Visiting Cuba and not seeing live music would be a shame on its own merits, but it would be a sin for me. If you put a gun to my head and told me I could only listen to one kind of music for the rest of my life, it would probably be Afro-Cuban jazz. This is why:

If those three songs don’t make you want to a) hear more Afro-Cuban jazz, and b) shake your groove thing, there’s no help for you. I mean, I guess we can still be friends…

Maybe.

Anyway, that’s what I had in my head when we talked about going to Cuba. I wasn’t planning on going out every night, but music tourism was absolutely top of mind. Thankfully, we were able to enjoy music from traditional to modern, in venues from bars to concert halls.

The first music we saw was at El Rintintin in Trinidad, which I covered here. That kind of classic sound really sings to me, and I found it again in Habana Vieja. The house band at restaurant/bar La Vitrola right on Plaza Vieja scratched the itch. Not Tito Puente, but that ship has sailed.

Our next concert was concert hall, not bar. It was staged in a beautiful Colonial church, and featured a group of maybe 9-10 musicians doing an overview of Cuban music from roughly the last 100 years. The entire program was excellent, but my personal favorite was a piece by composer/pianist Frank Fernandez, who was in attendance, called Bellas Artes. I can’t find any version of that to share, but here’s another piece by Fernandez that at least gets you close.

The very next night we saw some of the musicians who were in the concert perform as a jazz quartet at a local restaurant/bar. The Ernesto Oliva Band featured Ernesto on piano with a bassist and two percussionists. It was modern jazz built on a foundation of classic Cuban rhythm (although with a hint of 70s Airto).

Finally, we saw Frank Delgado, a beloved Cuban folksinger. His songs were not only catchy, they were obviously well-known, as the audience sang along with almost every number. He’s known primarily for two things: incisive songs that capture the contradictions at the heart of the Cuban experience, and pissing the Cuban government off. I have a hunch those two things might be related.

Attending the concert was kind of weird. Imagine seeing Dylan in a small house, if the US government has worked over decades to suppress his music, you’d never heard his songs before, and you didn’t speak English. So… cool but baffling?

I expected Cuban music to be a highlight of our visit, and I wasn’t disappointed. The range of music on offer was incredibly broad, with so many different approaches to honoring and updating a deep and rich heritage. I hope you follow up on some of this, and join me in the joyous rabbit hole of Cuban music.