Strange things happen to Albita, the Cuban salsa singer who blithely strolled across the Mexican border into exile in the U.S. back in 1993. (Actually, she doesn’t much care for the salsa label but it’s what’s available for now.)
So this summer, in a schedule chock-full of U.S. dates like Milwaukee’s Summerfest Saturday night and a Sunday night gig at the House of Blues, Albita will pack her pipes and head to, of all places, Helsinki, Finland, where she’ll be featured, along with the likes of Tony Bennett and Gilberto Gil, in a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald.
Say what?
“It’s strange to me to be in a homage to her, not because I don’t feel honored, but because of our different styles of music,” she says with a hearty laugh. “But, really, I think there’s been a gradual opening in Europe and the U.S., to look outside of their own worlds. Right now, that means African and, well, yes, Cuban music. Everybody knows Cuba’s the cradle for everything.”
Not that Cuba, and Africa, haven’t always been a lifeline for the music of other cultures. But it seems a particularly golden moment for artists like Benin’s Angelique Kidjo, Cape Verde’s Cesaria Evora and Senegal’s Africando, as well as a horde of Cuban musicians recording and touring in the U.S.
In Chicago alone, Los Van Van tore the House of Blues down Wednesday night and Cubanisimo raved Thursday at the HotHouse. The week before, Vocal Sampling was at the HotHouse.
“There are definitely cycles,” says Albita, who’s been riding the crest of the wave: Two out of three of her U.S. releases have been nominated for Grammys. “It’s a really good moment.”
Her first two records, “No Se Parece A Nadie” and “Dicen Que,” won critical raves, sold reasonably well and established her as a creative force on the tropical music scene in the U.S., although last year’s “Una Mujer Como Yo,” designed specifically to nail her radio airplay that had been so far denied, was a sales disappointment in spite of the best reviews of her career. And radio, which had basically dictated to executive producer Emilio Estefan what it wanted, virtually ignored it. Strange, huh?
“It was a dance record, a record we did outside of our contract,” Albita explains. “We did it very fast, on a lark, really.”
Featuring non-Cuban rhythms such as vallenato (Colombian) and merengue (Dominican) and produced as a showcase for Kike Santander, the Colombian composer-producer responsible for Gloria Estefan’s “Abriendo Puertas,” the record showed off Albita’s versatility and capacity. It lost its Grammy bid to the Buena Vista Social Club, Ry Cooder’s collection of old-time traditional Cuban music.
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So don’t expect Albita to do anything like “Una Mujer Como Yo” anytime soon.
“Look, I’m a Cuban artist, I do Cuban music,” she says. “I was glad to do that, as an exercise, as a pause in my career. But there are plenty of wonderful people out there already doing merengue and vallenato. I’ve got to tell you, though, this phenomenon of music categories makes me hysterical. That’s why I’m so ambivalent about the salsa label.”
She’s already begun work on her next recording project and expects to finish it in August, with a fall release. In what’s tentatively titled “Corazon Adentro,” she goes back to her Cuban roots, in fact, to the same approach to music that is showcased on her pre-exile records: original compositions alongside Cuban classics treated to innovative, often startling new arrangements. The new CD will include at least one song by Cuban great Miguel Matamoros, and Albita’s own version of Moises Simon’s “El Manicero (The Peanut Vendor).”
She is adamant, though, that the record not be viewed as campesino or purely traditional. “I’ve always mixed traditional and contemporary styles — my first record in Cuba wasn’t purely traditional either, although people may remember it differently,” she says. “This new record will have everything. It’s a recompilation of styles. It’s the real follow-up to `Dicen Que.’ “
Estefan is, once more, the executive producer but Albita herself will be at the production reins on this one.
“I do what I like, what I feel inside, what I want to bring to people,” she says about her approach to music. “I want people to feel good, to lift their spirits.”
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Columbia College’s American Sign Language interpreter training program celebrates its five-year anniversary with a show Friday featuring deaf comic CJ Jones and hearing storyteller Bonnie Kraft.
Jones, who calls himself “the living cartoon,” combines voices and signed language. Kraft, who grew up with deaf parents, will present “The Coda Dance: Stories About Life in a Deaf Family.”
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The facts
Friday, 7 p.m., CJ Jones and Bonnie Kraft, Getz Theater, 62 E. 11th St. Call 312-663-1124 (voice) or 312-360-9133 (TTY). The theater is wheelchair accessible.
Sunday, 9 p.m. (doors open at 7:30 p.m.), Albita, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn St. Call 312-923-2000. House of Blues is wheelchair accessible.