she rose from star to the category of living legend of Cuban music. Her innate versatility to cross the various genres of popular dance music, combined with her incomparable swing, made her an ambassador of Latin culture in the US and around the world. Químbara, composed by the Puerto Rican Luis Ríos Cepeda, is an example of all of this.
2. El punto cubano - Celina González
Cuban peasant music had its peak in Celina Gonzalez. In this song, she identifies herself with the most popular genre of creole peasant music, the punto cubano. This kind of music is still cultivated in the guateques and parties of the Cuban peasants. Celina Gonzalez, an inspired composer and owner of a powerful and in-tune voice, represents the dignity, pride, and ancestral strength of the inhabitants of the countryside of the Caribbean island.
3. Ya no hace falta - Bamboleo
Within the powerful wave of dance groups that emerged in the nineties of the last Cuban century, Bamboleo stood out on its own merits. The band, formed by the talented pianist, composer, and arranger Lazaro Valdes, was particularly distinguished by the inclusion of female voices in a leading role: Vania Borges, Haila María Mompié, and Tania Pantoja. Ya no hace falta is a tasty plea for the independence of a woman who resists falling into a vicious circle after a breakup.
4. Que se queme el arroz - La Reyna y La Real
In the contemporary Cuban rap scene, La Reyna y La Real (Reyna Mercedes Hernandez Sandoval and Yadira Pintado Lazcano) make up a duo whose growing trajectory reaches a decade of work. Diverse sounds and rhythms to a hip-hop base, as well as by an increasingly conscious and vindicating discourse of their condition as black Cuban women, distinguish their music.
5. La llaman puta - Magia López, Obsesión
The duo Obsesión, made up of Alexei Rodríguez "El Tipo Este" and Magia López, are among the top representatives of old-school hip hop in Cuba. Issues such as racism, sexism, respect for diversity, the need to revisit history from new canons, are central in their committed and responsible musical work. La fabrik (2003), where they collaborated with the guys from Doble Filo, and El disco Negro (2010), are the two albums that left their mark.
6. Universo - Yissy & Bandancha
The strong presence of Yissy García on drums is an act of empowerment in itself, in a country where far more women than men graduate from musical academies, but in which that proportion is absolutely reversed in the labor market. After her presence in various female salsa groups and her training as a drummer in the all-star Interactivo, Yissy composed and directed the group Bandancha in 2012, and debuted in 2016. Universo is single from 2018, with a beautiful video that you don’t want to miss.
7. Mi cuerpo es mío - Krudas Cubensi
"Neither master, nor state, nor party, nor husband", say the Krudas Cubensi in this song, in which they ‘represent the choices of women and queer people’. The project of Odaymara Cuesta (Pasa Kruda) and Olivia Prendes (Pelusa Kruda) has been setting the pace in the discourse of Latin sexual dissidence for more than two decades. This track, from the album Poderosxs (2014), is a powerful testimony of their diverse cross-conditions (migrant, Caribbean, queer, poor) not as a lament, but as a joyful recognition of themselves.
8. Yo aprendí - Danay Suárez
No other Cuban rapper's career has gone further and higher than Danay Suarez's. Her songs have been included in the soundtrack of the FIFA videogame and have even been covered by the beloved Colombian Karol G. With her melodic voice and her ability to encapsulate popular wisdom in rhymes, Danay has gained followers throughout the length and breadth of the Latin American continent. Yo aprendí is the pinnacle of all that this talented artist has to offer.
9. He perdido contigo - María Teresa Vera
For many years this immortal bolero by villareño composer Luis Cárdenas was attributed to María Teresa Vera herself. Whatever her sexual preferences, María Teresa Vera's career is one of the most remarkable and innovative in Cuban popular music. Her legendary duets with Rafael Zequeira and Lorenzo Hierrezuelo, as well as her brief but defining period at the head of Sexteto Occidente, make her a key figure in the shaping of a typically Cuban sound of the early 20th-century song.
10. Palabras - Composer: Marta Valdés, Interpreter: Haydée Milanés
The resounding work of Marta Valdés has marked the repertoires of several generations of Cuban performers. Outside Cuba, many have become standards. On this occasion, Haydée Milanés, one of her most faithful interpreters and who dedicated an entire album to her, sings her version of Palabras, the first composition of a very young Marta Valdés, in 1955. All the strength, pride, and determination that a woman is capable of, live in this text and this melody.
