Tag Archives: Bruce Cockburn
Latin Grammy Winner Alex Cuba Headlines Weekend at Blue Mountain Village
On Saturday August 4th at 8:30pm Blue Mountain Village brings Latin Grammy and Juno Award Winner Alex Cuba to the Coca-Cola Village Stage, headlining the weekend’s Mosaic World Music Festival.
A musician since the age of four, Alex Cuba has in his veins the music of that tropical island whose name he has appropriated for the stage. But his music is uniquely Canadian in spirit.
His Cuban music roots run deep. Seminal Cuban artists like Matamoros, el Benny and Compay Segundo filled his ears from infancy. He played in his father’s ensemble of 24 guitarists alongside his twin brother Adonis Puentes, (who will be at Summerfolk this August), appeared as a teen on Cuban national TV, won a songwriting competition at the age of eighteen.
After studying electric and standup bass, he toured Cuba and internationally. He was on a tour of Canada when he fell in love with a Canadian girl, Sarah Goodacre, daughter of a B.C. politician. She returned with him to Cuba and they were married. Later they emigrated to Canada, so that he could “creatively spread his wings” and to be close to Sarah’s’s family in Smithers, B. C.
In Smithers, he and his wife created an independent label Caracol Records, to distribute Alex’s music. Working on their own, Alex and Sarah have built his career and a following in the Spanish-speaking world. In Cuba, his music is not heard, in keeping with that country’s total rejection of artists who leave to find success elsewhere, abandoning the revolution. Like Celia Cruz and Tito Puente before him, international success excludes the country of his birth. Likewise in the U.S. labels still avoid Cuban artists, both in the aftermath of a longstanding blockade of trade between the countries and in anticipation of more of the same from the Trump administration. He succeeds in spite of these drawbacks because what he offers has a distinctive difference.
Alex’s brother came to Canada as well and under the name the Puentes Brothers they made a great first impression on the Canadian music scene, picking up a Juno nomination nomination in 2001 for their first recording. In 2004 they diverged into separate recording careers in Canada, but they continue to write together.
Not long after embarking on a solo career, Alex Cuba’s recordings on 2006 and 2008 won him Junos for World Music Album of the Year. Working from a Canadian base his music has had an impact on the Latin music world. He won Best New Artist at the 2010 Latin Grammy Awards, where his third album, self-titled, was nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Album. In 2011 he won a BMI Latin Award for his songwriting on Nelly Furtado’s #1 Spanish hit “Manos Al Aire” to which he contributed on more than half the songs. In 2012, Alex received his second Socan Hagood Hardy Award for outstanding achievement in Jazz and World Music. And he continued to win Latin Grammies with every new release.
In 2016, his Latin Grammy win was as a singer-songwriter rather than for World Music, for an album which included duets with several Canadian artists, including Ron Sexsmith, David Myles, Alejandra Ribera and Kuba Oms. His Canadian take on Latin music substitutes beautiful vocal harmonies and guitars for the horn riffs in the style of Beny Moré that normally punctuate Cuban music. “Lo Mismo Que Yo,” his intoxicating duet with Sexsmith, became a hit in the UK Singles Chart, reaching #52.
Alex is aware that he sounds different from other Latin artists and he attributes that to his “Canadian identity”.
“I became a singer-songwriter, a producer, a musician in Canada. Canada has given me an identity,” he told Georgia Strait, “My music was made in Canada. No Latin artist in the Latin world can sound like me, because they don’t have this Canadian side that I have. They don’t have the situations, the inspirations, et cetera, that I have found in this country.”
Part of the Canadian influence on his sound is the guitar-oriented narrative tradition in Canada evolving from artists like Gordon Lightfoot and Bruce Cockburn to bands like The Tragically Hip. Another part is the wilderness surrounding Smithers, where he has lived for fifteen years, which he credits with giving his music a more open and airy feel, and ensuring his themes have universal appeal.
