Cimafunk describes his unique sound and how he's bringing Cuban music to the world

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: Latin rock, Afro Cuban funk and many other names have been applied to the music of Cimafunk. The 35-year-old star is now making waves around the world, earning Grammy nominations three years in a row, and being called a global ambassador for Cuban music.

In the final piece in their series from Havana, senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown and senior arts producer Anne Azzi Davenport show how Cimafunk is blending genres to produce his own sound. It’s part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: He’s a man of many moves, a dynamic onstage presence, a performer on the move before a frenetic crowd at a historic La Tropical in Havana, at his CimaFest, an annual dance party held twice a year in Miami and New Orleans, and mixing it up with the crowd at “Austin City Limits.”

Everywhere he goes, Cimafunk is bringing his own special mix of Afro Cuban sounds and rhythms and African American funk and soul.

Cimafunk, Musician: I say that I’m mixing because I try to put more and more funk in the Afro Cuban music that I make.

Jeffrey Brown: Seventies soul and ’70s funk.

Cimafunk: Yes. Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: And it — you put it together with Afro Cuban?

Cimafunk: Yes, yes, because it’s really similar to the Cuban feeling in terms of expression and melodies and way to sing and way to say the things.

Jeffrey Brown: Cimafunk was born Erik Iglesias Rodriguez into a family he describes as very poor in Pinar del Rio two hours from Havana. If his music is a blend, so is his stage name. Cima comes from the term Cimarrones, the Cubans of African descent to escaped slavery from the 16th century on and established their own communities.

Learning that history, he says, opened up his world and his path to music.

Cimafunk: Whatever they were creating was original, because it was a freedom of expression. It was dealing with the things that it was, we are free here. And that moment, I started to get more and more close of my roots, looking where I came from, what — I started to learn more about that and all the Africa, all what they bring here was most of the great things that we have today in music, in food, in all kind of contribution that Africa brings to the continent.

So I was like, I got to embrace that, because I feel like finally I found my identity. And I love it. And I just super like — I want more and more and more.

Jeffrey Brown: Though he sang in church as a child, his original path following other family members was medicine. He attended medical school for two years. But music, he says, called, people like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and the biggest bang of all, seeing video of James Brown performing.

That ended his medical career.

(Singing)

Cimafunk: I was like, yo, who — what’s this? Because I get — it blow my mind.

Jeffrey Brown: It blew your mind.

Cimafunk: Yes, it blew my mind, yes, yes, because I hear this song before, but I never imagined and I never saw that was this type of character with this type of style and groove. And then I get obsessed with music. And I was like, I got to do this.

Jeffrey Brown: You mean using your body, as well as your voice?

Cimafunk: Yes, yes, definitely, everything. Everything is part of the rhythm. Everything is an instrument.

Jeffrey Brown: And also heard, though, how the influences flowed the other way, Afro Cuban sounds of his youth impacting American music.

Cimafunk: I can hear it in funk music of James Brown. I can hear it in the music of Marvin Gaye. I can hear it. I can hear the groove and I can feel that it’s a groove from Cuba.

Jeffrey Brown: This connection of grooves has brought Cimafunk three Grammy nominations and one Latin Grammy nomination, including this year for his album “Pa’ Tu Cuerpa,” “For Your Body,” a joyous example of his brand of empowerment through music.

It also fueled his leadership in a very direct project of connection called Getting Funky in Havana. It recently brought together music students from Havana and New Orleans. Cimafunk worked alongside his friend jazz great Trombone Shorty, mentoring and playing with the stars of tomorrow, including at a music school in their own special kind of mash-up.

Troy Andrews, “Trombone Shorty”: He’s one of the great, Cimafunk, and he’s incorporating American funk with the Cuban style and he’s creating a whole new genre of music. And the kids that’s here, they love him. I just walk around town with him and see that.

Jeffrey Brown: Overlooking Havana, Cimafunk told us that this work is giving young Cubans a sense of the influence and power of their music in the wider world.

Cimafunk: Everybody know what music you do. Everybody appreciate and respect Cuban music and you’re part of that Cuban music. Those kids don’t know that. They didn’t know neither. I didn’t know how important Cuban music was for the music in the world, how much Cuban music influenced all the music in the world.

So, when I knew that, I was like, huh. Everybody should knew that. I should knew this before. So when kids start to know that, they feel like, yes, I don’t have a trumpet, but I got the feeling.

Jeffrey Brown: At the Getting Funky Festival, the feeling for Cimafunk extended beyond the stage to a fashion show, where he swaggered on a runway, and a panel discussion, including musical inspirations Taj Mahal and George Clinton.

Cimafunk: I would have all the sound every day in the house, everybody singing. And we grow up with that type of behavior.

Jeffrey Brown: He also made a music video appearance with fellow Cuban star Pedrito Martinez, along with up-and-comer 21-year-old Wampi.

And on this night at a free concert under the stars, Cimafunk lit up the stage as part of a super jam for the Getting Funky fans and Cuban fans alike.

The Havana-New Orleans connection is an extra strong one now for Cimafunk. While he returns home to visit his extended family, New Orleans is where he mostly lives and makes his music. It’s part of the reality of Cuba today, a depressed economy with few opportunities.

Many of your friends have left?

Cimafunk: Yes, most of them, most of them, in Spain, Nicaragua or U.S., anywhere, everywhere.

Jeffrey Brown: Because they — no opportunity here?

Cimafunk: Yes, yes, yes, yes. When the things get bad, you move to other place, or you try.

Jeffrey Brown: So, for you, being out of the country is a necessity or a choice?

Cimafunk: I leave because I could, but I keep working out of Cuba because I want to, because it’s better for my career. It’s obvious. It’s — this United States, Europe are big market for my music. So, even if I could stay being fine and everything good here, for my career, it’s not the best option. So I choose to improve myself.

Jeffrey Brown: In December, Cimafunk joined Trombone Shorty at the Kennedy Center Honors in celebration of Cuban American music icon Arturo Sandoval.

But he also knows that his island is again in many ways isolated from the U.S. and other parts of the world with recent political changes and continued travel restrictions. Of the future, he says:

Cimafunk: I don’t know what will happen, but I would love to this be better. I would love people have more. No, I would love that people, especially people from the street, that have people that needs. That’s what we hope and that’s what we wish.

That’s my dream, that things get better and get connected, connected with the world.

Jeffrey Brown: For now, he’s doing his part through music.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in Havana, Cuba.