New Album Prolongs Cuban Rumba Tradition

Havana, Nov 9 (Prensa Latina) The new CD-DVD with a documentary anthology of the Cuban Rumba group Muñequitos de Matanzas is a valuable tribute to their ancestors, the musicologist and general producer Cary Diez said on Friday.

'Maferefun la rumba, the title of the album that contains 10 tracks and the documentary by the filmmaker Julia Mirabal, brings us this group that after 66 years of its foundation always sings to its ancestors, always shows the rebellion worthy of a runaway slave, as reflected in the song La Mundo Se Está Acabando Mayoral (The World Is Coming to an End Foreman), a sign and a principle of freedom,' Diez told Prensa Latina.

The artistic director of the new project, who won a Latin Grammy Award in 2001 as the producer of the CD La Rumba Soy Yo and one of the most prestigious researchers on this dance musical expression, described some of the works in the CD-DVD to Prensa Latina.

She stressed that the CD is also the rebellion of Africans enslaved in a lament sung by Rafael Navarro Pujada, the leading singer of the group.

Diez highlighted that the phonogram also includes a plena from Puerto Rico and its culture, and a tribute to the bolero and Rafael Hernandez, the great Puerto Rican composer. 'Francisca la Conga, with which the album ends, has the strength of the Bantu Congo culture that extends from the West to the East and connects us with the magnetism of Muñequitos de Matanzas,' explained the researcher in relation to the CD, recorded at the studio of Pablo Milanes and presented on Thursday in this capital.

With a discography of more than 30 volumes of their own and many collaborations, after several years without venturing into a studio, Muñequitos returns now with Maferefun la Rumba, news that deludes specialists and fans of this expression of Cuban culture registered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on its list of Humankind's Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The CD-DVD produced by the Cuban recording label Bis Music will be presented and sold to the public on November 11 at 17:00 hours, local time, at the Mella Theater in this capital, in the framework of the El Rumbazo 2 Festival, sponsored by the Cuban Music Institute and the Postmambo studios.

This show, directed by Cary Diez and Arnaldo Diaz, will have the participation of Muñequitos de Matanzas, the Academy La Rumba Soy Yo and the group Rumbatimba.