With JARDINEROS (GARDENERS), Hery Paz summons two kindred spirits from his diaspora: master percussionist Román Díaz, (also featured on vocals) and veteran drummer Francisco Mela to search beyond the forms and codes of Cuban musical structures by reimagining syncretic, rhythmic and poetic materials into personal improvisational and instrumental practice.

Far from ritualism, mysticism and traditional constraints, JARDINEROS is a poetic declaration to freedom, a landscaping of new grounds for uncompromising dialogs among Cuban Improvisers.

Cuban musicologist Lea Cárdenas elaborates on JARDINEROS: “Approaching this album pretending to listen to what we traditionally understand as Cuban music would be a mistake. The revolutionary nature of the instrumental formats used, the novelty in Paz’s writing to graph the musical content through unconventional notation, the creative freedom that he offers to each of the musicians who accompany him on this journey, open new stylistic pathways.”

1. Calle Libertad
2. Jardineros
3. Arroyo Lajas
4. El Real de-las Palmas
4. Miel de la Tierra
5. Conga Espirituana
6. Miel de-la Tierra
7. Lenguas del Tambor
8. Comunion
9. Pensamiento
10. Barrio del Jobo

On an album which offers a recontextualization of Cuban popular music, based on the use of sounds and interpretive resources belonging to the most experimental musical styles, it opens with the fluttering beauty found within Calle Libertad (which encapsulate the enigmatic elements of Cuban Danzón, but translate into the 21st century), the cultured, titular Jardineros, and then come a lusciously sculpted pair of duets between Paz and Mela in the form of the stridently free-flowing Arroyo Lajas and the more relaxed El Real de-las Palmas.

Along next on this sumptuous album, which is itself a return to the roots, the reaffirmation of an identity, of an idiosyncrasy that is consolidated and preserved from memory and life experience, is the upbeat and joyous, flavorful Conga Espirituana (itself an impression of a carnival Comparsa in which some of the formal genre structures prevail), and which is in turn backed by the playfully perky Miel de-la Tierra, the cinematic, short but sweet Lenguas del Tambor, the effortless Comunion, the album rounding out on the classic Cuban Trova song Pensamiento, coming to a close on Paz’s metaphoric account of his family and neighborhood history, Barrio del Jobo.

Paz comments on the music’s origin: “long before elucidating any musical ideas for this project there was a very concise poem I wrote with the same name…”

in a ritual of tongues, they savor soil

between their lips & spit, invoking the

hallucinating nostalgia of the midday sun

GARDENERS (JARDINEROS)

“…those words conjured feelings of nostalgia from my life back home in what I can only describe as sensorial abstractions. Not quite memories, these are tactile feelings taking root somewhere deep between my imaginarium and reality. My back on a cold cement floor, the brass tasting water of a well, the burning smell of a charcoal pit or the paralyzing lethargy of the high noon heat… This music is my humble attempt to portrait those feelings and events in all their poetic mystery.”

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