Jorge Gomez, pianist, composer & leader of Tiempo Libre
Jorge Gomez is hoping you’ll dance. In Cuba, that’s what people do to Afro-Cuban music, says the 37-year-old keyboardist, composer and leader of the Grammy-nominated band Tiempo Libre. Their new album, “Bach in Havana” was just released by Sony Masterworks and the group is now touring the U.S..They will perform at Dizzy’s Club in New York City on June 30th.
Gomez grew up in Havana, studying classical music by day, playing party music by night. “Afro-Cuban was the music of my neighborhood,” he says. “Every weekend we had a fiesta. People would bring dominoes, food and instruments. We danced, danced, danced and had a great time!”
When he’s not behind the keyboard—and even sometimes when he is—Gomez is still dancing. Rumba, son, cha-cha-chá and especially timba—the high-energy beat of young, urban Cubans, that Tiempo Libre specializes in playing.
Their albums “Arroz con Mango” (2005) and “Lo Que Esperabas” (2006) won Grammy nominations for their aggressive, irreverent and technically impeccable take on 21st century Afro-Cuban style. Then last year, they headed in another direction, when they collaborated with classical flute virtuoso Sir James Gallway, to record “O’Reilly Street,” featuring Claude Bolling’s classic jazz suites.
Their newest album “Bach in Havana,” takes yet another turn, fusing the melodies and figures of Johann Sebastian Bach with the rhythms of Cuba. It’s an inspired maneuver to bridge the worlds of popular and classical, all the while keeping the party going. “You can definitely dance to Bach!” Gomez says. Choreographer George Balanchine certainly agreed.
The son of a top classical pianist, Gomez started piano when he was five, then attended Cuba’s prestigious La ENA (Escuela Nacional de Arte), where he met the musicians who would later—in a future life in Miami—come together to form the group Tiempo Libre.
In those days, the Cuban government supported classical music but frowned on Afro-Cuban, with its roots in the Santería religion, which worships a pantheon of deities called the orishas. So Gomez and his musician friends led double lives and simultaneously perfected their skills in two distinct musical idioms.
At parties in Havana during the 1980s and 90s, the old Afro-Cuban rhythms of the last generation were morphing into something new. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the USA’s continuing economic blockade caused intense hardship on the island. Those rough times shaped a generation of young people and their music.
Often, it was the dancers who led the way. They combined traditional moves with elements of jazz, hip-hop and funk to create the aggressive, cutting- edge style that came to be known as timba. Vocalists rapped in street slang and made jokes about Castro: he was an over-ripe mango, waiting to fall, or a tough, stringy chicken…if you got their allusions. The instrumentalists also caught the subversive spirit, improvising modern figures, and rapid-fire syncopations that stuttered through the night.
By the late 90s, Gomez and a number of his friends from La ENA had fled Cuba. Eventually, they met up in Miami and organized Tiempo Libre to show the world what a new generation of Cuban musicians could do. When they were chosen to open for Celia Cruz at the Ravinia Festival in 2002, and for Aretha Franklin the following year, they were off and running.
The new album ranges from carnival-style street music to spiritual reveries—all inspired, in one way or another, by Bach. In the infectious “Tu Conga” Gomez takes the theme from the “Fugue in C Minor” from the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier and bends it into a Möbius strip of non-stop percussion and vocals. “Air on a G String,” a bolero featuring guest artist Paquito D’Rivera on alto sax, uses Bach’s “Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major,” to weave a lyrical fantasy that seems to hover like a gull over a gently rippling sea.
Most audacious is the “Kyrie” which opens with Bach’s actual “Mass in B Minor,” then swivels into a jazzy meditation with piano, horns and percussion. Its backbone is a series of polyrhythms played on batá drums. The beautiful, two-headed batá is a sacred instrument in Santería ritual, used to call forth the religious spirit as just as Bach used the church choir. Yet in this “Kyrie,” Gomez seems less interested in prayer than fun.
“Bach is one of the greatest composers in the history of the world,” he said, when I asked him about his intentions. “And Afro-Cuban music is a religion thing. But we just want to make music you can enjoy by dancing.” Let the party begin!
Tiempo Libre website (includes a list of some upcoming tour dates)
Tiempo Libre on YouTube
Dizzy's Club - Time Warner Center - Broadway & 60th St.
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