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AVAILABLE NOW on Justin Time Records:
Jane Bunnett Forms Exhilarating New All Female Band
Maqueque, Blending Afro-Cuban,
Soul and Jazz on Self-Titled Release

For more than thirty years, Canadian flutist and saxophonist Jane Bunnett has been bridging the gulf between Cuba and North America, introducing jazz audiences to some of the finest musicians that the island has to offer. Through her longstanding ensemble Spirits of Havana, Bunnett has provided early opportunities to such future greats as Dafnis Prieto, Yosvany Terry, Pedrito Martínez, and David Virelles, and also becoming a Canadian national treasure as well as an internationally acclaimed jazz artist in the process. Now, with her new sextet Maqueque, she introduces the world to some of Cuba’s most promising female musicians, injecting her own music with an invigorating dose of youthful energy in the process.

On their self-titled debut, Maqueque blends scintillating Afro-Cuban rhythms, folkloric influences, exhilarating jazz, and soulful vocals into an utterly intoxicating blend. Vocalist Daymé Arocena, percussionist Magdelys Savigne, drummer Yissy García, bassist and tres guitarist Yusa, pianist Danae Olano, and bassist Celia Jimenez join the four-time JUNO Award winner, two-time Grammy® Award-nominee, and Officer of the Order of Canada to create a dynamic and hard-driving sound that should suffice to silent any doubts from the boys’ clubs of jazz or Cuban music.

The all-female line-up provides the band with a unique energy, Bunnett says. “There’s a very happy energy about it,” she describes. “All of the women are very supportive of each other. I’ve seen a couple of all-women groups in Cuba that are geared toward tourists and can border on being pretty cheesy. What we’re doing is creative and collaborative and involves a lot of the Afro-Cuban elements that stem out of traditional folkloric music.”

The tempestuous “Tormenta” was inspired by an experience that Bunnett had while playing a jazz festival in Kansas, watching a tornado on the flat Midwestern horizon as she played on an aluminum stage. “New Angel” stems from a more joyous place, with a celebratory, joyful chorus of voices. “Song for Haiti,” originally written for a benefit album for the country’s earthquake victims, closes the album with a host of special guests, including Spirits of Havana alum Hilario Durán (who contributes string arrangements throughout the album) on piano, the New Orleans-style Heavyweights Brass Band, and spoken word artist Telmary Diaz.

Arocena also contributes three pieces: “Guajira,” inspired by the self-sufficiency of rural Cuban farmers; “Canto a Babba,” an homage to the Yorùbán deity Oba; and “De la Habana de Canada,” a cha cha relating her unusual journey. The album also includes a moving, intimately soulful rendition of Bill Withers’ classic “Ain’t No Sunshine” sung by Arocena and Yusa, and an eccentrically grooving take on 1940s Cuban pianist Pedro Peruchin’s “Mamey Colorao.”

Bunnett wrote most of the music for the album in the central Ontario cabin built by her grandfather, a refuge surrounded by the sights and sounds of nature. Those elements directly influenced the disc’s opening track, “Papineau,” named for a nearby waterfall. But the music was work-shopped by the group in Cuba, adding a lively Cuban chant far removed from water crashing on rocks in the Great White North.

That sort of collaboration is what excites Bunnett about the music and has kept her returning to Cuba for so many years. “One of the things that I really love about music is to collaborate with the different personalities who are out there, because everybody can always bring something very different to the table. In Cuba, there’s so much music happening and a lot of the time it’s of a collaborative nature; I always imagine it’s like 52nd Street in its heyday,” she explains. “When I go there I feel that I’m surrounded by a lot of creative energy. There’s an enthusiasm about embracing the arts, and music is primary to everybody’s lives there, even people who aren’t musicians.

Jane Bunnett · Jane Bunnett and Maqueque
Justin Time Records · Release Date: September 9, 2014

For more information on JANE BUNNETT, please visit: JaneBunnett.com

For more information on Justin Time Records, please visit: JustinTime.com

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