Soul Jazz Records presents Cuba: Music And Revolution 1975-85 (Compiled By Gilles Peterson & Stuart Baker)

Cuba: Music and Revolution: Culture Clash in Havana: Experiments in Latin Music 1975-85 Vol. 1 is a new album compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) that explores the many new styles that emerged in Cuba in the 1970s as Jazz, Funk, Brazilian Tropicalia and even Disco mixed together with Latin and Salsa on the island as Cuban artists experimented with new musical forms created in the unique socialist state. The music on this album features legendary Cuban groups such as Irakere, Los Van Van and Pablo Milanés as well as a host of lesser known artists such as the radical Grupo De Experimentación, Juan Pablo Torres and Algo Nuevo, Grupo Monumental and Orquesta Ritmo Oriental, groups whose names remain largely unknown outside of Cuba owing to the now 60-year old US trade embargo which remains in place today and which prevents trade with Cuba - and thus most Cuban records were only ever available in Cuba or in ex-Soviet Union states. The music on this album reflects the most cutting-edge of Cuban groups that were recording in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s - who were all searching for a new Cuban identity and new musical forms that reflected both the Afro-Cuban cultural heritage of a nation that gave birth to Latin music - and its new position as a socialist state. Most of the music featured on this album has never been heard outside of Cuba. Cuba: Music and Revolution is the third book that Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker have collaborated on together and follows on from their two earlier critically acclaimed books, Freedom, Rhythm and Sound (Revolutionary Jazz Music in the 1960s and 1970s) and Bossa Nova and the Rise of Brazilian Music in the 1960s, both of which also had related album releases on Soul Jazz Records.