{"id":18830,"date":"2023-09-22T00:01:51","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T04:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/?p=18830"},"modified":"2023-09-21T21:43:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T01:43:14","slug":"timba-a-la-americana-harold-lopez-nussa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/timba-a-la-americana-harold-lopez-nussa\/","title":{"rendered":"Timba a la Americana \/ Harold Lopez-Nussa"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cuban's relationship with the world is inevitably mediated by the fusion of local and external elements. It is inevitable to impregnate with a local sense everything that is perceived since our reality, \"the damned circumstance of water everywhere\", is confined, although not limited, to our rock of land in the sea. Cubanness is therefore, linked to the mixture of cultures, to the concept of the <\/span>melting pot<\/span><\/i>We are open to fusion with everything that comes our way, as long as it makes us throb. Hence, it is not surprising the early assimilation of jazz in our land.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An example of this is that, when a musical genre settles and becomes creolized in our country, its local culturists usually inoculate it with a very Cuban bug that, when it enters your ears, inevitably induces you to move.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was thinking about all this in connection with the disc <\/span>Timba a la Americana<\/span><\/i> (Blue Note Records, 2023)<\/span> by Harold Lopez-Nussa, composer and pianist who for years has been part of the international avant-garde of his instrument. From <\/span>The 3 Musketeers <\/span><\/i>(Bis Music, 2022), together with WiIliam Roblejo and Ruy Adri\u00e1n L\u00f3pez-Nussa, or technically from <\/span>I Told You So<\/span><\/i><\/a> (Mack Avenue, 2020), we had no new album from him. That wait ended last August 25.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Timba a la Americana<\/span><\/i> (Blue Note Records, 2023) is a Cuban jazz album, which basically means that everything happens in there, but it is undeniable that there is a bit (at least) of Cuba in each of the themes. In my opinion, it is a thesis of Cubanness in all senses, since it takes several international musical expressions and, in an organic way, incorporates a subtle but effective stamp on them. His work, without departing from the canons of jazz and instrumental music, manages to inoculate a (sometimes not so) calm desire to dance, like someone who feels compelled to take his steps from the shyness of someone who understands that perhaps the context is not the most appropriate (maybe these are conjectures of a Cuban who has felt the desire to dance outside this land and the sorrow has overcome him).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, this album is full of catchy melodies and rhythms that after a while of listening start to play automatically in your head. The timbral work finds a tasty point of coherence without sounding like the same song, something that is helped by the rhythm changes between tracks. I was also pleasantly surprised by how he manages to emulate the timbral voice from the piano and harmonica, which seems -if you listen from afar- to be an undefined voice, without a doubt a sonorous illusion that shook me, in a good way.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to the timbre, another element that stands out is the super cast of musicians that make it up, starting with Harold himself on piano and Rhodes keyboard, Ruy Adri\u00e1n L\u00f3pez-Nussa on drums (in all combinations), Gr\u00e9goire Maret on harmonica, Luques Curtis on bass, and B\u00e1rbaro <\/span>macho <\/span><\/i>Crespo on percussions, and the stellar Michael League as co-author on some of the tracks and in the role of producer and performer of synthesizers and other miscellaneous that complement this <\/span>A dream team<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is an album that is very much marked by the current experience of the pianist, who is currently living in France. The artist himself declared it in his social networks when talking about topics such as <\/span>Mal Du Pays<\/span><\/i>,<\/span> where he makes his feelings explicit through an expression inherent to French that has no literal translation, and that can be equated to the sensation of <\/span>sparrow<\/span><\/i> or the longing that one feels from a distance for one's own country. But the album is not only that, in fact, it is many things, many things. <\/span>moods<\/span><\/i>Many experiments with the mixture of rhythms and cadences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, I will go through some of the songs that in my opinion best define the essence of the album:<\/span><\/p>\n

Funky:\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

A staircase song (it works in an ascending way), which from the opening handclaps announces a steady rhythm, but you don't see how far it will go, neither the tumbaos, nor the cadence changes, nor the series of sound effects alluding to a kind of ritual of elevation. At around 00:50 the track gives a first warning that things are just getting started. In the middle of the song appears a block that sins a little of <\/span>runner<\/span><\/i>The song's directionless, but then resumes its course between the tumbao of the piano that leads to the final ascent of the theme, where it enters a <\/span>intense <\/span>harmonica solo, marked by the cadence of the piano and complemented by the <\/span>tasty <\/span>a sum of percussions that fill the theme from beginning to end.<\/span><\/p>\n