Jungle Fire is an explosion of adrenaline. With their energizing music, the American band puts on a show that sets bodies on fire to unite night with day. This is how he has been demonstrating it since he went on stage for the first time and now the Cubans will be able to see it live, during his debut on the island at the Jazz Plaza Festival 2023.
“We are super excited about this trip. Going to Cuba and playing our music for the people who have inspired a good part of what we do is phenomenal,” he tells OnCuba Alberto López, the band’s percussionist, in a brief conversation before packing up and heading to Havana.
Jungle Fire was founded in 2011 by a group of friends who were looking for a way to express their individual interests in music. They found in the multiple possibilities of afrofunk, seasoned with other sound elements, a path tailored to their creative interests.
They then jumped onto the stage and no one has been left out of the captivating proposal of alienation: a party oriented towards the dance floor in which sweat, joy and musical strength reign. Above all, from that music born from experimentation and that drinks from the mixed origins of funk and from the contemporary sounds coming from the djs’ machines. In other words, the music of Jungle Fire is a stage party full of allegories of sound eclecticism and the claim of the power of fusion.
The Nacional Records label, which brought Manu Chau to Cuba in 2006, has been behind this first visit of “Fuego de la Jungla” to Cuba. Producer Jennifer Sarkissian, one of the top managers of the label, advanced the quality and strength of this band. “They’re terrific live,” she said. And he is right. The group has not stopped furrowing a sea of praise for their power and the naturalness with which they deploy their rhythmic arsenal, to which very few can remain indifferent.
Jungle Fire responds, above all else, to the sound of Los Angeles. Their musicians, too. The journey they have followed before joining the band speaks for itself of the mix and quality on which they base their stage and record projection. Several of its members have performed alongside figures and groups such as Celia Cruz, Ozomatli, LCD Soundsystem and U2, just to name a few sacred names for music lovers.
The expectation to share their music with the Cubans grows in the band as the day of their arrival approaches. “The concert in Callejón de Hamel on January 29, honoring the rumberos who have left us, will be a great event and we are very happy and honored that they have included us”, says the percussionist.
They will also play on January 26 at La Fábrica de Arte, and one day they will repeat the dose at the Teatro América. On the 28th they will arrive at the Casa de la Cultura de Plaza, the founding site of the event. During their presentations they will have among their guests notable musicians from the island such as Orlando Valle “Maraca”, Jesús Fuentes, Julio Valdés and the Rumba All Star troupe.
Musicians from almost 20 countries among the guests at Jazz Plaza
Jungle Fire has in its catalog a series of albums that represent that sound kaleidoscope that defines the band and on which its roots are based, in which there is no lack of genres such as cumbia and afrobeat. By the way, the band participated in a version of the anthological song “Bacalao con Pan”, which could even attract the attention of Chucho Valdés himself. And surely the theme will occupy a privileged place in their Cuban concerts, where they will review their discography, made up of phonograms, among others, Jungle Fire, Jambu Y tropical.
Precisely his second album, Jambu, put them directly on the radar. From the release of that explosive and unclassifiable sound cocktail, they delved deeply into the international circuit and began to blow up the stages with a mix made in the most eclectic music laboratories.
In truth, this way of assuming the legacy of greats like James Brown or Fela Kuti and accompanying it with the most radically contemporary trends in music, has made this band a show to keep in the memory space reserved for the most frenetic concerts. . And nothing better for the life of Havana than the shudder that Jungle Fire displays, a telluric artistic proposal that reminds on stage that, at least in music, anything is possible.
