Ryan on Music: Orishas

A couple of years ago, my housemate and I decided that we were going to throw a Cuban themed party. It's not a particularly hard theme to dress up for - you just throw on a Hawaiian shirt, and there you go. The music, however, proved to be more problematic. Basically, I wanted to have more than an endless repeat of "Guantanamera."

During this search, I came across some Cuban rap by Orishas. I decided to give it a listen, expecting it to be more of a novelty than anything. "What could they rap about?" I wondered naively, "Pimping out their cigar rolling machines?"

Oh, how little I knew about the magnificence that awaited me.

To this day, I still have no idea what their music is really about. It's all in Spanish. But, the sound is entirely unique. It's what you would get if you locked Ibrahim Ferrer and Daddy Yankee in a room together, and told them that they couldn't come out until they learned to play nicely together. If you had to give that a genre, it would be hip-hop/Latino fusion. Or, in Ryan-speak, "perfect summertime cigar-smoking, rum-drinking party music."

If this at all interests you, I highly recommend that you check out their debut album, "A Lo Cubano". You can find samples from it here.

I've also purchased "El Kilo" and, while it's quite good, I don't feel it stands up to the quality of their debut album. Still, well worth the purchase.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts or comments. If anyone reading this has listened to their second CD, "Emigrante", I'd appreciate your feedback on it.