Various Artists - Changüí: The Sound of Guantánamo / 3CD set

2021 release

Deluxe 3-CD silkscreened box with 120 page full-color hardbound book including over 100 original photographs. Liner notes by box set producer Gianluca Tramontana, with additional essays by Changui historians José Cuenca Sosa, Gabriel Rojas Perez & Benjamin Lapidus, Ph.D. Between 2017 and 2019 music journalist Gianluca Tramontana traveled to the Guantánamo region of Cuba and immersed himself in a 150-plus-year-old culture of rural, riff-based, foot-stomping, largely improvised music.

Through his journey into changüí music he recorded these musicians in their homes, backyards, and porches. The results are three and a half hours of music played for the sole purpose of making you dance 'til you drop. REVIEW: "It's like finding 50 rough, discarded demos for the Buena Vista Social Club: recorded in situ, in in the rural parts of the eastern province of Cuba, where back-breaking labour is interrupted by impromptu parties that last all weekend, this 3-CD box set, curated by journalist Gianluca Tramontana, is arguably the first in-depth survey of the folk music that gave birth to a revolution" - MOJO (4 Stars). "I fell in love with Cuba, it's people and it's music long before making the Buena Vista SocialClub with Ry Cooder. The country, from Punta de Maisí in the East, to Maria la Gorda in the far West, the country has so much to offer that even after close on 30 years of traveling through the island, I feel I've only touched the surface and there is so much music to hear. This glorious set is a case in point. The Guantánamo region has so much culture to discover. Many musicologists consider changüí the predecessor of the "son" we recorded on Buena Vista Social Club and I can hear it too." - NICK GOLD (WORLD CIRCUIT RECORDS / Ex. Producer Buena Vista Social Club)