Electric jazz-The underground bridge / Etián Brebaje Man

Veteran rapper Etián Arnau Lizaire (Brebaje Man) has once again playfully pushed the boundaries of his music. With the double album Electric jazz-The underground bridge (Cubadisco Award 2021 in the Hip hop category and released by Brew Man Records), the former member of Explosión Suprema, one of the flagship groups of Cuban rap, wins again the bet —which at the beginning of his artistic career he made with a troubadour in the city of Alamar— to be able to reinvent himself over and over again.    

Although we must be fair to memory and point out that this work joins the list of previous works when it comes to using elements of so-called jazz-rap, street-jazz or hip-bop (I'm thinking, for example, of Kalmunity and Tomorrow's Revenge, of Obsession, or Llena de amor el mambo and Solar, from Ogguere), one of the profits of Electric jazz-The underground bridge is not to be jazzy, as it is called pejoratively to records with a jazz decoration, but without "substance" in the background. Through 17 pieces, an unprejudiced Etián delivers music with a global essence, where genres and styles such as rumba, R&B, blues and even classical music intermingle with jazz in an intimate, sensual tone. a kind of spirit groove where you can find not only the danceable for the body to have fun, but also a philosophical dimension. It is worth noting that this album emerges in the midst of a pandemic that has disrupted everything at a structural level, and (work by future specialists through) one day we will know in depth how it has impacted artistic consciousness in an evolutionary way, beyond hatreds and mental sterilities. 

Of the themes included in the phonogram, the bionic cockroach it becomes an apology for these animals so feared and crushed in everyday life, therefore, a call to respect any form of life on the planet, and our responsible action on it. A dear friend told me some time ago an interesting anecdote about the poet Fayad Jamís, when in his house he had saved from drowning —through a leaf that he used— to one of these insects. Perhaps fate weaves strange threads between these two word artists, with different trades and times, in the name of sensitivity. highly recommended when one has and rain, sing, stone. In the first, a duet with Papo, the Hegelian condition of the human being is addressed, very present in texts by Cuban masters of ceremonies. While I was listening to her, I was evoking a scene from the documentary Scratch, in which DJ Shadows, one of the most prestigious artists of the turntable world, reflects in a warehouse filled almost to the ceiling with vinyl records with extraordinary humility/reverence of the same before so much preceding art, as opposed to a materialistic and egotistical position. In the second, a collaboration with Pana, from the group Pasión Oscura, the erotic dimension of flirtation in couples, so typical of “pills” or moñera ballads, is wielded. In this sense, the inclusion of styles such as R&B and neosoul in Cuba, which have exponents such as Sigrid, Danay Suárez, Alejandro Benítez, MRC, Reynaldo Soul González, Kayron Evans, Hanoi Neyra, among others. Listening to Etián's daughter (five years old) on the record is extremely tender and thoughtful at the same time. Having as background beats tranquilizers of lofi hip hop (an ironic and narrative nod to musical production) and a critical discourse through the use of a child's voice, a message that alerts about our political capacity to absorb uncertainty and return it in generational terms is presumed. I confess that after listening to it over and over again I automatically thought of a song that started with Yes this is my mom, from Obsession, and will end up sampled with My daughter with 5 years (freestyle)of Etian. A kind of return to the hiphop seed?

Sorry and Caribbean Campechana They are two great pieces with overtones of chronicle, a dimension so typical of the sociological will of Latin American and Caribbean rap. It seems that the voices of Anita Tijoux, Canserbero, Gabilonia, El B, Akapellah, ChocQuibTown, ACRU and many others flow through Etián, who has already become a kind of medium that spits out whipping rhymes like silken whips. In Dietary Carmen, in a duet with Kervin Barreto, the intertwining of electronic sound environments with a powerful wind instrument as the protagonist leads us to unsuspected territories where the influence of sound spirits such as Herbie Hancock, Nujabes and Masego is notable, while Santiago de Cuba and numb silantro they become blood, black and Spanish verse, sex, narratives of resistance, congruence, musical ajiaco. 

I really enjoyed bunions, with Julito Padrón, Papo and Cheloman. Not because it deals precisely with the universe of streetwear as one of the distinctive elements of hip hop culture, but rather for its faithful singing narrative to subordinate subjects and their micro-stories. In mom jane (together with the Dominican Marcos Medrano) we contemplate a very convincing blues interpreter Etián, reminding us not only that rappers come from a deep socio-historical root, from distant cotton fields and entertainers from jazz to dark and residual avant-hop, but there is also a Cuba that is always enriched through heterogeneous cultural consumption. Or many Cubas. 

the dead fly closes the album —an authentic creative delight, which makes us understand again why Cuba is a musical empire—, having as guests great figures from the sound scene such as Roberto Carcassés, Julio Padrón, Oliver Valdés, among others, while the design graphic is in dual black and white (yin and yang) and the representation of one of the communicative devices of the orishas appears. Electric jazz-The Underground Bridge It produces the same effect as when you grab a snail in the sand and listen to its sound: you feel the sea, the flow of things, death and life dancing their infinity, the universe...