Roberto Fonseca (born 1975, Havana) is a Cuban jazz pianist. From an early age, Fonseca was surrounded by music: his father was a drummer, his mother, Mercedes Cortes Alfaro, a professional singer (she sings on her son's most recent solo album, Zamazu), and his two older half-brothers, Emilio Valdés (drums) and Jesús "Chuchito" Valdés Jr. (piano), are also two young musicians of great international prestige.
After an early interest in drums, Fonseca switched to piano at the age of 8, and by 14 was experimenting with fusing American jazz and traditional Cuban rhythms; he appeared at Havana's Jazz Plaza Festival in 1991 when he was just 15.
Fonseca studied at Cuba's prestigious Instituto Superior de Arte, where he obtained a master's degree in composition, even though he often says that he was a really bad student. After earning his degree, he left Cuba to find his sound.
His first album, En El Comienzo, which he recorded with Javier Zalba and the group Temperamento, was awarded Cuba's Best Jazz Album in 1999. This success encouraged him to work on two solo records: Tiene Que Ver and Elengo, combining Latin jazz, drum and bass, hip-hop, urban music and Afro-Cuban rhythms.
In 2001, Fonseca went to Japan to record No Limit: Afro Cuban Jazz. He also toured with the Buena Vista Social Club the same year and has worked with Rubén González, Ibrahim Ferrer, Cachaito, Guajiro Mirabal and Manuel Galbán.
A Buena Vista Social Club tour spanned the world, with over 400 concerts, promoting Ibrahim Ferrer's records next to great legends such as Cachaíto López, Manuel Guajiro Mirabal and Manuel Galbán, among others, and playing at the most prestigious venues, such as the Frankfurt Alte Oper, Palais des Congrès (Paris), Albert Hall (London), Beacon Theatre (New York), and the Sydney Opera House (Australia). Not a single review of Ibrahim's concerts, from South America to Asia, would fail to mention Fonseca's talent and his magnetic stage presence.
That period of intense work, touring round the world, led Fonseca to realise that his music was ready for creating his own project. He dug deep to compose each of the songs that form Zamazu, the result of the integration of all his influences: Afro-Cuban music, jazz, classical music and traditional Cuban music.
In the words of one reviewer, his recording, Zamazu, is "a deftly varied and well-sequenced set that leaves a strong impression of who Fonseca is and promises plenty for the future."
2008 was a year full of work and experiences that have inspired Fonseca's new compositions, one being Columbia Pictures choosing the track "Llego Cachaito" from the Zamazu album for the Will Smith film Hancock.
With his 2009 album, Akokan, Fonseca wanted to bring the magic, strength and improvisation from a live show to the studio. With a quartet formation and accompanied by his band, the one that he had been playing with for the past 12 years, Fonseca as the record's producer encouraged creativity and chemistry amongst the musicians.
There are also two very special collaborations from artists that Fonseca admires, artists that have very different styles: Mayra Andrade, the Cape Verdean singer who wrote the words and sings on "Siete potencias", and Raul Midón, the American guitarist, who wrote "Second Chance". On this track Fonseca did the arrangements and Midon accompanied him on guitar.
In 2010 Fonseca was the support act for Omara Portuondo's USA. After the summer his album Roberto Fonseca Live in Marciac was released. It includes a bonus DVD which features footage of the festival's 2009 show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Fonseca
In her teens,
Fatoumata Diawara moved to France to pursue an acting career. She appeared in a handful of films and worked with a street theater troupe but really found her calling later, when she took up the guitar and started writing songs. Born in Cote d’Ivoire and raised in southern Mali, Diawara grew up hearing Wassoulou music, a song style that’s thought by some ethnomusiclogists to be one of the main pre-colonial ancestors of blues. The Wassoulou cultural area is now split between three countries, but it has a history that extends back centuries, and Diawara merges that long, traditional history with a modern, globalized sensibility on her debut album.
Diawara has honed her performing and recording craft through work with AfroCubism, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, and Herbie Hancock, among others, so really the big step here is to recording her own songs with her own arrangements. She has a voice with a naturally sensual glide to it that sometimes reminds me a little of Sade. Unlike many of her peers, such as Oumou Sangaré, power is not really a part of her style– she keeps her singing even and steady to complement the hypnotic, cycling guitar parts of her arrangements. The album is quietly intense, rarely rising above the volume of ordinary conversation.
Diawara sings in her native Wassoulou language, but understanding the exact content of the songs isn’t necessary to enjoy them. There’s plenty of information in the melodies and rhythms, and inventive musicianship as well. Diawara locks in with the simmering funk backdrop of “Bissa” by playing harmonics on her guitar instead of full chords. The electric leads seem to float up out of the patterns; several times over the course of the album, I found myself caught up in a flowing solo that I didn’t even notice when it started. This is how the whole record works. There’s no fanfare, nothing is announced. It simply surrounds you with its atmosphere.
It is an ultimately beguiling album because of this. Even in its most demonstrative moments, such as the shivering lead guitar line that opens “Bakonoba”, it’s a record you can sink into and enjoy for its sonics as well as its songwriting. “Bakonoba” is among the songs with the strongest West African character, and that guitar is a big part of it– it’s reminiscent of the type of lead Malian guitarists Djelimady Tounkara or Kanté Manfila might have once laid down for the Rail Band. Otherwise, Diawara is one of a growing number of musicians working on a sort of pan-folk sound that incorporates influences from across a broad Afro-Western cultural spectrum. It’s an approach that may be a better fit for the “world music” label than any of the highly localized sounds that tag’s often applied to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatoumata_Diawara