“In Cuba,” he went on to tell Georgia Strait, “sometimes it’s all about the rhythm; it’s all about making you move, physically. But Canada, it’s different. It’s about making you move mentally, maybe making you move spiritually. You know what I mean? That inspired me to create that way, to incorporate that into my music—to pay more attention to the way I craft my music, my melodies, how many instruments I have on an album, et cetera, et cetera. It has given me a sound.”
Ironically many Canadians won’t understand his narratives because they don’t understand Spanish. His music has a spiritual and rhythmic beauty that can be enjoyed even by someone who doesn’t understand the words, but like other Canadian artists, he has something important to say. He cares about his lyrics.
It is special to him when he gets a chance to perform for “people that understand Spanish, that understand the power of my words,” he continues. “This has been happening for me in Mexico, as well. I’ve been playing solo shows down there; the last one I did, I played for 2,000 people on my own, and it was unbelievable—all those people singing my songs. I felt like a kid, you know? Like I wanted to play nonstop for four hours. It was beautiful!”
The Alex Cuba concert is the highlight of a weekend of world music at Blue Mountain Village that includes Bamkanda Drumming, Greek Dancing lessons, belly dancing, and the Beinn Gorm Highlanders, along with some great rock and roll from Sean Pinchin, The Summit Band and Alysha Brilla.
It’s all free!
CROW Sessions Spotlights Stephen Fearing
By Bill Monahan
On Tuesday April 24th, Crow Bar and Variety in Collingwood presents the third in its special series of dinner shows, this time featuring singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing. The early dinner-show format, with the admonition, “Shut the F@#k Up and Listen”, is designed to give audiences extra insight into the artists featured with a mix of stories and songs. Part of the show on Tuesday will be an interview on stage conducted by writer and broadcaster Jeff Woods “asking some of the hard questions”.
Stephen Fearing, a veteran singer-songwriter, winner of two Juno Awards, a Canadian Folk Music Award and a West Coast Music Award, has been building an international reputation since the release of his first self-titled, self-produced cassette in 1986. He is probably best known as one of the founding members of Blackie and The Rodeo Kings, but during his decades with them he has continued to develop a solo career that includes collaborating with the Northern Irish singer-songwriter Andy White, almost two decades as a solo artist on the prestigious True North label, conducting songwriting workshops, and producing records by other artists that include Suzie Vinnick’s Juno-nominated “Happy Here”, for which he co-wrote most of the songs.
“When I started in this business it was a very different landscape and certainly there was a lot more emphasis put on just being one-dimensional,” he says, “You know, ‘don’t confuse the audience’, just be the thing that the record company is trying to sell you as and stick to that. I think a lot of musicians have an interest to try different things, not just other styles but collaborating, performing with other players gives you a chance to try a different hat and that kind of thing. The way the business is working now, you’ve really got to be able to spread yourself around, do different things, multiple income streams. But just from a selfish point of view of keeping yourself interested, the more ways you find to can skin a cat, as it were, the better.”
Like a lot of veteran artists, Stephen Fearing has lived through the seismic change in the music industry that occurred with the advent of the Internet, and he’s learned to adapt. He’s live through the change from the days when a musician was seen as “somebody who rolls out of bed at noon and picks up a guitar and then is just kind of magically transported to the show and then to a party afterward,” to the way things are now, “when so much that needs to be done is the artists’ job.”
Second Great Show at Desboro Hall This Weekend
The Desboro Music Hall is proving this season to be a great value, presenting high quality performers in the ideal setting of an old church for just $20 a ticket ($25 at the door). Their first show a month ago featured the virtuoso duo, My Sweet Patootie, who combined great musicianship with a highly energetic and engaging stage show. They are continuing in that vein this month with James Hill and Anne Janelle, a husband and wife team that combines the unlikely pairing of ukulele and cello to create a unique musical offering. Their first duo recording in 2009, True Love Don’t Weep, won them critical praise and a Canadian Folk Music Award for Best Traditional Album of the Year. It included traditional folk tunes and original songwriting. They subsequently recorded and toured separately but now they have returned to the duo format, appreciating its unique value. As Anne is quoted on their website, “I think we both came to realize, each in our own way, that the duo is our strongest musical offering.”
