(Klezmer Jazz, Afro-Cuban Jazz, Tzadik) Septeto Rodriguez (Roberto Rodriguez) - Baila! Gitano Baila! - 2005, MP3, 320 kbps

Cuban-American percussionist and composer Roberto Rodriguez is a bonafide innovator, synthesizing Cuban rhythms and Jewish melodies into an entirely new music that breathes joy and melancholy with tremendous emotional clarity. Rodriguez also draws upon the influences of pop, rock, jazz, world music, avant-garde and classical. Roberto Juan Rodriguez was born in El Vedado Havana, Cuba. Before leaving Cuba for Miami with his family at age 9, joining millions of others in flight, he studied violin, piano and trumpet at Caturla Conservatory of Music in Havana, and also learned much from his father, the trumpeter and arranger Roberto Luis Rodriguez. Rodriguez began playing percussion professionally at the age of 13 in his father’s ensembles as well as with the legendary Israel “Cachao” Lopez.
In Miami, Rodriguez encountered Jewish Holocaust survivors who had resettled there, many from Eastern Europe, as well as Cuban Jews from the island. He immersed himself in the culture of Miami’s large Jewish population, drumming at a small Yiddish theatre company and at bar mitzvahs. Rodriguez, who majored in jazz and studio music at the University of Miami, on a full scholarship, took keen notice of how Jewish immigrants were fascinated with the guajira, danzon and related types of Cuban music brought to south Florida by his father and his contemporaries. Rodriguez learned that a number of leading Latin pianists and trumpeters of the 1960s and 1970s had been Jewish, a discovery that strengthened his bond with those of the Jewish faith.
Rodriguez moved to New York and soon established himself as a must-have drummer in the jazz world. Jazz and pop notables with whom he has worked include Ruben Blades, T-Bone Burnett, Paquito D’Rivera, Julio Iglesias, Miami Sound Machine, Joe Jackson, Paul Simon, Lloyd Cole and Phoebe Snow. His deep interest in Jewish music was reinvigorated by the ongoing klezmer revival that started in the mid 1980s, by composer and alto saxophonist John Zorn’s series of Radical Jewish Culture recordings on the Tzadik label, and by playing drums in Jewish guitarist Marc Ribot’s Los Cubanos Postizos band.
When Zorn asked if he would like to record an album of Jewish music, Rodriguez jumped at the opportunity. Drawing on his experiences in Miami and New York bands, he began composing for the first time in his life. Soon enough, he enlisted the help of musicians like clarinetist David Krakauer and entered the recording studio. Overflowing with fresh, remarkable Judeo-Cuban music, El Danzon de Moises (The Dance of Moses) was released in 2002 to critical raves from DownBeat and The Village Voice. The album also garnered effusive praise from Rodriguez’s most prestigious predecessors in Cuban music. The legendary conguero Ray Barretto, for example, spoke highly of Rodriguez’s music, calling it “completely enchanting, delightful—different for my ears…it’s something that I’d refer back to if I want to get into another kind of playing.” Far more dance-oriented than the previous album, Rodriguez’s latest release, Baila! Gitano Baila!, goes beyond Havana, Miami and New York, drawing on Jewish and/or Latin music from South America, northwest Africa, and southwest Europe. Critical response to the new album has been overwhelmingly positive. All About Jazz called it “a stroke of genius,” adding that it combines a “fervid, swirling klezmer sound with the gentle and insistent percolations of Latin percussion.” Tom Hull of The Village Voice writes that Rodriguez’s “synthesis of Jewish melody and Cuban percussion dreams of roots that never were, yet it is convincing enough that one can imagine generations of conversos gathering in private to keep the ancient secrets of their culture alive.”

Another charming CD of music from the imaginative mind of composer/performer Roberto Rodriguez, whose first CD El Danzon de Moises is one of Tzadik's best sellers. Celebrating the elusive Jewish community of Cuba, Roberto has fashioned an exotic new music that brilliantly blends both Latin and Jewish traditions. Featuring a hot new band and brilliant new compositions Roberto's new CD is as soulful as it is danceable.

Sam Bardfeld: violin
Matt Darriau: clarinete, kaval bulagaro, flautin irlandes, trompeta china
Curtis Hasselbring: trombon
Brad Jones: bajo
Meg Okura: violin
Ted Reichman: accordeon, b-3 hammond-leslie
Roberto Juan Rodriguez: percussion
Roberto Luis Rodriguez: trompeta, bombardino, trombone de piston
Mary Wooten: violoncello