Mambo swings round the turnpike again

Reviewed by GRAHAM REID

Ibrahim Ferrer: Buenos Hermanos

(Herald rating: * * * )

(World Circuit)

Ry Cooder/Manuel Galban: Mambo Sinuendo

(Nonesuch/Warners)

Of all the Cuban albums which came roaring down the turnpike after Ry Cooder waved the starter's flag with the Grammy-friendly Buena Vista Social Club in '97, the most unexpected came from a group called Cubismo.

Their lively self-titled album was a real cracker: vibrant rhythms, great horn section, joyousness and so on. All the hallmarks of classic Cuban pop music. Cubismo, however, were a Croatian band from Zagreb.

Now that's world music.

After the success of Buena Vista Social Club - over 6 million sold and still ticking away - it was surprising how record companies discovered they had Cuban artists on their books. Dozens of Cuban albums shipped into stores and across reviewers' desks, although most paying punters have no more than a couple in their collections. Most of these discoveries by record companies stalled something awful on shop shelves and the companies' accountants will be the first to tell you there was no such thing as the Cuban music phenomenon.

The BVSC might have briefly been caught in old-style Cold War politics and some critics thought they whiffed a Paul Simon Graceland-style scandal, but most people didn't care about that. They just liked the story of these old folks being rediscovered by Cooder (largely a convenient myth as it happens), loved the Wim Wenders movie, and enjoyed the delightfully romantic music. Some of those BVSC folks went on to record solo albums and became minor stars in their own right. They were a charming bunch: octogenarian pianist Ruben Gonzalez, and the seventysomething singers Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo deserved an international audience.

They still do, and Ferrer's latest album Buenos Hermanos was again produced by Cooder who received dispensation to travel to Cuba just as the curtain fell on the Clinton Administration. That the guitarist had also donated NZ$20,000 to Hillary Clinton's senate campaign didn't go unnoticed by Republicans at the time.

But, as Santana says elsewhere in these pages, music transcends politics and most take it for what it is: life-affirming, fun, soulful and passionate.

Ferrer's Buenos Hermanos doesn't quite possess the spring of his self-titled '99 album which appeared under the BVSC imprimatur (it also featured Gonzalez and Portuondo) but those vocal charms are intact on the ballads: the fragile Naufragio over weepy accordion and punctuating piano is the standout, and only a hard heart won't be moved by Perfume de Gardenias with its barely blown saxophone.

If Ferrer doesn't quite spark as he did previously, musically this is as good as it gets: the title track sounds like a slowed down version of Santana's Oye Como Va, pianist Chucho Valdes (seen recently duelling on the ivories with his son Bebo in the Calle 54 doco) cascades notes like Monk on meths (or should that be rum?), and the international guests include Tex-Mex accordionist Flaco Jiminez, the Blind Boys of Alabama, session drummer and Cooder/John Hiatt sidekick Jim Keltner, and Cooder.

Of special interest, however, is guitarist Manuel Galban, a peripheral BVSC figure who appeared on Ferrer's previous album. He adds unusual colour to many of the tracks, almost expressionist in the manner of Bill Frissell on Mil Congojaz, sinuous and like a melodic Fred Frith on No Tiene Telarana.

When Cooder returned to Cuba it was to work with this guitar wizard he felt the most open to experimentation and considered by his fellow musicians as someone unique. The resulting album Mambo Sinuendo under their paired names - with Keltner again on drums - confirms that opinion.

In a flashy cover featuring the fin of some classic 50s car - which reminds that Cuba is the living graveyard for such automotive elephants, and that Cooder once did Crazy 'Bout an Automobile - the all-instrumental album touches some elusive areas from 50s doo-wop pop (beamed from America and beautifully misheard on Cuban radio perhaps?), to Duane Eddy strum-und-twang spot-welded to Latin pop, and a jazz trio setting (with Cachaito Lopez on bass) on the old Doris Day standard Secret Love, here rendered much as John Abercrombie might play it on a minimalist ECM jazz album.

Cooder and Galban's guitars are seamlessly entwined, but Galban is the one who brings character to these sessions. He is as at home playing slithering bolero as covering Perez Prado's hoary Patricia (don't worry, like Tequila, you'll recognise it) and also explores a dark and moody tone as much as bright lounge-pop. The opener Drume Negrita sounds like the theme to an Endless Summer somewhere near Galban's hometown of Gibara, a small fishing village in Cuba's western province.

The timeless Mambo Sinuendo has its roots in an imaginary past where various styles of American popular music (Dizzy Gillespie's big band, finger-snap doo-wop and surf music among them) have been borrowed by musicians who, after a few rums on a warm afternoon, reconsider them through their own musical experiences.

Cuban music may have been subject to overkill and over-exposure these past few years, but these are two albums - one of an era passing, the other of possibilities opening up - to come back for and be charmed or challenged all over again.

And not a Croatian in sight.