Aymée Nuviola: a happy journey through Cuban music

May 30, 2019

No one can deny the feeling of Cuban spirit that comes from enjoying singer Aymée Nuviola. Her contagious smile and charismatic presence represent the best of what is ours, but if we add to all this a product of the quality of 'A journey through cuban music', her most recent album, the offering becomes tempting. During her tour through the island while working on the album, Nuviola visited, in addition to Havana, the provinces of Matanzas, Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Pinar del Río, which was captured in a documentary that will premiere soon. "I am very optimistic about the future of Cuban music," she tells us, "our people is all music."

With her two latest albums recorded under the Top Stop Music record label, Nuviola has positioned herself at the top of the Billboard popularity charts (Latin Grammy included for her previous album Como anillo al dedo). Now the beautiful singer returns reinventing herself, with fresh and renewed material dedicated entirely to celebrating the most authentic aspects of Cuban music. "I thought I had to do something different and the idea came up to record a series of three albums with the rhythms of our music," she points out enthusiastically.

A journey through cuban music, produced under the sure vision of Paulo Simeon, Gregory Elias, Roniel Alfonso Mella and Nuviola herself has turned out to be an elegant and sophisticated album, among other possible adjectives that, with the evident framework of a tribute to the music of the greatest of the Antilles, proposes an ambitious international projection with excellent collaborations that make clear the essential character of an album that moves between tradition and modernity.

Omara Portuondo, and pianists Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Chucho Valdés, are some of the stars who collaborated with Nuviola making the work an unforgettable experience. "They are all great artists and it was a real challenge and a great pleasure to find the way to approach the different songs and personalities correctly," she admits. "The most important thing was achieving cohesion so that the album would be congruent despite mixing different musicians and rhythms."

At a moment especially inclined to celebrate and overvalue urban sound, Nuviola delivers us a product of excellent quality, far from tackiness and poor taste. The album, made up of thirteen tracks, launched as its first single Donde estabas anoche—a delicious traditional rumba—written by Ignacio Piñeiro, in which the singer is accompanied by the Septeto Santiaguero.

Nuviola moves very well in all Cuban genres, from son to rumba, from guaracha to mambo, although her voice is always infused with feeling, something that defines her as an eminently sentimental interpreter. Clear evidence of this is the exquisite interpretation of the bolero Tres palabras, by Osvaldo Farrés, which the singer performs accompanied by the octogenarian Cuban diva Omara Portuondo. "Recording with Omara took me back to remember my beginnings as a singer, when at just 15 years old, my sister Lourdes and I were guided by her as she corrected the lyrics and melodies of all the beautiful feeling songs," she recalls fondly.

El manisero, an essential classic within the Cuban musical catalog composed by Moisés Simons and first recorded in 1920 by Rita Montaner, serves to reunite Nuviola with one of the most important musicians in the world of jazz, pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Both artists are linked by a friendship that takes them back to childhood and leads them to share a world of inspirations that convert this piece into a sensitive embrace, where the always prodigious hands of Rubalcaba on the piano, united with the singer's voice, deliver us delicious melodic phrasings.

On the other hand, flavor and danceable music do not cease to be present in the recently premiered material with several pieces that include a delicious interpretation of El bodeguero—a cha-cha-chá by Richard Egües that set half the world dancing—and La caminadora, the Zafiros classic that Nuviola revitalizes at the rhythm of conga.

Ese Atrevimiento, a catchy number with the participation of the group Los Muñequitos de Matanzas and Chucho Valdés—one of the most venerated pianists in the world—and the song Somos Cubanos recorded with Samuel Formell, leader of the band Los Van Van, complete the offering.

Taken from El Nuevo Herald