El Danzon de Moises

1. Polaco

2. Danzonete Hebreo

3. Shvitz

4. Guahira

5. Shron

6. Danzon de Moises

7. Comparsa en Altamar

8. Shalom a Shango

9. Jerusalem Market

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
The Cuban-born percussionist Roberto Juan Rodriguez plays with such varied acts as Marc Ribot's Los Cubanos Postizos, Julio Iglesias, Miami Sound Machine, Joe Jackson, and John Zorn. But it's his background in Cuba's small Jewish community that is the inspiration for El Danzon de Moises, an outstanding amalgamation of traditional Cuban and Jewish music. Leading a dozen of New York's downtown finest (including clarinetist David Krakauer, percussionist Susie Ibarra, and bassist Brad Jones), Rodriguez has composed and arranged an album that adeptly captures the wailing clarinet and Eastern European rhythms of klezmer, and seamlessly fuses them with the shimmying sway of Cuban son and the percolating fire of Afro-Cuban percussion. Ostensibly, this seemingly incongruous fusion would play best (or perhaps get the most resistance) in Miami Beach or New York City because of their large Latin and Jewish populations, but the beautiful and reverential songs will appeal to anyone open to musical possibilities. This album realizes the unique vision of a talented musician. --Tad Hendrickson

Tracks:

El Polaco
Danzonete Hebreo
The Shvitz
Guahira
Shron
El Danzon De Moises
Comparsa En Altamar
Shalom A Shango
Jerusalem Market

Amazon.com

The Cuban-born percussionist Roberto Juan Rodriguez plays with such varied acts as Marc Ribot's Los Cubanos Postizos, Julio Iglesias, Miami Sound Machine, Joe Jackson, and John Zorn. But it's his background in Cuba's small Jewish community that is the inspiration for El Danzon de Moises, an outstanding amalgamation of traditional Cuban and Jewish music. Leading a dozen of New York's downtown finest (including clarinetist David Krakauer, percussionist Susie Ibarra, and bassist Brad Jones), Rodriguez has composed and arranged an album that adeptly captures the wailing clarinet and Eastern European rhythms of klezmer, and seamlessly fuses them with the shimmying sway of Cuban son and the percolating fire of Afro-Cuban percussion. Ostensibly, this seemingly incongruous fusion would play best (or perhaps get the most resistance) in Miami Beach or New York City because of their large Latin and Jewish populations, but the beautiful and reverential songs will appeal to anyone open to musical possibilities. This album realizes the unique vision of a talented musician. --Tad Hendrickson

Customer Reviews:

Wow, fabulous!!.......2005-01-01

I love Cuban music. I love Klezmer music. Give Cuban music to expert Klezmer players, and you have superb music. You have this album. Sad, touching, inspiring, moving, beautiful, joyful, alive, passionate, most of all fun. What music should be about.

Where jazz and world music intersect.......2004-04-16

We've got Jewish & Western (Tim Sparks), hillbilly Jewish (Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys), Jewish soul-jazz (Steven Bernstein), Jewish soul-blues (Paul Shapiro and Midnight Minyan), Jewish avant-garde (John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, Eric Friedlander), Jewish gonzo jazz (Jamie Saft)--Why not Jewish Afro-Cuban, danzon, and son?

Indeed, why not?

There's a small but vocal Cuban Jewish community, with their own Jewish traditions and sensibilities, who've come in contact with and slyly incorporated into their own musical understandings the expansive music of the African diaspora, as experienced in Middle-Passage Cuba.

As far as I know, El Danzon de Moises represents the first-ever disc seeking to capture this unique music.

And what a disc it is!

Featuring the usual Downtown suspects--such brilliant players as Mark Feldman (viola), Craig Taborn (piano), Ted Reichman (accordion), Marcus Rojas (tuba), Matt Darriau (clarinet, trompeta China), Peter Apfelbaum (soprano sax), and the great Susie Ibarra (percussion)--this discs cooks with an easy swinging groove, effortlessly linking two disparate but remarkably similar musical traditions: Afro-Cuban and Klezmer.

It's entirely amazing to me how easily and naturally these two traditons match up. It's almost as if they were meant to combine (as perhaps they were!). What astounds about this music is its insane naturalness, almost to the point of duh: Jewish swing melding seamlessly with African sensibilities.

My own view is that some of the most exciting music is happening at the fringes of traditional musics--musicians like Omar Sosa, Adam Rudolf, Dhaffer Youssef, Claude Chalhoub, Royal Hartigan, Cyro Baptista--and R. J. Rodriguez. Anyone at all interested in further exploration of the frontiers of jazz and world music should not hesitate to pick this up.

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