Cuban Roots

The first Cuban Roots album was released 32 years ago and immediately slipped from public view and into musical lore. The Cuban Roots of 1967 were veritable Afro-Cuban All-Stars of its time, albeit of the Stateside variety, including such Latin jazz kingpins of the time as Chick Corea, Bobby Valentin, Mario Rivera and Tommy Lopez, Jr., but for some unaccountable reason it was badly recorded and only a handful of copies were ever pressed. The Cubop imprint was thwarted in its attempts to secure the rights for a long overdue reissue, so it did the next best thing and assembled a new version of Cuban Roots, including logical choices like the great percussionist Francisco Aguabella and some less obvious ones like the uncle/nephew duo Mark and Dan Weinstein — Jewish musicians who have long histories playing Latin jazz. A blend of covers from the 1967 album and new material, Cuban Roots Revisited reflects that kind of cosmopolitan line-up, both an excursion into pure Latin jazz and a beefed-up version of Latin jazz that shows the effects of years of New York and L.A. Latin jazz circuits. Now that Afro-Cuban jazz has made a considerable dent amongst musos around the world, there’s little chance that Cuban Roots Revisited will be consigned to the ranks of Latin esoterica, and assuming that the Latin jazz market has not yet reached its saturation point, this mambo-fied jazz should make a lot of people happy.