Gerardo Alfonso Presents a New Album, "The Slave Route"

September 2, 2022

Cuban singer-songwriter Gerardo Alfonso presented this Tuesday in Havana his most recent recording project, The Slave Route, as a tribute to the 75th anniversary of Cuba's admission to UNESCO and the International Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

The launch of this project took place in a room at the National Museum of Fine Arts, an intimate encounter without concessions before the media and experts, an initiative under the patronage of the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) in Havana.

In his 17th work, Gerardo Alfonso covers in 15 songs a multitude of genres, from rumba and guaguancó to choral chants of Arará matrix, going through afro, funk, reggae and songo.

"It is an album of entertainment and reflection that encompasses, from a musical point of view, many facets of Afro-descendant origin, although it is not a folkloric record," explained the renowned artist in an interview with the blog La Habana en clave de Sol.

The author of the iconic song White Sheets, noted that in this project conceived more than a decade ago, he gathered songs that seemed to him "recurrent to ethnography, raciality and other aspects...", including some that he had composed in the 1980s and at other times.

The musical production, from the Cuban label Egrem, and the arrangements of The Slave Route's songs were in the hands of one of the most important Cuban musicians, maestro Joaquín Betancourt.

Alfonso also had the participation of guest artists, such as the director of the group Mezcla, Pablo Menéndez, who contributed the sound of electric guitars to fourteen of the songs, Daysi Bravo and her group Obba Aré Anlé, and saxophonist Janio Abreu, among others.

The Slave Route is not this troubadour and self-taught composer's first eclectic album, which has the CD Race as a precedent.

Alfonso (1958), member of the Cuban New Troubadour Movement since 1980, has been influenced by Cuban singer-songwriters such as Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés, and by Brazilians Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Milton Nascimento.

He is the creator of the guayason rhythm, with melodic elements of peasant and Afro-Cuban music, which he calls "son of the guava".

With more than 30 years of artistic trajectory, he has accumulated numerous nominations and national awards in the recording sector, has composed soundtracks for local television programs and films of the island, and has worked with Cuban and Italian symphony orchestras.