Tag Archives: cuba

Last year, Robbie Robertson played “The Weight” with musicians around the world, including Ringo Starr, Japanese guitar virtuoso Char, Congo soul singer Mermens Mosengo, and others. It’s been streamed more than 8 million times on YouTube. Many of those streams happened in the past month; Mark Johnson, co-founder of Playing …

When 30-year-old Erik Iglesias Rodríguez — the med school student-turned-bandleader Cimafunk — took the stage at Miami’s Global Cuba Festival in March, the crowd’s enthusiastic roar nearly overwhelmed the sound system. Cimafunk represents Havana’s modern street sound: an electrifying combination of funk and soul, layered over the five-beat clave, or …