The Panorama Lighthouse is a section that is responsible for highlighting the most important releases in Ibero-America and is published simultaneously in all the media that make up the alliance, thus multiplying its reach and visibility. Every delivery updates us on the struggles in each of our countries, currently going through the reality of COVID-19, and on the news of their musical ecosystems. As we always say, there is much to discover out there. If you want to know what the region sounds like today, this is the place and the time.

Lighthouse is composed of IndieToday (Argentina), Scream&Yell (Brazil), shock (Colombia), Magazine AM:PM (Cuba),  POTQ (Chili), Sound World and Construction Area (Spain), Indie Rocks! (Mexico), Rock Achorao' (Peru) and Piiila (Uruguay). It also works to create original and innovative content, as well as various activities that serve to break down borders and build bridges between the different countries of Ibero-America.

Cuba

By Magazine AM:PM

Cuba, like the whole world, entered 2022 with a new pandemic wave due to the Omicron variant, which aggravates an already almost endemic economic crisis. Although the scenario seems to be the same as in previous months, we wonder more and more frequently if inflation on the Island will be curbed, if the pandemic will come to an end... Meanwhile, we recently had to say goodbye to various musicians on the scene national: Mongo Rivers, considered the King of sucu suco, the trumpeter Elpidio Chapotín, and the singer and producer Suylen Milanes.  

Luckily, apart from the sadness and worries, the musical releases do not stop, and today we can recommend some of the most interesting of the last few weeks.

fools fair It was released at the beginning of last December by Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Varela. It is a song in collaboration with the Cuban rock group Sweet Lizzy Project that attacks a society in which everyone is a puppet jumping on the tightrope of a crazy and absurd circus. Listen to this story.

Get out of me one of the world classics composed by the Argentine Virgilio Expósito and popularized in Cuba by the great Bola de Nieves, came to us updated in the voice of Cimafunk, in collaboration with Harold López-Nussa on piano. This beautiful version, quite faithful to the arrangement of the Ball, is part of the soundtrack of the film The last rafter a 2020 Cuban-American drama, directed by Carlos Betancourt. The groove The most sensitive of Cimafunk joins here with the jazzy harmony of Harold. Pure beauty. 

At the end of the year, the Duo Iris launched as a gift Acoustic from the room, an audiovisual material that revisits the work of important songwriters in Cuba. César Portillo de la Luz, Marta Valdés, Pablo Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez and others from generations closer to the performers, come and go in this material from the voices of Javier and Dayami, who rescue many of the works that have marked the aesthetic evolution of Cuban songwriting.

Scarlet Island and Yoyi Lagarza join in breathe, a theme that works with experimental and electronic sounds, mixing indie rock and lo-fi, with jazz and hip hop. Verses of a very well developed lyric complete the demons of an ambiguous story that invites a creative and varied interpretation. New sounds in Cuban music are reaching digital platforms and you have to find out, this is one of them. 

The trova movement in Santa Clara has a name: La Trovuntivitis. This musical community came together again in El Mejunje to record an audiovisual material that projects their works in the space that has opened its doors to them and has seen them grow. trovuntivitis in concert (Bis Music, 2021) is a CD/DVD filmed in 2018 that includes songs by 10 representative singer-songwriters of this group. 

Cuba's urban scene has many faces, some of which come together in the theme It's me. El Chacal, Lenier, Yomil, el Chulo and el Micha "speculate" very colorfully, from their supposed scenarios of alpha males, about the reggaeton condition of having women at their feet. The language is typical in these cases, but it has flavor.

Dayron Ortiz is a young guitarist who has stood out for several years for accompanying many and varied musical projects on the Cuban scene. Since the end of 2021 he has been presenting his new project, accompanied by Gabriela Díaz on violin, Armando Osuna (Mandy) on percussion and Osniel Regal Sandoval (El Moro) on bass. This audiovisual session made up of four themes: Ala Macheteeeeeé, Nana for you, Reforma 222 and A Mamina, is a detailed and exquisite sound gift. It will purify your soul, you have to listen to it.

Words is one of the most beautiful classics of the Cuban song of the 50s, composed by the important Cuban composer Marta Valdés. This beautiful version for three of Mario Salvador Morales arrives to enchant us and make us fall in love instrumentally in all possible ways. A fresh proposal that comes with a lot of Cubanness, talent and young sentiment.

Hard timba and rumba arrive with Fable, the most recent single of The Child and the Truth. A tasty song to dance to and good for reflecting on the necessary generational changes. It has a chorus that says: "School is getting old, the chalk no longer writes on the blackboard, the children no longer do their homework, because the teacher is out of fashion." For all ages.

as you wanted It was released at the end of January. It is a very sensual love song that combines the funk of Nube Roja with the characteristic rap of Jota Barrioz. Raise your hand, dance softly with your eyes closed and feel it in a night that is eternal, because "I know I'm going to end up inside your life." That's what they say and it can happen.

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