Indie guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela recorded their album “Area 52” in Havana, following the historical tradition of collaborating with artists on the island, an exchange that birthed Latin jazz before diminishing in the 1960s. Although the Buena Vista Social Club seemed like a watershed moment for a resurgence of recording in Cuba, there have been relatively few projects of this kind, and R y G’s is notable for really making room for a Cuban group, rather than just giving a little Cuban tinge to the album. "We were thinking about trying to get our music played by a Cuban orchestra without them being too involved," Rodrigo Sanchez told me for an article I wrote in Billboard Magazine, "But when we got there it was totally different." This mix also includes recent made-in-Havana tracks with Gilles Peterson, Wynton Marsalis, and hip-hopera Ana Tijoux, and from Ry Cooder and Manuel Galvan's Mambo Sinuendo, which, though though it sold less than Buena Vista, is much groovier.
