Joaquin Nuñez: Ruta De La Clave

Ruta de la Clave is everything a good recording should be: listenable, stimulating, thoughtful, a bit eclectic and, above all, musical. Joaquin Nuñez has set out to do a version of the "history of the clave." Of course, this is a unique vision, a distillation of Núñez's experiences as a Cuban-Canadian percussionist. But his overall goal is considerably greater, "a reinvention of Afro-Cuban jazz." That is a pretty tall order.

Others will say whether Núñez achieves that, but he does succeed in producing something rather different. The vocals in particular are intriguing, not quite what one would expect this genre, a sort of Swingle Singers meet clave. But what else would you expect from musicians heavily influenced by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and classic bebop in general? Their sound is assimilated, not imitated, which is the hardest thing to accomplish. It is really no wonder that a listener who grew up to later versions of New York swing bands hears echoes of them, especially in some of terrific flute-led passages. Yes, there were outfits, even commercial ones, that could produce a similar sound and feeling in the early 1960s, but that detracts not a bit from what Núñez does. Good music is good music. It defies genres, conventions, pigeonholes and the rest. People who talk about universal language are not just idly enthusing. That is just what Ruta de la Clave provides.

So one gets danzón ("Danzón Sin Tumbao"), changüí ("Mi Changüí"), rumba ("Rumba de Solar") and the narrative "Una Guajira en Nueva York," the story of a peasant girl who encounters the instrumentation of the clave in the streets. "Suite Columbia" is another narrative, of an African brought to Cuba, which has already been culturally Africanized by the truly enormous influx of the 19th-century trans-Atlantic slave trade. This is not just some romantic tale. Between the 1780s and the 1860s, 800,000 Africans to work primarily in the sugar cane plantations and boiling factories were enslaved and brought to Cuba, twice as many Africans as had been forcibly transported to the United States. So the vital influence of African rhythms, drumming, religion and language decorate Ruta de la Clave, even as players who had been steeped in swing and bebop had already broken ground in which the transplant could flourish. The recording is different, original and refreshingly free of the clichés that often plague Latino music. It should find the wide audience it merits.