Daymé Arocena returns to the stage

Daymé Arocena returned to the stage, in New York City, at Le Poisson Rouge thursday November 11th. The World Music Institute show presented a challenge to the Cuban vocalist, it was the first time she had performed without her band. She rode out the quarantine in Canada, and her band is still stuck in Cuba unable to get vaccines in order to travel.

Having rehearsed with the musicians for the first time the day before, the music was lean and loose with long solos from each of the musicians. Backed by an old friend Ahmed Alom on piano, Alberto Miranda, a Cuban bass player now based in New York, and Murphy Aucamp an American born in Miami on drums. She drew on songs from each of her albums including "Para El Amor: Cantar!", :”Maybe Tomorrow” and “La Rumba Me Llamo Yo”.

Earlier in the week Daymé shared her experiences during the quarantine with musician and writer Ned Sublette in an interview that can be heard on the WorldMusic Institute you tube channel.

Daymé: “i never push myself to write music it comes to me naturally, i can write a song on an airplane or taking a shower, i can get an idea. So its not something where i say alright Dayme lets sit down and write a song.  i feel its a gift and every song that comes to mind is a gift.  so of course staying at home all the time is not so inspiring, at least in my life. But it doesnt mean that i have not been writing music because music is always around me i always get ideas, i record them in an audio recorder, and i develop it, i made a draft of my next album and looking for the right producer to work with.”

“I got a lot of help from my band in Cuba to put this draft together in order to show it to the label to make sure they like the vibe and idea of the next album and now i am ready to start recording.”

“La Rumba Me Llamo Yo” -  “I wrote that song when i was on the road working for the documentary La Clave, a documentery inspired in Rumba We were going to different places in Havana and different places in Matanzas to find the history of rumba. I was so amazed, so impressed so inspired by all the rumba vibe I was getting and i realized how much I am a “rumbera”, sometimes when you discover things from different places you forget your roots, and because, not that you forget them, I was too focused on jazz and world music, and didn’t pay a lot of attention to my music, that doc was a great chance to remember my childhood, it was a house of rumberos. I grew up going to Ernesto Gatell, “El Gallo’s” house he was my neighbor. That was my childhood, I was born in Santo Suarez, so making that journey was going back to my roots, at the same time I didn’t feel capable, I felt Rumba is such a complex and deep thing, I don’t have the knowledge or the  training to do that. And then I had a dream, in my dream I got that song, i get a lot of my music through my dreams that song came straight from the beginning to the end,  and that was how that song was born.  it was like someone telling exactly what I had to say what I had to sing. I woke up quickly and wrote everything down.”