When Yotuel Romero Manzanares picked up the phone to call his two bandmates from the long-defunct group Orishas, he hadn’t spoken to either of them in seven years.
It was last year, and the rapper-turned-producer had just scouted talent in his native country of Cuba. He felt optimistic about the future of the Cuban music scene. But he wondered whether he should take another shot at his own pioneering hip-hop group, Orishas, which made an international name for itself singing songs about cutting sugar cane, the working-class Havana neighborhood of Cayo Hueso, and the African gods masquerading with saints’ names from the Afro-Cuban religious tradition of santería.
“Nostalgia overcame us all,” Yotuel, who goes by his first name, told HuffPost. “I wanted a second chance ― a chance to take everything I’d learned as a soloist, moving in the same direction, but climbing that last step we hadn’t reached.”
With origins in Cuba’s underground hip-hop scene, Orishas burst onto the international stage in 1999, with a self-titled album recorded in Paris that interspersed rap lyrics with Afro-Cuban percussion and the melodies of son, a traditional Cuban song form that influenced salsa. They recorded three studio discs, but disbanded in 2009. Partly because the U.S. trade embargo keeps Cuban musicians cut off from international distribution, no other major band blending traditional sounds with hip-hop stepped into the void when they broke up.
All three members of the group say they didn’t need to speak during their long separation, as they spread across three countries. “It was a pause that extended itself a bit,” said Roldán González Rivero, the silver-haired singer who carries the group’s melodies and looks not unlike a Hispanic version of George Clooney.
“A group is like a marriage, like a couple,” said Roldán, who is also known by his first name. “It was important to get a bit of distance, to recharge our batteries a bit. I think if we had stayed together, we would have ruined what we’d created.”
Now the band is back, riding a wave of new interest in Cuba and touring the United States. They’ll play Thursday in New York City’s Irving Plaza before continuing on to Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas.
An Immigrant Group
When President Barack Obama traveled to Cuba for his historic visit, marking the first time a U.S. head of state had visited the island since Calvin Coolidge showed up aboard a warship in 1928, Yotuel was there. He was among the guests invited by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes to witness the historic cooling of Cold War hostilities.
“I gave [Obama] my hand and thanked him for breaking the ice,” he said. “It was magical.”
Returning to the island to record for the first time marked a turning point for the band. Orishas had made its success in France, seeking opportunities beyond an island where musicians face the dual difficulties of the U.S. trade embargo and a communist government that viewed hip-hop as a suspicious import from the United States.
But despite selling more than a million records, the band broke up in 2009 and members went their separate ways. Hiram Riveri Medina, who goes by the name Ruzzo and is known for his staccato rhymes, now lives in Pamplona, Spain. Roldán stayed in France. Yotuel, the most entrepreneurial of the trio, settled in Miami, becoming a producer and appearing in films.
The sense of coming home imbues the first song they’ve put out since reuniting, “Cuba, Isla Bella,” a track laden with nostalgia for their home country ― a theme that will be familiar to anyone who’s followed the band’s progression. The cut features a host of other Latin musicians from on and off the island, including percussionist Pedrito Martínez, singer Laritza Bacallao and reggaeton group Gente de Zona.
Orishas takes its name from the gods of African religious traditions associated with present-day Angola. Africans brought to the island in chains during the colonial period protected their spirituality by renaming their gods as saints, giving Cuba the religious tradition known today as “santería,” which is practiced widely on the island, even among Catholics. The early santeros managed to preserve the language of prayer, which the band has used in its recordings. The new track opens with such a prayer, which the band says it chose to bless their reunification.
“Racism exists all over the world. But in Cuba you see it a little less. In Cuba, no one kills you for being black.”
- Yotuel
“Orishas has always been a group that talks about its roots ― the fact of being immigrants, of leaving our country, the desire to return,” Roldán said. “It’s what we know and what we need. We’ll always be foreigners. I don’t have a homeland anymore. I’m not in France and I’m not in Cuba ― I’m in limbo. I’ve got my buttcheeks sitting on two chairs.”
Other parts of the immigrant life have been hard for them to deal with. The highly publicized spate of killings of unarmed, young black men makes Yotuel, who is black, worry about the safety of his son ― something he says he didn’t think about in Cuba. “Racism exists all over the world,” he said. “But in Cuba you see it a little less. In Cuba, no one kills you for being black.”
Future Plans
Despite their decision to leave, the limitations of Cuba weigh on the band as well. To record the “Cuba, Isla Bella” track, they paid $900 per day for studio sessions. That’s a sum of money they say the vast majority of Cubans, who earn an average salary of $25 per month, could never afford.
Ruzzo, whose quiet demeanor masks an aggressive stage presence, lamented the fact that in a country with such a strong musical tradition, musicians have to struggle with the government to gain access to venues and can rarely cobble together the money to cut an album. “Cuba’s musical potential is something that not just any country has,” he said.
But for the moment, Orishas is back. After the U.S. tour, they plan to return to the island to cut an “unplugged” record with Cuban musicians.
Before You Go
