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Orquesta Akokán Interview: How Will This Work with Clave?

Orquesta Akokán

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Perennially in search of the magic combination of old and new, Orquesta Akokán may have finally found it. Last July, the Latin jazz ensemble released their third album Caracoles (Daptone), and first with new lead singer and lyricist Kiko Ruiz, a composer and priest who practices a religion as grounded in Benny Moré as in any sort of divine entity. He's the perfect fit for Akokán, which was started by arranger and pianist Michael Eckroth, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Plasse, and vocalist Jose "Pepito" Gomez in 2016. Back then, the three traveled to Havana to record a big band mambo album in the style of Moré and Pérez Prado; Irakere's Cesar Lopez helped them form a band and navigate the logistics of recording in an unfamiliar country. Daptone signed Orquesta Akokán in 2018 and released their self-titled debut later that year and follow-up 16 Rayos in 2021. However, with Ruiz now leading the pack, Eckroth and Plasse have discovered someone with a like mind, the ability to innately feel the past and manifest music from it.

Simply put, the instrumentation on Caracoles is on point, from the classic blaring horns and skittering percussion on album opener "Con Licencia" and Gaston Joya's limber bass on “Pan Con Tíbiri”, to Lopez's alto sax call-and-response solo on album closer “Doña Felipa”. But it's the way that Ruiz performs in conjunction with the rest of the band that's transcendent. On the title track, he sings in Congo dialect, sharing the history of the genre of mambo itself, inviting the audience to join in: "This mambo is for you." The band changes tempo in between verses, embarking on breathtaking breakdowns, Evaristo Denis's baritone saxophone shining as Ruiz delivers raspy trills. It's both storytelling and improvisation, exemplary of Akokán's ethos.

Last year, Plasse spoke to me over Zoom from Calgary as he was visiting family. Like Eckroth, he lives in New York, but as so many of the band members live in Cuba, whenever they play live, it's an event. "We can't just say, 'Here's a gig, let's get on an airplane.' We have to fly 12 musicians," Plasse said. "People are coming from Cuba, so there's a lengthy visa process whenever they come here. It's always a challenge to get them here, but it's always worth it, because the music is so good." Indeed, the stage is where Orquesta Akokán jump to the next level. "These [songs] are meant to be heard live," Plasse said. "It's a pretty faithful reenactment of what you hear on the record, just much louder."

If you're in New York, you can catch Orquesta Akokán tonight at Lincoln Center for free. If you're in Austin, you can catch them tomorrow at the Austin Blues Festival. Below, read my conversation with Plasse, edited for length and clarity.

Caracoles album art

Since I Left You: How would you say that Caracoles fits with your overall approach to what you try to do with your albums in general? How would you say it's unique?

Jacob Plasse: I've always been obsessed with Cuban music and [this] time period of Cuban music. The first [record] was almost a recording project, sort of. I was told, "Do not do this, it's a terrible idea. If you go to Cuba, it just won't work out. It's too difficult trying to get this done in a communist country, with rolling blackouts and people not showing up, and trying to do a big band record." It all sort of came together, luckily. The band started touring. The second album, [16 Rayos], we tried to sort of explore more of the folkloric aspects of where mambo was coming from. [Caracoles], they let me double down on the original intention of making a dance album. Over the years, we've learned a lot, both me and Mike in terms of how to approach recording this and how to arrange and write for this type of ensemble. We were also really thrilled to work with this new singer Kiko Ruiz. He had a different interpretation of how to do that, more of an Afro-Cuban religious rumba background. It was amazing to see our collaboration with him evolve.

SILY: How did you first come in contact with Kiko and the players on the album?

JP: It was all through Cesar Lopez, an incredible alto saxophone player from Irakere who I met through other musicians. He runs ship there. He made all this stuff possible that wouldn't have been possible without [him.] It's not just about working with great musicians, but whether they all get along and whether they play well as ensemble musicians. It's not always the case. He called his crew, and it became Akokán. We're really lucky to have him. He was also able to make sure we were in the best studios, calling ahead and making sure studios were actually working. We did this one in Abdala studios, which is the biggest recording studio I've ever been in. I'm from New York, but most of the really big rooms have closed down. Abdala is three times the size of anything I've been in. It's perfect for a sound that requires so many musicians playing together to get that gigante sound you get on those Benny Moré records, whether they're recorded in Cuba or Mexico. Cesar is an incredible saxophone player. None of this would have been possible without him. We're really lucky to have him.

SILY: Did he help you avoid any potential issues recording in Cuba, the type that the skeptics telling you not to go there were referring to?

