Rebel Tumbao is a revelation. It is many things: it is perhaps the most successful album meshing Afro-Cuban and Reggae music to date; it is an exceptional example of deeply felt spiritual and political lyrics; and, in the tradition of Gil Scott-Heron, it has jazz roots and scorching spoken word. Did I mention consistent improvisational mastery and state-of-the-art recording technique? I’d like to hold forth for a minute about this album that has changed so much in my listening and thinking about Caribbean music.

The album is co-produced by José Claussell, timbalero for Eddie Palmieri for 24 years. Claussell solos a modest amount, but his percussive leadership is evident throughout.

José Claussell on the mic, Matt Jensen at left - photo by Tom Ehrlich

Also co-producing is Matt Jensen, a keyboardist who teaches Bob Marley’s life and music at Berklee College of Music. Many of the songs are from the Marley songbook. I remember when I was a teen and Marley had his first U.S. tour nearly forty years ago; some critics met him with scorn as a violent troublemaker with race war on his mind. Now that we’ve come to our senses he is of course part of the American popular music canon.

In the liner notes, Brian Michel Bacchus writes, “…what Rebel Tumbao has done makes you realize that the clave exists in the one drop and the one drop in the clave.” What his pointing to is the seamlessness of that aspect of this album, the perfect integration of the two supposedly disparate styles with roots in Africa.

The political lyrics here are not your normal over-generalized statements. They are explicit; “ripped from the headlines” as is said on TV. Also, Rebel Tumbao speaks truth to power. “I really don’t think you know anything,” roars the opening song, “about what the rest of us call freedom, no way/‘cause you got your story all wrong!”

“Llegó el momento de despertar ,” sings Palmieri’s sonero Hermán Olivera in a guest appearance. He suggests that overspenders try to curb their habit at the Betty Ford Clinic.

In “Masters of Greed” singers preach to the 99%: why do we keep from biting the hand that feeds us, when so much of what it does is wrong?

Perhaps the musical moments that moved me most came in two songs. “A Love Supreme/Exodus” combines the Coltrane masterpiece and the Marley standard as if the writers of the songs had themselves collaborated in heaven. In “The Sun is Shining,” originally a very early Marley recording, singer Toussaint Yeshua soars with the instrumentation so soulfully that even if it’s gray outside the song takes you straight to the kind of Jamaican day that must have inspired the song’s inception. No overt politics here, just the will to survive that Marley taught us outsiders, through his music, is to be found at the core of Black culture and spirituality in the New World to this day.

The album should be available soon, and I wouldn’t hesitate to pick it up. Look for Rebel Tumbao to come to your town. In a club, in a hall, they’ll shake the rafters wherever they go. This is real innovation.

“Cuba and California: Prospects for Change and Opportunity,” was a conference hosted jointly by the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, Center for Latino Policy Research and Center for Latin American Studies. The daylong discussion was held September 28 in the sparkling Banatao Auditorium on the Berkeley campus.

Opened up by local Congresswoman Barbara Lee and closed by keynote speaker Professor Carlos Alzugaray Treto of the Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies at the University of Havana, the conversation focused on the Cuban economy, developments within Cuba since Fidel Castro stepped down six years ago, and the slight progress in U.S.-Cuban relations during the Obama presidency.

In some ways, not so much has changed since I was a student at the Center for Latin American Studies in the 1980s. At that time I heard Wayne Smith, who was an American diplomat in Cuba under President Carter, speak about the self-defeating nature of the embargo against Cuba, and he was present once again at this conference saying, well, the same thing. It used to be, however, that Cuba was a player in the Cold War, and that is over. The U.S. can no longer claim that Cuba is fomenting Soviet schemes in the Americas.

I learned from multiple presenters that since Cuba has established trade with many countries, the Cuban economy—while struggling—has recovered from the slump it went through in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, and is weathering the American embargo. It was also shown by scholars that the generation of leaders emerging to take the place of the aging revolutionaries is more representative of the gender and ethnicity of the Cuban population.

The late afternoon panel featured Bill Martinez, the San Francisco attorney—and friend of Timba.com—who works tirelessly helping musicians from Cuba get visas to come to the U.S. With him was Michael Zuccato, President of Cuba Travel Services, who is making an effort along with Congresswoman Lee and others to initiate direct flights from Oakland to Cuba. Darius Anderson of Platinum Advisors, who is an advocate of a number of ventures to link California to Cuba, was also on the panel, and he was a major donor towards making the conference possible.

What struck me most about the program was the care all of the presenters showed for Cuba’s present and future. There were differences of background, focus and opinion, but the element of cynicism that has been so prevalent in Washington was largely absent. The expressed hope of both Americans and Cubans at the conference was for free exchange between our two countries, and between the folks of the far-flung Cuban Diaspora.

Professor Alzugaray Treto, who is a specialist in the study of the embargo and all its concomitant frustrations, finished his speech at the end of the day with the suggestion of a new attitude for Cubans: “I don’t care if you lift the embargo or not, because I am doing very well!” If nothing else works, he said, perhaps this will.