11. Qué dice usted - Sara González
In a natural tone, questioning an interlocutor - surely male - who seems skeptical, Sara Gonzalez demanded for women in the 1970s the same roles and treatment that men had at that time. For some, today this chant for equality may sound naïve, but in a deeply sexist environment such as the Cuban one, it still seems to make sense. The Cuban government has just approved a General Program for the Advancement of Women, which shows how far Cuba still has to go in these matters.
12. Flash - Yusa
This is one of the few songs that - even shrouded in a veil of fiction or mystery - can be identified as openly lesbian in the Cuban music repertoire. In the form of a photograph or short movie (hence the name), the Cuban composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist Yusa presents us with a couple of girls who get out of a car together and are followed by the stares of an entire neighborhood, which silently reproves - or envies - their relationship. A kind of musical haiku, with bass and voice, included on the album Breathe from 2005.
13. Libre - Eme Alfonso
In a cathartic mood, Eme Alfonso subtly portrays the small drama of relationships. Eme's work confirms that if there is a family in Cuba to which the saying "it runs in the family" is true, it is the Alfonso Valdés family. Eme is the daughter of Carlos Alfonso and Ele Valdés, founders of the mythical group Síntesis, and sister of the unclassifiable artist Equis Alfonso. The beautiful music video for the song, created by designers Raupa, Mola, and Nelson Ponce, is a perfect audiovisual complement to the composition.
14. La rumba me llamo yo - Daymé Arocena
The future of Cuban jazz arrived a few years ago, and her name is Daymé Arocena. The young singer made her solo debut in 2015 and only grew since then. This party called La rumba me llamo yo is impeccable work that is based on her extraordinary vocal conditions and an accompanying band that aligns some of the best musicians of her generation, and have turned Daymé into one of the favorites of the jazz-following public and media.
15. Rumbero como yo - Brenda Navarrete
Brenda Navarrete emerged like a cyclone, a few years ago, in the panorama of Cuban popular music. Trained in Havana's demanding conservatories, she finished her training in the all-female rumba group Obini Batá and in the choirs of the Interactivo band. Her stage presence together with her inseparable drum, her strength, and charisma make her a phenomenon that no one can ignore. Brenda is part of a generation that is putting in check the traditions of Cuban popular music.
16. La Maltratada - La Dame Blanche
The world fell at Lizzo's feet, but here in Cuba we already had our own flute player with catchy sounds. From Paris, Yaite Ramos Rodriguez has forged an explosive career characterized by a mix of playful lyrics with sounds of urban music and African rhythms. Adored by the world music circuit and barely known by the Cuban public, La Dame Blanche's work is waiting to be discovered by her compatriots.
17. Que equivocao - Telmary
She studied English language and literature but had a vocation for journalism. She began her career as an MC at the parties of Djoy de Cuba, a local electronic music guru, until she turned to rap and jazz poetry, eventually finding a very personal style. This song, in which she puts her man on the spot, is already a classic of her repertoire.
18. Me voy - Ibeyi ft. Mala Rodríguez
The French-Cuban girl duo Ibeyi, daughters of the important and prematurely deceased percussionist Angá, use ambiguity and poetry to convince everyone of their confidence. The song, in which the great Spanish rapper La Mala Rodríguez is featured, is built on a simple electronic dembow base and a hypnotic bass, on top of which they perform a precise and accomplished three-part vocal work.
19. Silencio - Sigrid Armenteros
One can notice in Sigrid, one of the newest voices of Cuban song, the intention of finding her own path, her own space, her own musical, and vital discourse. Silence, she asks in this track, as if to allow herself the necessary introspection that will lead her to her identity as an artist and a woman. We will have to follow this girl closely, who some time ago released her first album, Confluencias, with EGREM.
20. Lengua - Malaka
Representative of the Cuban Gen Z, Malaka is a perfect example of this cross-border and virtual culture in which we live today. With an aesthetic closer to the under than to urban music, Jennifer González aka Malaka has developed a short but intense career that has made her a reference of the contemporary sound of the island. Songs like Lengua are a fun game with sexual stereotypes by this young artist who flees from classifications and is determined to bring Cuban popular music to the 21st century.
A version of this playlist was originally published in Magazine AM:PM
