I’ve been a fan of The Buena Vista Social Club for a few years now as well as other artists that are included on this project and the idea of combining Cuban rhythms and sounds with modern indie/pop songs was very clever indeed. It’s a great Cd and I recommend it not only for the quality of music but also for helping the causes that a portion of the proceeds are supporting.

-Jenny May

Following is the press release for Rhythms Del Mundo:

Hip-O Records/Universal Music Enterprises have released Rhythms Del Mundo, an exciting collaborative album, which fuses the hot Afro-Cuban sounds of The Buena Vista Social Club with tracks from today’s biggest artists such as U2, Coldplay, Sting, Jack Johnson and Maroon 5 as well as some of the buzziest bands, including The Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, The Kaiser Chiefs and many others. It also features the amazing vocals from famed Cuban vocalists, Omara Portuonda, and the last ever recording of the much beloved Ibrahim Ferrer.

The album is in aid of Artists Project Earth (APE), which lends support for natural disaster relief and climate change awareness. Universal Music Enterprises will donate a portion of its proceeds from sales of the album in the United States to the Music Rising campaign, an instrument replacement fund for musicians of the Gulf Coast.

Rhythms Del Mundo is an electrifying album that fuses music of different cultures and comes up with a melting pot of rare sounds. Arranged by Demitrio Muniz, the main recording sessions took place in Havana at Abdala Studios from April 2005 to June 2006. While the majority of the vocals remain the same, The Buena Vista Social Club took the original orchestration from each song and created something utterly unique casting their trademark mastery over each track. Their noted and exceptional musicianship seduced even the notoriously protective Arctic Monkeys into handing over their track. As a rule, the band has never licensed their music for compilation albums, but were so enamoured with the result that they were happy for it to be included on the album. As well as The Arctic Monkeys’ track “Dancing Shoes”, Rhythms Del Mundo includes reworked tracks such as “Clocks” by Coldplay, “Better Together” by Jack Johnson, “She Will be Loved” by Maroon 5, “High and Dry” by Radiohead and others.

Rhythms Del Mundo also includes music by famed Cuban singers Omara Portuondo and the last vocal recording of Afro-Cuban bolero singer, Ibrahim Ferrer, who died tragically in 2005. The other Cuban musicians from The Buena Vista Social Club who perform on this album are as follows: Barbarito Torres, Amandito Valdes, Virgilio Valdes, Angel Terri Domech, Manuel ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal, Orlando Lopez ‘Cachaito’ and Demetrio Muniz.

Kenny Young, producer and Founder/Trustee of APE, explains how the project emerged: “The project was sparked off by the devastating Tsunami of Xmas 2005. The idea came in to do a project with The Buena Vista Social Club to fuse their Latin sounds with Western artists and their familiar popular songs. The project evolved when more environmental disasters struck - the Asian Earthquakes and Hurricane Katrina. But the big picture was climate change. You can call these natural disasters but after all the research and scientific data, we know that we’re at least partly to blame for some of these disasters. Global warming is now in the news daily. If we don’t act in the time frame our experts give us, our grandchildren will curse us eternally.’

The artists on this album fully support the record as a show of commitment to the music and to the cause that it endorses. Thom Yorke comments, ‘We need a law, we need to have the Government put climate change in its place. If you leave industry to sort it out on a voluntary basis that’s never going to happen. So everybody if they’ve got any concerns about climate change has to register that concern with their Government officials because it’s the only way to go.’

The packaging for the album is carbon neutral.

For more information on the charities that will benefit from this album go to www.Apeuk.org and to www.musicrising.org.

http://www.rhythmsdelmundo.com

Track listing:

1. Clocks - Coldplay
2. Better Together - Jack Johnson
3. Dancing Shoes - Arctic Monkeys
4. One Step Too Far - Dido & faithless
5. As Time Goes By - Ibrahim Ferrer
6. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For - Coco Freeman & U2
7. She Will Be Loved - Maroon 5
8. Modern Way - Kaiser Chiefs
9. Killing Me Softly - Omara Portuondo
10. Ai No Corrida - Vania Borges & Quincy Jones
11. Fragilidad - Sting
12. Don’t Know Why - Vania Borges
13. Hotel Buena Vista - Aquila Rose & Idana Valdes
14. The Dark of the Matinee - Coco Freeman & Franz Ferdinand
15. High and Dry - El Lele De Los Van Van & Radiohead

Bonus track

16. Casablanca - Ibrahim & Omara

Other nominees were:
Isobel Campbell
Editors
Guillemots
Richard Hawley
Hot Chip
Muse
Zoe Rahman
Lou Rhodes
Scritti Politti
Sway
Thom Yorke

The Arcitc Monkeys walked away with a £20,000 prize which I’m sure they’ll put to good use.

Arctic Monkeys website: www.arcticmonkeys.com