JP: It's good to have someone on the ground for sure. He just made sure that all the musicians were there on time, the studio was cool, there was a good vibe in the room.

Nobody knew who we were when we made that first record. There wasn't really a plan, but I showed it to the guys in Daptone, Neal [Sugarman] and [Gabriel Roth], and they were so supportive of the whole project.

SILY: The videos for "Con Licencia", the album's first single and opener, and the title track show that the music you're making is inseparable from dancing and ritual. [The former portrays Ruiz’s daily gunpowder ritual, in which he calls the dead to free him from negative energy.] Was any of the thought process there to highlight the unique perspective of Kiko, of music as this ritualistic thing?

JP: Yeah, definitely. That song is about asking license of the gods to go through your day, and asking your ancestors for a blessing. That's a big part of his religion. It makes the most sense to focus on that for the video. I like all the songs on the album, but his performance on that one is really incredible. It's not really what you would think of as an Akokán single, if anybody thinks about that. It's sort of a slower groove, more stately, I guess. It just gives him room to really fly. There's the body of the song, and there's the call and response that's improvised. I've listened to so much Cuban music, I can hear how he's coming out of Benny Moré and [Miguelito] Cuní and Cuban singers, but having his own take on it.

SILY: You released an instrumental version of your debut record. Here, Kiko is so embedded in the music and integral to the record's sound, whether it's the syncopation or his trills, do you think that would be impossible to do?

JP: I don't think so. I was surprised Daptone [released an instrumental version], actually, in a certain way. Kiko is definitely integral to the writing, but the arrangements really hold up on this one, too. They sound better than the earlier albums. The rhythm section of this one, to me, is the most swinging out of all of them. Gaston has recorded on everybody's albums in Cuba from the 90's on. Yuya Rodriguez. The secret weapon behind all of this is Keisel Jimenez, who lives in New York now but is Cuban. We brought him down. He has this fire to the way he plays. These records really showcase that aspect to his playing. We all play to a click, so there are certain limitations when that happens. You're always slave to stay in the same tempo. Everything speeds up, but it feels natural. It feels exciting. His drive and swing is a real force in this, I think.

SILY: I was excited when this album was announced, and I saw that Carolina Oliveros from Combo Chimbita was going to be on a song, “Cha-Cha-Cha Pa’Ca”. To me, it seems like they're a band that might not sound that much like Orquesta Akokán, and you might be coming from different perspectives, but you both play traditional music in non-traditional ways. This album is very 2024, and their stuff is very contemporary. Do you think of them as like-minded peers?

JP: I hope so. I've known those guys forever. They're 3024. They're doing big stuff. I've been a fan of that band and her forever. I think she's incredible because she knows so much about the tradition, different ones: cumbia, bullerengue, rumba. What she's able to do with bringing that into modern sounds, I don't know anybody like that. We've become friends over the years. We did a couple shows with her other bulleengue band, Bulla en el Barrio. Through that, we became friends. I'm just such a fan. Getting her to do this really made sense. Originally, it was Kiko singing the whole song, which was cool, but me and her have been working on other music for a while, so it was fortuitous she was on this album. It sounds like it was meant to be from the start.

Orquesta Akokán

SILY: Do you hope in any capacity to educate folks with this album? Obviously, one can dance to it, but a track like the title track is referential to the history of mambo and what it really means. I'm not sure if that's something most listeners will pick up on, whether or not they know Spanish or the Congo dialect. Do you want listeners to do research about mambo alongside this record?

JP: That's such a deep question. Even if you don't know where something is from, you can hear it's coming from a different place. You can hear the magic in there. I don't know if I want to educate listeners, but for me, even before I knew where a lot of these rhythms or ideas were coming from, I'd think, "This is special." What Benny Moré and Pérez Prado were doing, there's something deeper here going on I'm not hearing in other music. Cuban music in particular has sort of resisted pop music because it comes from such a different place. A lot of world music, you hear a backbeat to. In the 90's, you'd hear music from Turkey and Thailand, and you could put a backbeat to it, so it ended up sounding like other music that was popular at the time. You can't really do that with Cuban music. It doesn't fit really, having a backbeat behind Pérez Prado or salsa. It was always clear to me there were other influences and traditions happening in Cuban music before I knew what they were. That's what I was able to take away from it. It's coming from a different place. It's not soul music or from New Orleans. While all these things intermingle, there's something special about Afro-Cuban music from the 40's and 50's. My goal is for people to enjoy the music so much, they're like, "Where is this coming from? I want to know more."

