SUBA Revisited: Cuban/African Connections Comes to Roulette

Cuban piano virtuoso Omar Sosa and Senegalese kora (21-string harp lute) master Seckou Keita, whose collaborations brilliantly embrace jazz, Latin and African influences, return to New York revisiting their acclaimed SUBA album.

This recording made NPR Music's '20 Best Albums of 2021' and reached #1 on the Transglobal World Music Chart (December 2021). SUBA is a hymn to hope, to a new dawn of compassion and change in a post-pandemic world, and a visceral reiteration of humanity's prayer for peace and unity. The program weaves together themes of friendship and spiritual connection, travel and loss, hope and optimism, dancing and the sea, and, of course, a new sunrise ("Suba" means "sunrise" in Mandinka).

The seven-time Grammy-nominated Sosa has explored African musical cultures and their connections with his Afro-Cuban roots throughout his long career; Keita has become one of the most influential and inspiring kora players of his generation. They are joined by the inimitable Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles, who encompasses the polyrhythmic sound of the African diaspora. In addition to performing key tracks from SUBA, the Trio will play music from their first album, Transparent Water.

Omar Sosa is one of the most versatile jazz artists on the scene today. He fuses a wide range of jazz, world music, and electronic elements with his native Afro-Cuban roots to create a fresh and original urban sound - all with a Latin jazz heart. Nominated seven times for Grammy and Latin Grammy awards and twice for the BBC World Music Awards, Sosa entwines the expressive traditions of Africa and the Americas in a distinctive cosmopolitan voice, articulating a brilliant, joyous, and thoroughly contemporary global jazz idiom. His musical trajectory traces the diaspora from Cuba to Africa and Brazil, from Central America to Ecuador's African-descent communities. Born in 1965 in Camagüey, Cuba's largest inland city, he studied percussion and marimba at the music conservatory in Camagüey, piano at the prestigious Escuela Nacional de Música in Havana, and completed his formal education at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Among his influences, Omar cites traditional Afro-Cuban music, European classical composers (including Chopin, Bartok, and Satie), Monk, Coltrane, Parker, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Chucho Valdés, and the pioneering Cuban jazz group Irakere. His extensive credits include Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, London's Barbican and Queen Elizabeth Hall, Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and such festivals as Monterey Jazz, JVC Jazz, Montreal Jazz, Montreux Jazz, WOMAD and Cape Town International Jazz. He received a lifetime achievement award from the Smithsonian Associates in Washington, DC in 2003 for his contribution to the development of Latin jazz in the United States, and has released over 30 recordings in a career that has spanned four decades.

Seckou Keita is one of the most influential kora players of his generation, seated in tradition whilst constantly pushing the boundaries of his art and extending the framework of the kora. Growing up in the Casamance area of southern Senegal, he was a child prodigy born of a line of griots (praise singers and oral historians) and kings. Since coming to the UK in 1999, he has received worldwide acclaim for his kora playing, appeared with such luminaries as Salif Keita and Youssou N'Dour, and appeared at many WOMAD festivals. Robin Denselow in The Guardian wrote: "Seckou Keita can be classed alongside the great Toumani Diabate as one of the adventurous masters of the kora." In the past decade, he began a successful cross-cultural collaboration with Welsh harpist Catrin Finch; in 2019 they were named the Best Duo/Band in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In 2017, he recorded Transparent Water with Omar Sosa and Gustavo Ovalles, and went on to perform more than 100 concerts with them in the US, Asia, Europe and South America. In 2019, he recorded and toured as a member of the AKA Trio with Italian guitarist Antonio Forcione and Brazilian percussionist Adriano Adewale Ikauna. In 2019, he was named 'Musician Of The Year' in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and produced the world's first-ever anthology of kora music notations.

Gustavo Ovalles has worked with leading artists from the worlds of salsa and jazz and shared the folkloric music of his native Venezuela with world musicians. After studying at the Caracas Conservatory, he turned to percussion and traditional Venezuelan dance, visited Venezuelan villages to find the roots of traditional music, and went to Havana to work with drum masters. He settled in Europe in 1997 to understand the European roots of Venezuelan music and with the intention of sharing the richness of the Venezuelan tradition. To date he has participated in many jazz festivals, including the North Sea Festival in Holland, the St. Louis Festival in Senegal and the Martinique Jazz Festival, and appeared on prestigious stages in New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Milan, Hamburg and Vienna. Prior to SUBA, he worked on four projects with Omar Sosa: Sentir, Ayaguna, Eggūn, and Transparent Water.

Photo Credit: Tom Ehrlich

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