In 2015, a few months after the U.S. lifted a decades-long embargo on travel to Cuba for U.S. citizens, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band made a pilgrimage to the Caribbean island from their home base in New Orleans. This trip, memorialized on film, became the lauded 2019 documentary A Tuba to Cuba (Blue Fox Entertainment). The film’s soundtrack, just released on Sub Pop Records under the same title, stands as an arresting musical narrative even without the colorful visual imagery from the film—the music tells its own story.
Each tune on the album extols the thrill of cross-cultural discovery. Or perhaps rediscovery—as the album makes clear, in reaching across the New Orleans-Cuba cultural divide the septet is merely re-establishing a musical connection forged hundreds of years ago in the folk traditions of West Africa. The musicians’ joy in this effort is unmistakable on tracks like saxophonist Clint Maedgen’s light-hearted “Yesteryear,” improvised and recorded solo in a Havana alcove, and bassist Ben Jaffe’s ebullient brass-band gambol “Tumba,” or his gently rolling “Malecon.”
The album comprises mostly originals—eight all told, with all but “Yesteryear” composed by Jaffe, the group’s prolific bandleader. In and among these originals, though, are several vintage recordings of traditional Cuban melodies: for example, the guitar-and-voice air “Las Palomas,” the reverential chant “Eleggua,” and the Cuban dance hit, “El Manicero.” Jaffe emulates these Cuban classics in his writing but doesn’t reference them directly; thus his compositions sound both fresh and contemporary. In this way he links the two jazz capitals not only across distance, but across time.
Jaffe’s parents founded Preservation Hall in 1961 to maintain New Orleans’ jazz heritage. With A Tuba to Cuba, that heritage deepens considerably.
Personnel: Clint Maedgen, tenor saxophone (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 12), vocals (3, 5); Walter Harris, drums/percussion (2, 3, 5, 12), vocals (3, 5), drums only (8); Ben Jaffe, bass (2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12), vocals (3, 5), tuba(4), percussion (4, 8), keys (6, 10), banjo (9); Kyle Roussel, keys (2, 3, 5, 8, 12), vocals (3, 5); Charlie Gabriel, tenor saxophone (2, 5, 6, 10), clarinet (3, 8), vocals (3, 5); Branden Lewis, trumpet (2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12), vocals (3, 5); Ronell Johnson, trombone (2, 3, 5, 8, 12), vocals (3, 5); Jerry Ordonez, percussion (2, 3, 5, 8, 12); Tumba Francesa, vocal sample (2); Septeto Tipico Oriental, arr. (4); Eme Alfonso, vocals (5); Mark Braud (5); David Oquendo, guitar (7); Joseph Pierce, cornet (9); Josiah Frazier, drums (9); Billy Pierce, piano (9); Louis Nelson, trombone (9); Allan Jaffe, tuba (9); Alejandro Almenares, guitar (10).
Tracks: Yesteryear; Tumba; I Am; Descarga del Septeto; Keep Your Head Up; Corazon; Eleggua/Traditional; Kreyol; El Manicero/Traditional; Solitude; Las Palomas; Malecon.
(Reprinted from October 2019 issue of Downbeat magazine)