SOUNDTRACK: CIMAFUNK-Tiny Desk Concert #952 (February 28, 2020).
Tiny Desk Concerts have shown me how much I enjoy Afro-Cuban music, a genre I really didn’t know much about previously.
The fact that Cimafunk incorporates elements of funk makes his even more fun.
The band plays three songs.
From the moment Cimafunk and his band start their feathery intro to “Alabao,” it’s clear that something different is about to go down. Lead vocalist Cimafunk (Erik Rodríguez) has mastered the mash-up of Cuban soneos (vocal improvisations) and deep, soul-singing over music that I swear could have been played by any of the funk bands I saw back in the ’70s.
Cimafunk has a terrific voice–deep and resonant, able to rap and scat and make interesting vocal asides. But he also shares the lead on “Alabao” with Ilarivis Garcia “Hilaria Cacao” Despaigne who takes a verse and then plays trombone!
The middle of the song has a great stomping section with heavy bass from Ibanez Hermida “Caramelo” Marrero and congas from Mario Gabriel Mesa “Machete” Meriño.
You can hear the funky guitar chords from Diego “Bejuko” Barrera Hernandez as the song draws to a close.
The next song “Cocinarte” opens with that fun Afro-Cuban chord progression on the keys from Juan Marcos “Firulais” Rodríguez Faedo (which I guess is called guajira).
the very traditional guajira piano riff on “Cocinarte” transitions to a James Brown-styled funk groove so easily, it sounds like they were made from the same root.
Backing singer Miguel “Miguelo” Piquero Villavicencio plays a percussive sliding instrument and Cimafunk adds in a fast rapping section. Everyone sings along on the fun chorus especially “Hilaria Cacao” and “Miguelo” (who makes the kissing sound later in the song).
The band breaks things down into the funkiest of bolero-swing only to have it explode into another funk romp, powered by lead singer Cimafunk’s reimagining of 1960s soul singer Otis Redding and Cuban icon Benny Moré.
The final song “Me Voy” opens with great guitar work from “Bejuko” before it turns into a party from start to finish with everyone singing, a funky bass and great drums from Raul “Dr. Zapa” Zapata Surí.
Cimafunk proves that he’s a great front man as the song nears the end and he sings really fast, ending in a big “whooo!”
It’s really fun watching “Caramelo” slide his hands up and down the neck to make grooving bass sounds and when “Miguelo” brings out the whistle, you know it’s a party.
their tune “Me Voy” raises the roof and wakes the dead, with a deep Afro-Cuban, funk-party groove. This time, they turned the Tiny Desk into the hippest Cuban dance spot on the East Coast.
I don’t know what these songs are about, but I don’t care, because they are super fun.
[READ: March 22, 2020] “Out There”
This story is about dating.
But in addition to the normal pitfalls of modern dating, Folk has incorporated blots into the mix.
The narrator says that after a bleak Thanksgiving back home in Illinois, she returned to San Francisco and downloaded Tinder, Bumble and a few other similar apps. She says she never liked the idea of ordering up a date the way you’d order an Uber, but now the blots had really complicated things.
I thought that perhaps I was too out of touch with this story and that blots were some thing I hadn’t heard of. But no, blots are (as far as I know) specific to this story. They are biomorphic humanoids.
Early blots were easy to identify–too handsome, tall and lean, they were like models with no sense of humor.
She met one at a party. Her fiend had invited her to the party to beta-test the blots without her knowing about them. Roger was “solicitous, asking about my family, my work as a teacher and my resentment toward the tech industry. He seemed eager to charm.” But she felt spotlighted by this attentiveness and was not charmed by him. (more…)
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