Both have won accolades for their songwriting, with R2 magazine calling Anne’s songs “inventive, entertaining, beautifully written and brilliantly performed” and Trad Magazine describing James’ songs as encapsulating “joie de vivre, tenderness and musical perfection.”
Both enjoy stretching the boundaries of their instruments, and passing along their insights through teaching. Anne has performed with such varied artists as Kanye West, Bruce Cockburn, and Holly Cole while experimenting deeply with free improvisation in both music and dance while James co-authored the Ukulele in the Classroom method book series with J. Chalmers Doane, the trail-blazing teacher who pioneered the use of ukuleles in Canadian schools and has taught throughout Canada and the United States, as well as in Europe, Japan, Singapore and New Zealand.
As if bringing world class musicians to Desboro is not enough, each of the summer series of concerts also features an engaging opening act.
In concert they have been universally praised for an engaging show, with critics citing “a crystal clear sound filled with warmth” and Anne’s “gorgeous syrupy voice”. The duo has toured Europe and Asia and now are finding themselves in the little hamlet of Desboro where they are sure to be met with an audience that fully appreciates their singular offerings.
My Sweet Patootie Kicks Off Desboro Music Hall’s Summer Season
This Saturday, Apr. 22nd, the Desboro Music Hall will be kicking off its second concert season with the international folk/jazz trio, My Sweet Patootie, a show that Driftwood Magazine describes as “two parts exemplary musicianship, one part vaudeville comedy”. The opening act will be Alicia Toner from Canada’s East Coast.
The Desboro Music Hall was created when brothers Phil and Joe Klages bought the historic Anglican church in town. Ever since the community centre closed down there had been a gap in the local culture and Phil and Joe, music fans who grew up in Desboro, saw the church as an ideal venue for concerts and other community activities. Their inaugural year was a great success, a mixture of local musicians as well as acts like Oh Susanna, Alfie Smith and Mark Reeves. Their choice of featured acts reflects the affection local audiences feel for roots based music and they have the good taste to include only the best purveyors of the style. It is the kind of concert series that you can attend knowing that it will be good because of the care with which it was put together. This year’s series starts and ends with exemplary performers who also happen to be Meaford residents, starting with My Sweet Patootie, who reside in Meaford when they are not on tour, and ending in October with The Honey Brothers, featuring Meaford talents Drew McIvor and Jayden Grahlman, along with Jay Stiles.
My Sweet Patootie was formed as a duo in 2007 when the long-running Canadian roots band Tanglefoot disbanded after decades of touring. The two halves of Tanglefoot took off in different directions. One half teamed up with Meaford-based drummer and singer-songwriter Beaker Granger to form RPR (stands for Richie/Parrish/Richie) and put the emphasis on roots rock. The Patootie half took off in an entirely different direction and, now after several years of touring and recording, they have evolved into a totally unique live act with recordings that have a sheen to them combining nostalgia with superlative musicianship.
If they were a very serious act the audience would be moved by their extraordinary musicianship. If they were mediocre players, their energetic showmanship would easily carry the day. When the two elements are combined they put on an irresistible show.
Both Terry Young and Sandra Swanell of My Sweet Patootie are classically trained, Terry in voice and Sandra in violin and viola. Terry’s roots, though, go back to Canadiana folk and his fingerpicking guitar style was influenced by players like Bruce Cockburn. Sandra was the principal violist of the Georgian Bay Symphony and fronted the Celtic art-rock band The Shards before joining Tanglefoot in 2005. Despite her classical training her violin more often than not echoes the “hot jazz” of Stephane Grapelli. Together they took their superlative instrumental chops and applied it to a hybrid of folk, Celtic and old jazz. All of these elements can be heard in their performances and their recordings. They mix evocative covers with their own originals which are simultaneously moving and whimsical.
