No prizes for divining that the title of Roberto Fonseca’s first album for the illustrious jazz label Impulse! is Cuba backwards, or that the enthralling former Buena Vista pianist intends it to describe a trip back through his homeland’s musical history. Fonseca is a famously eclectic artist, his playing steeped in American jazz and African music as much as the rhythms of bolero and son, but even by his standards, ABUC is an astonishingly broad, tightly fused and incandescently delivered vision.
The late Ray Bryant’s Cuban-jazz anthem Cubano Chant bookends the album, as a blasting big-band opener with a rousing Trombone Shorty solo and a riotous piano finale. Veteran singer Eliades Ochoa’s earthy voice intones Tumbao de la Unidad through an electronic mist; Fonseca’s singer mother coolly duets with Manuel “Guajiro” Mirabal’s muted trumpet on the bolero Después; Afro Mambo is a sleazy wail of blistering brass peppered with laughter; Soul Guardians is a punchy Spanish rap. It’s a set packed with contrasts, but everything fits seamlessly.
