Rene Alvarez is in an optimistic mood. After spending the last decade touring the world with his highly successful salsa orchestra, The Cuban Combination, the singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader from Santiago de Cuba is leading a different kind of orchestra of diverse musicians, rocking to an electric guitar-laced and high-energy sound described by critics as ‘James Brown meets Irakere.’ Whilst previously conforming, albeit successfully, to the salsa stereotype, the new Rene of Alvarez Funk is, he confesses "different, more of a showman, and…free."
What does Rene mean by free? Freedom for Cubans is always a sensitive issue (more about that later) but when it comes to music Rene is clear: "I always had the desire to compose songs that draw on and explore the diversity of genres we have in Cuba, not just what Western audiences think of as Cuban, and in particular the Buena Vista repertoire that has dominated Europe’s concept of us," he says. And thus we get to the triangle of interactions between musicians from Africa, Cuba and its closest neighbour, the United States, that has developed over the years, in a much more beautiful ways than their politics.
While Cuban son and danzón have long influenced music all over the world, from jazz of the 1940s to what was to become branded as ‘salsa’ in the 1970s, they are just some of the estimated 40 styles that exist around the island, Rene says, “for example, Afrobeat has always been present in Cuba, it’s distinct pattern of chants, drums and beats are shared by Cuban genres. The claves are essential for both afrobeat and Cuban music.”
Indeed, the cultural back-and-forth between Cuba and West Africa has been so historical and so fluid that today it is almost impossible to trace which influence is from who. Since slavery brought its original musical patterns to the island, Cuba has been exporting its own African-infused music back to Africa, all through the 20th century, which can be seen in African groups such as Etoile De Dakar, Laba Sosseh or Africando. Many Cubans were deployed in Africa under Castro’s regime to support anti-colonial struggles, and the musical fusion flourished. In fact, the original Buena Vista Social Club album was supposed to be a recording of Mali and Cuban musicians. The Mali musicians never turned up, and what was recorded instead was The Buena Vista Social Club which became a worldwide hit.
Likewise, after the influx of Cuban music into the US in the 1940s, particularly in New Orleans helped form what we know as jazz today, Rene explains. “The influence flowed back to Cuba in the 70s and 80s, even with the embargo, and a lot of American funk began appearing in Cuban music, not only in jazz groups like Irakere, but also in the explosion of Cuban timba in the 80s and 90s, which used drumkit, electric guitars and synths over the flute and violins of the guaracha.
Rene remembers growing up loving American music as much as Cuban. “In fact, one of my inspirations for this project is Michael Jackson; I have been a massive fan since I was young," he admits. Even his biggest salsa influence came from the US. “I started listening to Marc Anthony when I was very young. I was in love with his music. And it gave me a new perspective on tropical music that was not Cuban."
Like most musicians who are forced to leave the country they love, René’s story has been one against the odds. Coming from a musical family, from one of Cuba’s most musical cities, Rene sang his way through his Santiago upbringing, always connected to the rhythms around him. His father is a multi-instrumentalist, specialising in the piano and an orchestra director.
“My father was always travelling with his orchestra, and I wanted to be like him, sure, but it was my aunt who most influenced me. She loved to sing and knew my passion and talent for music. Her boyfriend was a trombonist, and this became my instrument It was through her that I got into the academy. For 13 years I studied as a trombonist before starting to participate in orchestras.”
In 2006 Rene came to London for the first time with an orchestra to perform at a Cuban festival. “From the moment I arrived, I realised this was the place I wanted to live. I couldn’t believe how multicultural London was - different cultures from all around the world living together in one place.”
“I realised I had to leave Cuba to take my career further. I wanted to compose and create new music, which wasn’t that easy at home. I won’t get political, but you know the situation in Cuba. It was hard to be able to do your own composing. If you were a trombonist, you were that, stuck in your pigeonhole. When I stepped foot in London, I saw an opportunity to fulfil my dreams. Here was the first time I was able to play the piano."
Rene is also quick to discredit the popular myth that Cuban musicians benefitted from the success of Buena Vista Social Club in the 1990s and beyond. The album, produced by Nick Gold and Ry Cooder and Wim Wender’s film was followed by a boom in tourism. But rather than benefit Cuban music, “the phenomenon held back the progress of a whole generation of musicians,” argues Rene, ”because just at the height of Cuban creativity and expression, when timba and other bands were taking Cuban music forward, tourists only wanted to listen to Chan Chan and so local musicians were forced to play the Buena Vista playlist instead of developing their own music and showcasing it abroad.”
Rene’s first years in London were hard, however, as is the case of many Latinos who come to a new country. "I didn’t speak the language, couldn’t get a job as a musician so I had to start working in a kitchen and cleaning. But I didn’t leave the music behind; I paid for my first piano with these jobs."
Slowly Rene began gigging, and one day a manager gave him his first break "He saw me playing in a club with an English DJ, and he asked me, ‘Do you want to build a Latin band? I will organise the events.’"
Rene got in touch with other Cuban musicians living in the UK who were ready to play. Just the day before promoting their first event, the manager asked, "So, what name should I put? Rene thought, ‘Well, we are all Cuban…’ and so, as simple as that, the Cuban Combination was born.”
In the following years, the band released three albums which took them on tours around the world, feeding the frenzy of salsa struck audiences from France and Germany to Peru, Japan or Ecuador. "It felt like so many people wanted to be part of the Latin community," he said. He’s played to the masses at festivals, to celebrities in private members clubs, to the world’s wealthiest in intimate mansion concerts, and to James Bond, featuring in ‘No Time to Die.’ But something was missing.
“Salsa attracts only a certain audience,” says Rene. And even today, long after the Buena Vista the death of its original members, Cuban music suffers from the decades of spin-off Buenos Vista Tours. “When you say you are a Cuban musician, people still talk to you about Buena Vista. But playing that music you are never going to penetrate a wider or younger UK audience, and to play that music is to miss the point. I'd like for people to recognise the vastness and diversity of Cuban music rather than reinforce stereotypes."
Indeed, with the UK’s link to West Africa and explosion of afrobeats into mainstream music culture, Cuban music is more relevant to UK music than ever. And so, after a very successful era with Cuban Combination it was time to do something about it, and that thing was Alvarez Funk, a place where Rene can finally find freedom as a musician.
“With Alvarez Funk there is chance to interact with the community and become part of it. London’s diversity is reflected in our band, composed of musicians from Cuba, Africa, the UK and everywhere. We are going back to the roots of our musical connections, exploring them and taking them to new places. We mix Cuban beats and afrobeats, with the electric guitar following a funk pattern, the keyboards vary from merengue to Cuban and we have UK rappers, Latino chorus and songs in English and Spanish."
In other words, Alvarez Funk is taking the legacy left by Irakere, NG La Banda, Los Van Van and other pioneering Cuban bands and moving it forward for an international audience into the 21st century. It’s Cuban for new multicultural British generation, whether Latino, African or Caribbean, that understands that music can be anything it wants, as long as it makes your body move.
"This project brings all communities together, Latino, African, English; I want to see them together in a festival dancing something that is not salsa but more a mix of many genres that they can relate to. Alvarez Funk represents these cultures in a unique musical way, and I hope that people will look and listen and not only see and hear one country, but the many countries that make up who we are and our influence on the world.”
