EGN NEWS DESK
As she grew into adolescence, Arocena grew to become the lead singer of the large band Los Primos, then created Alami, a jazz band made up of all ladies. (It later was reformed as Maqueque with the Toronto-based saxophonist and bandleader Jane Bunnett.) In 2014, the French D.J. and producer Gilles Peterson, who based the London indie label Brownswood Recordings, invited Arocena to take part in “Havana Cultura Mix — The Soundclash,” a collaboration between worldwide digital artists and Cuban musicians.
In some methods, Arocena’s tendency to combine Afro-Cuban folkloric music, post-salsa “timba” music and out of doors influences like R&B mirrored the mid-2010s Havana scene that Peterson encountered, one which produced the funk grasp Cimafunk. He sang in Interactivo, an important band from this era that was “the soundtrack of a whole era,” Arocena mentioned. “Every Wednesday, all of the cool youngsters would go to see them on the Bertolt Brecht” cultural middle, she added, peppering her speech with an occasional English phrase or phrase.
By 2016, Arocena had performed on the South by Southwest competition in Austin, Texas, and at Sub Rosa, a short-lived membership within the meatpacking district of New York. As her profile rose, she carried out with Cuban jazz titans like Paquito D’Rivera and Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Orchestra.
In 2019, she determined to go away Cuba for good and moved to Toronto, the place her husband may safe a visa. “It was a really onerous time for me,” she mentioned. “The pandemic got here, and that combined with emigration issues, and it was so chilly! I had left all the pieces, it was traumatic. I didn’t really feel like listening to jazz, any music that was very complicated, or that made me assume lots. I wished to listen to issues that relaxed me.”
Arocena retreated to music she heard when she was rising up, just like the Brazilian pop vocalist Djavan and the neo-soul diva Sade. “My dad would climb to the roof of our constructing with an antenna to catch a U.S. radio sign,” she recalled. “He was method in love with Sade, and I do know that within the spermatozoid that’s Daymé, there’s some Sade in there.”
