Havana Sessions
ASOF013 Auntie Flo - Havana Sessions is out today
Ten years ago, I was invited to Havana, Cuba to perform at the first ever Havana World Music Festival. Just take a moment to pause and reflect on what that means - a festival of bands from all around the world, in Cuba, a place which has spent its recent history under a closed Castro regime: pushing back against the dominance of the capitalistic systems from countries such as the US and UK.
Around that time, Cuba began to open itself up to the West and the Havana World Music festival was one of the examples of this, creating an interesting dichotomy. As I found out at the time, culture-led soft power was a primary tool that many countries were keen to exploit, not least the United Kingdom, with the British Council part-funding out trip. This was seen as an opportunity by Western governments to demonstrate superiority, through our cultural exports.
Should I have taken the opportunity to visit, knowing I would be small pawn in this culture-war, or should I visit knowing that it would be an experience of a lifetime, a chance to learn, meet and potentially collaborate?
I obviously chose the latter and it turned out to be a career highlight, despite some challenges.
Leaving politics aside, the musical culture of Cuba is so engrained in its society, and totally infectious from the minute we touched down.
We met so many fascinating people and talented musicians, playing two amazing gigs: firstly performing to 10,000+ at a baseball field overlooking the Malecon and the then being invited to play to perhaps an even bigger street party the next day in new Havana. A weekly free street party, with no alcohol but up to 8,000 very up-for-it young Cubans.
It was fascinating to learn how the live music industry works in Cuba: there are three main departments for broad genres -I believe roughly split between more traditional sounds such as Rhumba, Salsa etc, more Pop and then an Electronic/EDM category.
We were essentially housed within the latter category and had to meet various government departments who asked us a range of questions about our music, our intentions etc, right down to ‘what BPM’s we typically play’. Whatever, we said, we must have passed the test as we became the first non-Cuban band to play at the free street party.
Both gigs were incredible. With the slight downside of the array of Union Jacks that the British council spread around some of the crowd in the middle of our set without telling us!
I’ve had to wrestle with being a political weapon ever since…
The upside was that during these shows, we started putting the word out that we’d have some studio time and any budding musicians were welcome to come and jam with us. We turned up and were met with a line round the block!
During these sessions we recorded a host of tracks that have made it onto various albums - So In Love from Theory Of Flo, Nobody Said It Would Be Easy and Havana Rhythm Dance from Radio Highlife, and now the Havana Sessions, which I’m releasing on A State of Flo records today.
Havana City takes elements of Havana Rhythm Dance, adds some string arrangements, borrowed drums from Green City (hence the name) and Freedom of Birds, and dubs out the whole thing giving everything space to breathe. As per my love of the long song - this is a track to immerse yourself in - with keys, trumpet, talking drum, arp and Andrew Ashong’s triumphant vocals bringing a joyous summer vibe.
I was thinking about the absolute classic by Nuyorican Soul - ‘I am The Black Gold Of the Sun’. Does it measure up to that? I’ll leave it to you to decide!
Die Bailando is a track that holds a special place for me. After day 1 in the studio in Cuba, I chopped up some of the brass recordings and made a six minute loop. I then recorded this young vocalist Eric Alejandro who can up with the lyrics - ‘When I die… I’m going die dancing…’. For the original track, we did two takes, both equally as good so I simply doubled the track length and made this super long minimal electro-rhumba groove - think Ricardo Villalobos… It was original released as our first Highlife World Series record.
Eric’s voice is so unique and powerful, I new he had the potential to be big, and it’s been interesting to see his pathway since that session - now performing to huge audiences around the globe as Cimafunk. He’s even been nominated for a Grammy.
For this 2026 version, I went back to the studio and recorded new guitar parts with Ziggy and drums from Jose Joyette (of Ibibio Sound Machine), creating a new latin-groover with Erics vocals as centre stage.
The final track on the EP is Mother Theresa - also released on the Highlife World Series but it was never pressed to vinyl. The track is basically made up of off-cuts from the Havana sessions as we needed a b-side to the digital release. I added some beats and crow-barred in various bits and bobs from the recordings (which some folk like to point out are in differing keys!!).
I didn’t think much of it at the time, but this track has become one of my most played tracks on Spotify - approaching 2 million plays! So many people I randomly meet tell me how much that track means to them - that they play it at every after party, or on repeat throughout the day… Crazy, I made it in an afternoon without much thought - maybe a creative lesson there.
Go buy Havana Sessions today
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