“I tour through all of these different countries and I sing mostly in Spanish,” says the dynamic Miami-based singer Buika. “I want to prove that it doesn’t matter where a musician comes from-people understand it. It doesn’t matter where I perform- Turkey, France, Japan, the U.S.-something in the atmosphere tells me they understand the words I am singing.”
On her latest and most diverse album La Noche Más Larga (The Longest Night), the Spanish-bred singer of African descent continues to break down the walls that surround flamenco, the root source of everything she does, but a tradition that can’t contain her ever-evolving vision. For the first time in her career Buika, along with her two main musical partners pianist Iván “Melón” Lewis and percussionist Ramón Porrina, were the overall producers of the album. It was recorded in Madrid, Miami, and New York with a dazzling group of musicians from both sides of the Atlantic. forming a top-flight combo with the chops and imagination to match the singer’s disregard for genre boundaries. As usual, her powerhouse voice renders those lines invisible.
That CD garnered Buika a nomination in one of the Latin GRAMMY’s most prestigious categories, “Record of the Year” for the song “La Nave del Olvido” (Ship of Oblivion).
Now Buika launches another leg to her North American concert tour in November and December, with stops at Miami’s Arsht Center on Dec 1 and an unprecedented four nights at the SF Jazz Fest from Dec 12 through 15. This year alone her tour has taken her all over Europe – including two sold out performances in London – Latin America and the U.S. Next year, the tour will go to Turkey, Venezuela, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
On her last album, El Ultimo Trago (a tribute to the late Mexican singing legend Chavela Vargas), Buika partnered with the brilliant Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdés, and the collaboration garnered her a Latin Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Album. That stylistic expansion continues on La Noche Más Larga, where she tackles the modern Abbey Lincoln classic “Throw it Away”; sings in French with a stunning version of the Jacques Brel classic “Ne Me Quitte Pas” (If You Go Away); and creates an entirely new flamenco-driven version of the Billie Holiday original “Don’t Explain.” Additionally, jazz guitar great Pat Metheny contributes a beautifully lyric solo to one of Buika’s own compositions, “No Lo Sé” (I Don’t Know). The guitarist says, “Buika is one of my favorite singers ever.”
The song nominated for “Recording of the Year” is “La Nave del Olvido” (Ship of Oblivion), a composition by Argentina’s Dino Ramos originally made famous by Mexican singer José José. Yet Buika makes no effort to sing it, or any of the other cover songs on the album, in the spirit of the originals. She makes them her own.
Most significantly, nearly half of the songs on the new album were written completely by Buika, and actually credited to her, which has not always been the case in the past, due in part to the singer’s lack of attention to the business side of her career. Buika says her steady touring all over the globe has given her greater and greater confidence, and provided the sense of identity that’s eluded her for decades. “My parents were born in one place [Equatorial Guinea] and I was born in another [the Spanish island of Mallorca]. When I grew up in Spain many people used to say, ‘You’re not from here,’ and my family from Africa would say I wasn’t from Africa, so it was always tricky for me. But now, travelling around the world, I discovered a piece of me in every country I travel in. I discovered that the world is my house. My ‘self’ is full of things from everywhere in the world. What I try to do when I sing is to follow my free note. It doesn’t know about borders. ”
Since her introduction to the American marketplace in 2007 with her album Mi Niña Lola (My Little Girl Lola), Buika has experienced a meteoric rise, earning lavish praise from The New York Times, The Miami Herald, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as NPR, which quickly included her in their “50 Great Voices” radio gallery. Despite just a few concert appearances she earned two Latin Grammy nominations in 2008. Her next release, Niña de Fuego (Fire Child) paved the way for relocation to Miami in 2011 (she lovingly calls the US “the country of happiness and noise”). Before her career took off in the US she had already achieved success in Europe, performing on screen in the Pedro Almodóvar film The Skin I Live In and dueting with pop singer Seal. Music from those projects and more were collected in 2011 on the essential 2-CD set En Mi Piel (In My Skin) to satisfy a growing demand for her music in her new country. Rare is the artist to garner comparisons to Nina Simone, Chavela Vargas, and Cesaria Evora, but Buika has been compared to all of them. She has clearly inherited their steely independence and uncompromising creative vision.
“I think every record I’ve made is different, but with this new one I recorded behind my own ideas and I made this album from a state of freedom,” she says. “I think it’s the bravest record that I’ve made. I wanted to put our craziness and our sound in there.” As usual she puts her unique spin on a variety of covers — vibrantly deploying her rich, sensual, and husky instrument, best described as ‘velvet gravel’, to flamenco with jazz and soul — but her choices have never been more personal.
“This is a risky album because we never thought about anyone’s approval,” she says. “I just did what my heart was demanding. Sometimes in the music business everybody does what they think other people will like, but that’s a limitation. I don’t care about sales, I just want to be true. I want what Charlie Parker’s got – I want eternity.”
AFRO-SPANISH JAZZ SINGER BUIKA BEGINS NORTH AMERICAN
TOUR TO SUPPORT LATIN GRAMMY NOMINATED CD
LA NOCHE MAS LARGA CD NOMINATED FOR
“RECORD OF THE YEAR” FOR SINGLE “LA NAVE DEL OLVIDO”
CD debuted on NPR’s First Listen, features 5 Originals, Jacques Brel, Billie Holiday
+ special appearance on CD by Pat Metheny
U.S. TOUR INCLUDES 4-NIGHT RUN AT SF JAZZ FEST + MIAMI + LA
HEAR “La Nave Del Olvido” + Title track performed LIVE
NPR Tiny Desk Concert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qryg2q3lUs
BUIKA – North American Tour
Buika (vocals), Ivan “Melón” Lewis (piano), Ramon Porrina (cajón)
Nov 24San Juan, PRBellas Artes
Dec 1Miami, FLArsht Center / Knight Concert Hall
Dec 3Phoenix, AZMIM / Musical Instrument Museum
Dec 6Vancouver, BC, CNChan Centre
Dec 8Seattle, WAThe Triple Door
Dec 12 – 15San Francisco, CASF Jazz Fest / SF Jazz Center / Miner Aud
Dec 17Los Angeles, CAClub Nokia
NEW YORKER
“The dynamic Spanish vocalist Buika has the timbre and style of a soul singer and the repertoire of a pop flamenco star.”
NEW YORK POST
“A singer like Buika comes only once in a generation.”
MIAMI HERALD
“Unique is an over-used word but this Spanish-African singer and rising world music star more deserves the title.”
By PR
Photos official website