SILY: Whenever I hear Cuban Spanish, I hear something similar. It's unique. It's different from when I hear someone from Mexico or Peru speak Spanish.

JP: That's a good point. And in the language, there are these signifiers of other cultures influencing Cuban music. Kiko goes really in on the Congo dialect. There's a lot of standard street slang or common words that are African in nature, from Congo or from Nigeria.

SILY: Do you have a favorite track from the record to play live?

JP: I like the title track. It has all these different moods, the intro with the horns, and Kiko swirling around. I love the percussion solo in the middle of it. It hits all the things for me.

SILY: His voice is so raspy on that song sometimes, it really grounds it.

JP: Yeah, he's really going in. It's always hard, playing live, because when you put something in front of people in the recording studio, it's new, and they play with a certain energy that sometimes dissipates live. After you play a song live a bunch of times, it grows and takes on new meaning. People add things, and stuff develops. We sometimes think, "Maybe we should have toured this and then recorded it." We should do a live album at some point. There's definitely some stuff on the internet from a show in Chicago. We played at a couple radio stations. We did something in Colorado, and New Sounds in New York with John Schaefer.

SILY: Are you and Michael always writing the next thing for whatever shape this ensemble takes? Or do you have to sit down and know the players that are going to be there and the concept of it?

JP: At this point, we're always sending each other things we think are cool, different musical ideas or tracks that are inspiring. It's always sort of been like that for me composing. Rarely is there something where the heavens shine down, the door opens, and there are beautiful ideas. Something gets stuck in my head. It might not even be mambo. Lately, I've been into that [Charles] Mingus album The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. It can come from other places and [make me think,] "How will this work with clave?" Mambo and Cuban music is all about clave. It is this rhythm of, "dot dot, dot dot dot," but it's also the idea of a bar of tension and a bar of release, or a bar of release and a bar of tension, a bar of more downbeat-oriented, and a bar of more upbeat-oriented. [I think about] how to take a Mingus thing [and] how that could fit in, or how we could orchestrate that for mambo. The first album was definitely a lot of, "I love this particular Benny Moré track, so let's take the lick from that and turn it into another song." I'm always listening to so much amazing music, and so much amazing Cuban music, it's never hard to be inspired. We're always sending stuff back and forth, and now, we'll send stuff to Kiko. I'm more interested in exploring this next album, how mambo entered American music in a weird way. I'm into this Rosemary Clooney and Pérez Prado record [A Touch of Tabasco] that verges on cheesy, but when they get it right, it's really powerful.

SILY: How mambo entered American music is just as much part of the Cuban American experience.

JP: Mambo took over pop music back in the day in the 40s and 50s. It came out of jazz and Cuban music, and back to America, it was finding it's jazzier, big-band roots: the cross-continual pollination of mambo music. There's a golden age of cumbia big band music, and everything's coming out of Benny Moré and mambo. You sometimes hear the singers sing...the things Benny used to say. I'm interested in how it's spread, I guess, and how it changed.

SILY: Is there anything else else you've been listening to, reading, or watching lately?

JP: I've been listening to this particular Celia Cruz record, Sabor y Ritmo de Pueblos. I've been listening to Motomami by Rosalía since it came out. We did these covers of her before the album came out. There's a 45' of us doing "Con Altura" and "TKN".

SILY: That's another artist taking traditional music and doing something new with it!

JP: Totally new. She's a genius.

The Benny Moré con Pérez Prado record, El Bárbaro del Ritmo, I'll never stop listening to that record. It's so perfect. The Tito Puente and Celia Cruz record Cuba y Puerto Rico Son... is very great. His big band was so swinging. Akokán focuses more on the Cuban end of things, but all of Tito Puente, who was more well-known that Benny Moré and Pérez Prado, he's taking that Cuban sound of Benny Moré's and figuring out how it works in New York. People are still playing that music in New York. The Mambo Legends Orchestra is amazing.

I kind of just listen to the same thing I've been listening to for the last 20 years, plus Motomami.

SILY: When something new comes out that catches your ear, it has to be unique.

JP: The new music that comes out that interests me is somehow taking the past and doing something new with it. Reggaetón is cool to hear in the club, but I'd never put that on, particularly.

SILY: Is there anything else I didn't ask about that you wanted to say?

JP: It's funny: You hear the record, you have all these ideas, you tour it, you play live, and you hear all these new things in the music. I haven't listened to the album in a couple months, and I listened to it yesterday, and I feel like it's a culmination of all these years on the road playing with these guys. We've finally figured out a sound close to what I think of as mambo, but it's its own thing. It's figured out its own identity.

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