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RAUL PAZ'En Casa'The brand new album from the Cuban/Nuevo Latino sensation
Cat No: NV810112 Release date: 6 November 2006
RAUL PAZ will play The Pigalle, 215 Piccadilly, LONDON SW1 on 8 and 9 November 2006 from 9pm Tickets (door): £25 standing £60 for diner (3 course meal) Reservations: 0845 3456053/ www.thepigalleclub.com SEE TICKETS : 0870 1660424 www.seetickets.com STARGREEN : 0207 734 8932 www.stargreen.com
"En Casa is totally different from what I've made before and from what I might do later" confides Raul Paz, a half smile on his face...
Today Raul Paz, who has contributed greatly to the Cuban music revival, offers us another facet of his music. His new album En Casa opens new horizons in which the rhythm of traditional sounds melts with Raul's unique creativity.
At the heart of En Casa is the return to Cuba: a fine mix between his childhood memories and rediscovering the land. For the first time in a long while, Raul spends many weeks in Havana. He fills himself with the music of his childhood. It nurtures his inspiration. Raul shares his musical universe and his experiences with new talents from the current Cuban music in Havana, where modernity and tradition are entwined and a daily reality. He composes songs, performed in the acoustic vein of the "campesina" (music from the country) with a personal and modern touch: Raul Paz always reinvents and gives a new breath to these sounds.
Now, he's returning home ("En Casa"). His story begins in Pinar del Rio, a city in the west of Cuba, where he was born in 1969, before moving to San Luis, a peaceful town located nearby, where he spent his earliest years with his family. Sunday was especially important to him during this period of his life. It was the day when, by listening very closely, he could hear snatches of music through the walls of the house next door. The music was played by elderly musicians taking part in a "guateque", a festive Sunday country gathering held between noon and midnight and featuring not only eating, drinking and cigar smoking but also the rhythms of rumba and guaganco. Sunday was also the day when the whole family would get together at 7:00 p.m. to watch "Palmas y cana", a TV show devoted to traditional Cuban music that still broadcasts today.
"My father loved it", says Paz. "That's how I also ended up enjoying country music, like guajira, and how I learned all the Portabales songs".
When he sang at the Olympia concert hall in Paris in 2005, Paz opened with an allusion to that period, which laid the foundations for his career and recalls a time when he used to sleep with the guitar his neighbours gave him, much to the consternation of his parents. "That day in Paris, I paid tribute to my father and sang the music he loved - campesina music. The first part of my concert was devoted to the Portabeles repertoire and a few of my own songs, but with a traditional touch".
"En Casa" is the echo, the continuation of that concert, and of his intimate reconnection with memory. "Recorded in the old-fashioned way, that is, all together," Ð with him and his Cuban musician friends of 20 years in the historic Egrem studios, just as he intended Ð "'En Casa' blends the colours of my childhood with my way of seeing things today". Paz plays around with time, always seeking fusions between yesterday and today. "I like being able to combine old-style lyrics with modern music, or the opposite, taking an old melody and treating it in a modern way, like 'Mulata' for example". "Mulata", which came out in 2003, marked the beginning of his collaboration with the French record company naïve after the release of his first album, "Cuba libre" (renamed "Imaginate" for the American market), recorded in Miami on RMM, Ralph Mercado's salsa label (Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, etc.). "Mulata", reinterprets Cuban music whilst introducing dub, electro and hip hop effects. The next album, "Revolucion" continued along the same path, tipping its hat to musical fusion. "It's important to open up music", says Paz. "Isn't Cuban music based on encounters, on comings and goings?"
"En Casa" itself is a return to the very roots of Cuban music and to Paz's origins, as well as an album that highlights his very subtle and generous talents as a singer-songwriter. The spare sounds of the acoustic guitar lay bare the songs that rely on nothing but themselves and the strength of their lyrics. Unanimously praised for his passionate concerts, Paz has succeeded, with this album, in taking a new, decisive step forward. And for the first time, in one title he tries his hand at French; under its acoustic and traditional tones lies a rich vein of influences. He confides that he has never expressed himself as fully as he does on this album, adding that, "these influences are hidden more deeply in the lyrics and harmonies". The Spanish lyrics in a number of his other songs plunge us into true stories that can be interpreted at different layers beneath the surface. "My songs have always had various levels of interpretation", says Paz. For him, music is a way of experiencing "many different things" and bringing them into dialogue together. "That is where my pleasure in music comes from, from this quest, and from dreams as well".
Paz will share his sense of pleasure and delight in experiences with his audience during his much anticipated London performance at The Pigalle, Piccadilly, London, on 8-9 November 2006 (full details at the top of this page).
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