Friday, April 14, 2006

Indulging in a guilty pleasure

I like music. I'm not one of these people with thousands of CDs, but I have an eclectic musical taste. Everything from reggae to rock to rap to country. But one of my all time favorite musical groups is the Cuban Hip Hop trio, Orishas. I could write several paragraphs about them, their history etc. but I won't bore you too much with the details. The main thing is that they rap in Spanish with Cuban rhythms and beats. It's a blend that may sound terrible as described, but in actuality it is really really fun.

The protagonists of Orishas live in Europe. The two rappers in the group (left in and middle in the photo, the third member is a singer) came up in the underground world of Cuban hip hop in the 90s. Though they live in Europe, they haven't completely cut their ties with Cuba and to my knowledge go there quite frequently. To an intransigent, old school hardliner like me it causes me a little distress. But I love the music. Orishas will be performing at La Covacha in Miami on April 28th. More information, click here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude, I have since become addicted to Orishas, and BTW I blaim that on you! Aside from that, yeah, I'm not too happy that haven't cut their ties with the island and visit often. Maybe they still have family -no es facil man...

BTW: There song Mistica is AWESOME!

Anonymous said...

Everybody is entitled to their opinions, and great music is great music regardless of the political position of the artist. Still:

"Yotuel se declara procastrista. Textual. No fidelista ni anticastrista. Prefiere el término impronunciable de... bueno, eso mismo. Por algo será. Un amigo me dice que no se puede ser "eso" pues al apelativo que le dan al Comandante cubano sus enemigos le añade el prefijo positivo pro, que termina dándole un sentido neutro al término además de hacer imposible la pronunciación. Pienso que el término lo usa Yotuel (realmente me encanta el nombre) para referirse a aquellos que necesitan alejarse de Cuba para encontrarle sus encantos al castrismo, como sucede con ciertos cuadros impresionistas. Los fidelistas de la Isla le dirán: "¡Así cualquiera Yotuel! ¡Lo jodido es encontrarle el encanto acá adentro!"

Read more:

http://arch.cubaencuentro.com/humor/2002/06/04/8269.html

jsb said...

Are they really pro-Castro, or are they just playin' the game to get in and out of Cuba? I'm curious 'cause I just dropped 30 bucks on 'em and I don't want to listen to them if they're blantantly pro-castro. But damn, they sound good.

Henry Louis Gomez said...

I don't really know. They have made some statements in the past but they choose to live in Europe. One can also assume that views evolve over time and perhaps years of indoctrination take time to wear off. I don't think they'd be coming to Miami, to ground zero of the Miami Mafia if they were really that pro-castro.

Anonymous said...

Scott, for whatever is worth, I think it was just PR. In Europe, comments of that nature gets them ink.