| 01 March 2010
She likes to think of herself as a gypsy. He, point blank, classifies himself as a mutt. She was born in Cuba, went to Rome to study art history and restoration and chose New York over Barcelona to pursue her career as an artist. He was born in Venezuela, his family is from Argentina, he carries a German passport, studied for awhile in North Carolina before going back to Venezuela, and obtained a full scholarship at the Berklee School of Music in Boston before moving permanently to New York.
New York, a city full of outsiders and a point of entry for many immigrants to this country, may be their home base. But Andrés Levin and Ileana Padrón (a.k.a. CuCu Diamantes) are globe trekkers, citizens of the world. They are driven by curiosity, learning about and absorbing all the elements of a specific culture and applying them to their big passion: music.
They complement each other even though their minds, at first glance, seem to operate on separate tracks. Andrés expresses his ideas and points of view clearly, in a deep voice with the accuracy of a sniper pointing his long-range rifle at a target hundreds of miles away. But to engage CuCu in a conversation is to find oneself involved in a Gabriel García Márquez novel. She is the quintessential personification of “stream of consciousness” thought: CuCu can segue from one unfinished idea to another, one anecdote to another, and then circle back minutes later to where she started. Her mind is as restless as her stage persona.
This unique partnership set the Latin Alternative music scene ablaze nine years ago when they recruited a group of recently exiled Cuban musicians and vocalists like Xiomara Laugart and Descemer Bueno and put them together with the cream of the crop of New York’s music scene to create Yerba Buena. Their rambunctious live shows were the talk of the nation thanks in great part to their combustible fusion of Afro-Caribbean and American urban rhythms. Artists like actor John Leguizamo, drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernández, trumpeter Brian Lynch (a veteran of Eddie Palmieri’s orchestra) and Cuban hip-hop outfit Orishas collaborated on their two albums, “President Alien” and “Island Life.”
“Yerba Buena is born because we met. If it wasn’t for CuCu there would be no Yerba Buena, bar none,” declared Andrés last fall during an interview at the Whitehall Hotel in Chicago’s Gold Coast. “She knows all of this music from Cuba and I think the mutual desire to do something crazy and start a 12-piece band with no money, no label, had a lot to do with a passion for the culture.”
“He was the father and I was the mother [of Yerba Buena],” added CuCu minutes later. “We were giving to the whole collective and after nine years of Yerba Buena, Chino, one of the singers, went away, Xiomara went to do her solo project [and star in the off-Broadway play, ‘Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz’] and we co-produced Pedrito Martinez’s ‘Slave to Africa’.”
So, with Yerba Buena on a brief hiatus, CuCu felt the time was right to work on her first solo album. Co-produced by Andrés and Yotuel Romero of Orishas, “CuCuland” finds inspiration in the German cabarets of the 20s and 30s and the Cuban casinos of the 50s. But, musically, the album is anything but retro. CuCu, Andrés and Yotuel mix in a giant blender a wide array of genres that is as forward-thinking as Andrés’ work for such critically acclaimed Latin Alternative groups like Aterciopelados and El Gran Silencio. The album’s 12 songs celebrate female empowerment while playing off on CuCu’s flamboyant on-stage persona.
“What was definitely the backbone was the emotion and the sensitivity of her lyrics and her persona,” explained Andrés. “As an artist, it was really interesting to build a world around her”.
“I had other love stories before I met Andrés. I’ve been writing about that and I’ve been writing to things that have happened to people who are close to me,” said CuCu. “What happened to them touched me too because they are like my family.”
Growing up in a female dominated environment also influenced her songwriting and her outlook on life. CuCu humorously describes the Padrón household as “La casa de Bernarda Alba,” referring to Federico García Lorca’s play about a matriarch who holds dictatorial control over her five daughters. “My grandmother and my lesbian aunt, my Mom’s sister, raised me,” recalled CuCcu. “I used to love my grandmother but she was Bernarda Alba for real. She was super, super conservative. My aunt is the one who told me to go out of Cuba. She called me when I was finishing [studies in] Rome and told me to never come back. ‘This is not your place. Go on, go on.’ She’s the one who gave me the strength to be who I am.
“I love women. I have a lot of women friends. I hate women who hate and don’t support women. I think I’m a little bit like my aunt,” CuCu added.
Although she started her musical career singing background vocals for a salsa band in Rome and was one of the leading vocalists of Yerba Buena, CuCu felt that she still had a lot to learn before she went into the studio to produce “Cuculand.” “I don’t like to have doubts about something. When I’m sure, I’m sure. So [the production] was a process of learning, to see what I like, to really concentrate the best of me…When I finished the record I was, ‘I am not happy, it is not finished yet, it needs more’.”
Yotuel was brought on board partly as a referee between CuCu and Andrés and partly to give him the opportunity to showcase his talent as a songwriter and producer. “Because we are a couple it made perfect sense to not do everything,” said Andrés. “So, boom, they got together and started riffing on ideas. It was the perfect balance. He is super talented. I think he is going to be a great producer. He is a great songwriter and both of them being from Cuba, that whole cubaneo really comes seeping out on this record.”
But “Cuculand” is more than a record. It has been designed as a theatrical experience as well. Andrés and Cucu have hired a theater and a lighting director to design sets for the show “but we haven’t had the budget to do the whole thing with sets and in a theater,” admitted Andrés, who produced the Grammy award winning Original Broadway Cast Recording of “In the Heights”. "Mas fuerte," the first single from "CuCuland" was nominated last year to a Latin Grammy for "Best Alternative Song."
For her tour, CuCu has invited local vaudeville, cabaret and avant-garde artists to appear at her shows. In fact, the couple always goes out of their way to invite local artists to their performances. At last year’s “Paz sin fronteras” concert produced by Juanes and held in Havana, Cuba, they invited the members of the traditional rumba group Yoruba Andabo to perform alongside them. And in Chicago, during one of their appearances with Yerba Buena, they invited two national balloon champions, ages 10 and 12, they met in an elevator to create balloons for their show at the now defunct Hothouse.
“Every thing that we do, every time we go out with someone, it’s like we are either creating a relationship or coming up with an idea or being inspired with something that is going to end up in a project or a record or a movie. It is what we love to do. It is not work,” said Andrés.
“Everywhere we go, we try to learn and get the best of that experience,” added CuCu. “We are very adventurous. When we work we are very serious, but when we go on a trip, on my God, anything can happen.”
SIDEBAR
The Road Ahead for CuCu and Andrés.
• These next two months will see the U.S. release of two albums co-produced by Andrés: “Métodos de placer instantáneo” by México’s Aleks Syntek, one of the pioneers of that country’s electro-pop movement (Feb. 9); and “Leave Your Sleep”, Natalie Merchant’s first album in eight years, which consists of 29 Victorian poems brought to life through different styles of music (March 2).
• Andrés and CuCu will also be working on CuCu’s second solo album this year. According to CuCu, she left some songs out of the first one which she wants to include in the next and would like to work on an album featuring seven songs in English and seven in Spanish.
• Andrés and CuCu are also working on the next phase of Yerba Buena which could very well turn into a musical.
• Last year, Andrés launched Pirata, a company designed to build a bridge between the music business and the advertising world.
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