Li Robbins. Special to The Globe and Mail. Friday, June 23, 2000
Toronto -- It might seem the height of self-aggrandizement to call your band "gods," which is roughly what the Cuban word orishas translates to, until you filter out the nuances. Roldan (he and the other members go by single names), vocalist and guitarist for the Cuban band bearing
the name, was quick to explain its inspiration in a telephone interview last week from Paris, where Orishas is based.
"Really it means semi-god -- they were real people, real personalities, but with the mystic side. There are many orishas, and in Cuba, each person is the son or daughter of one of these, depending on your characteristics, your personality. I'm not saying everybody is a religious fanatic in
Cuba, but the Afro-Cuban religion shows itself in every aspect of everyday life. So choosing Orishas as a name is a kind of homage, and moreover, this is a way to represent what we do to the whole world -- when people hear Orishas, they think, Cuba."
They do think Cuba, but not nostalgic, archival Cuba, so fabulously popularized by the Buena Vista Social Club and subsequent spinoffs, continuing to clock in three years after that recording was released. Because if orishas, as in gods, inhabit two worlds, the same could be said of Orishas, the
band. Load up their debut recording A Lo Cubano, and other than the first track (a traditional combination of ceremonial drums and voices chanting in Yoruban), you'll find a musical world fused by the seemingly disparate partners of hip-hop and traditional Cuban rhythms. In an era replete with
musical fusions, Orishas' particular brand is unique. Others have hinted -- salsa and hip-hop have been grabbed by their respective tails and given a good shake by groups such as P18 and Sergent Garcia -- but Orishas focuses on what Roldan deems "the pure Cuban rhythms" such as rumba, son,
and guaguanco. Another Orishas first is that the band members are all Cubans, not part of the ever-increasing contingent of French Cubanophiles.
Roldan provides the traditional bedrock -- he worked as a singer of trova and son, and his training includes years of classical guitar. His compatriots Ruzzo and Yotuel were members of the Cuban rap group Amenaza. The fourth performer, Flaco-pro, is a Sergent Garcia alumnus. And then there's the
fifth, "silent partner," Miko Niko, a French hip-hop producer.
Niko was already sampling Latin rhythms when he got wind that some of the Orishas were planning a compilation of Cuban hip-hop groups. (Roldan estimates that there are 250 to 300 hip-hop groups in Cuba, but because of a lack of resources, they aren't heard by the rest of the world.) Niko jumped
on the idea of having a band that would combine the sampling sensibilities of hip-hop with live Cuban rhythms and singing styles, laced through with rap. He persuaded Orishas to become a band, not a contingent of producers.
"He oversaw the project," Roldan explained. "He'd lay down four or five basic tracks, beats, we'd grab one and think of a theme. Then we'd each go off and work on 16 bars, come back in and try them out together. If they were valid he'd work them into the structure."
Sounds a little clinical, but clearly it worked. "You can't just fuse something for the sake of it. For us, I don't know if it was destiny or natural law, but we gradually stumbled onto the formula," Roldan said.
He acknowledged that two years ago, just before the birth of Orishas, if you'd told him he would be involved in a hip-hop-related project, he would have scoffed.
"I sincerely hated hip-hop at the time. I was working at a club in Paris, singing, and Flaco-pro was DJ-ing. He asked me to get involved. Since we're Cuban and we were compatriots, I said okay, let's work together. We went into the studio the next day and by the end of that day I had fallen
in love with the whole idea."
Their audiences are from the same two worlds as their music. "We've never had a 100-per-cent homogeneous hip-hop audience or any other group -- you get everyone dancing in their own way. Some people dancing on the Cuban side with the Cuban style, other people just batting their heads
hip-hop style."
If it didn't require understanding Spanish to appreciate the Buena Vista Social Club, then without a doubt it doesn't take a second language to feel the Orishas vibe.
Orishas, at 9:30 tonight, at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre as part of the JVC Jazz Festival. The group plays Winnipeg Saturday; Vancouver June 26; Calgary June 27; Edmonton June 28; Montreal June 29. |