The Rosebud Agency

Havana. New Orleans. Sister cities of sinful past and sizzling present, baking in the Caribbean heat. Yeah, that's right -- our own New Orleans, northernmost port of the Caribbean, steeped in the same legacy of seafaring French and Spanish, swashbucklers, slavery, suppressed Indian tribes and, on a lighter note, a glorious musical melting pot. That's what MARDI GRAS MAMBO: ¡Cubanismo!" IN NEW ORLEANS is all about: Where Bourbon St. hits the Malecón. Dr. John backs up Beny Moré. Preservation Hall meets the Tropicana. When Jesús Alemañy, trumpeter and prime mover behind the Havana all-stars ¡Cubanismo!" was asked by producer Joe Boyd to join some of the Crescent City's finest in the studio, he knew the results would be hot.

"It's one of the places that I feel the most comfortable in and identify most with when we come to the states," says Jesús Alemañy. "It's a place where people are keeping alive their traditions, like in Havana." For four years, the band has made a habit of visiting N'awlins every time they've toured in the U.S, bringing their virtuosic mix of Cuban dance music to ever-growing crowds. Boyd arranged a meeting in Havana for Alemañy, pianist Nachito Herrera and some of the producer's favorite New Orleans musicians: Glenn Patscha and Mark Bingham of the Yockamo All-Stars; and soulful crooner John Boutté, the crooner who would put his own stamp on the MARDI GRAS MAMBO sessions.

"They were so excited," remembers Alemañy of the Americans' reaction to La Habana. "They said that the whole environment gave them ideas... It's like New Orleans, music in the streets and every night live in the clubs. So they found something in common." That was just the beginning. When Alemañy and Herrera arrived in New Orleans in November 1999 to work on writing original material to augment the selection of Crescent City classics, they found a familiar ethic in their collaborators. "I think that people in New Orleans music feel the same way we do," says Alemañy. "I don't think that happens anywhere else, where people are actively trying to keep their own traditions, the New Orleans African American and the Afro-Cuban music, alive. That's why these musics, for years and years and years, have survived."

Indeed, it would be hard to find another city so proud of its many varieties of cuisine, architecture, and music than New Orleans. Except of course, Havana. Where ¡Cubanismo! brought a vast knowledge of Cuban son, mambo, cha-cha-chá, danzon and timba, Patscha, Bingham and crew were ready to rumble with second line marches, New Orleans R&B, hot jazz, smoky swamp blues, Mardi Gras Indian chants, and the vast musical gumbo of their own hometown.

Everyone who's ever visited N'awlins knows the Hawketts' "Mardi Gras Mambo" that gets locals shakin' that thang on the streets of the French Quarter. But the history of Latin music and rhythms swapped between Cuba and Louisiana is a long one, and has as much to do with piano and brass as it does with tropical beats. Says Jesús Alemañy, "When we came back to do the recording, people came to us and told us how historically, other artists had made this kind of bridge... early in the 20th century, musicians were coming from Havana to New Orleans, and at the same time, military brass bands were coming from New Orleans to Havana, and this continued into the 30s and 40s." And of course, jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie always found themselves at home in New Orleans or Havana.

"During the 20s and 30s in Cuba, people were crazy for American music, listening to the jazz bands, the big bands," says Alemañy. "Obviously, the Cuban musicians took this as an element to incorporate into our music. There's that influence in how to play the piano and arrange the brass. When you play the second line, or any other New Orleans way of percussion or rhythm, you can feel the Latin beat. Sometimes the downbeat will change, but you can combine it. That's the good thing about this, there's a common musical element that you can combine. Also, whether it's son or it's jazz music, this is 100 percent dancing music."

That last point is not easily lost on listeners to MARDI GRAS MAMBO. Deftly weaving Cuban styles into New Orleans boogie -- rumba and R&B, mambo into Mardi Gras chants -- ¡Cubanismo!" and friends cook up a syncopated smorgasbord. The opener, "Marie Laveaux," pays tribute to the legendary voodoo queen with a mix of blues and salsa horn charts. "Cuborleans" hinges the rich New Orleans brass band tradition to Cuban street percussion for a twice-baked second line. In between, they rework the title track into a legit Cuban mambo, and even incorporate New Orleans' -- and Cuba's -- latest musical movement: hip-hop, on "Rampart St. Rumba."

"That's one of the things on the record that I'm most pleased with," says Alemañy of the track. "Rap is very popular in New Orleans and is also important in modern Cuban music -- we use rap in timba, which is the most current Cuban rhythm." The Americans conceived the track. "I said, well, why not have a rapper talking about the two cities, the music, the culture, the reality." Local rapper Cashus Clay stepped into the Boiler Room studio and got busy. "He did a great job!" says Alemañy. "He wrote it spontaneously and really got the idea of it. That was the way the record worked -- as a team, more than working as individuals. I would sit at the piano, and Glenn would help me find the New Orleans elements in what we were doing. On ŒMarie Laveaux,' we discovered the Cuban elements in the American song, and made it a salsa kind of sound. "

The high point of this unilateral approach is "Shallow Water Suite," an elegiac number that draws its power from the rich African roots of Cuban rumba, gospel, jazz, and the music of the black "Indians," the feathered and bejeweled carnival societies of black New Orleans. "That was actually the last song we did," points out Alemañy. "We said, we need to something religious, because that's a something that's alive in Cuba and New Orleans, so we couldn't not have it on the album. It was a real collaboration -- we combined [the spiritual] "Shallow Water" with "Iko Iko," which is a famous New Orleans song, and a rumba." The moving result is easily one of an already dazzling band's most ambitious compositions.

From the elegant danzon treatment of "It Do Me Good," featuring the vocals of Topsy Chapman to the romantic back alley bolero of "Nothing Up My Sleeve," MARDI GRAS MAMBO continually surprises. With such a vast store of musical treasures at their disposal -- Cuban and Louisianan -- ¡Cubanismo!" and friends had all the right ingredients for a most flavorful Latin gumbo -- or Creole sancocho, if you prefer. Whatever you call it, you'll want to keep this one cookin' for a good long time.

¡Que los bon temps roulezar!