Cachaito Views

• Music

If there was a record that you could buy just from the names on the credits, this would be it. The label is World Circuit, the guys who recorded Buena Vista Social Club. The producer: Nick Gold, the man with the q"Midast" touch, responsible not just for the Buena Vista projects, but Oumou Sangare, Ali Farka Toure, and Cheikh Lo's as well. The artist: Orlando i"Cachaitob" Lopez, bass player extraordinaire, veteran of all of the Buena Vista CDs. Cachaito is the nephew of legendary Cuban bassist, Grammy award winner Israel

Heavily influenced not only by his remarkable musical family, Cachaito grew up listening to American jazz pioneers Bill Evans and Ray Brown. He also has a strong classical element to his music, crediting the time he spent listening to his father's rehearsals with Cuba's Orquesta Filarmonica in the 1940s and 50s. By the 1950s, Cachaito was playing with Ruben Gonzalez. In the 1960s he was a regular with Los Zafiros, and Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna with Manual a"Guajiroe" Mirabel and Chocho Valdes.

Buena Vista Club mainstay Orlando Cachaito Lopez, who is widely regarded as the best bassist in Cuba, could have taken the safe route and recorded a straightforward collection of Cuban son/Latin jazz music. The resulting album may have been a bit predictable and mild, but the high level of musicianship would have ensured a quality product, particularly considering the impressive international cast that appears with Cachaito on this album. To their credit, however, Cachaito and his colleagues were willing to take some chances. Some tracks approach a Cuban version of dub music, as Jamaican organist Bigga Morrison's Hammond prods or Cuban surf guitarist Manuel Galban's instrument reverberates while the bottom drops in and out of the mix. French DJ Dee Nasty even scratches on Cachaito in Laboratory, a partially successful experiment that yields interesting results even though it doesn't quite gel with the rest of the album. ra" Read more

Orlando Lopez was born into a family of musicians in Havana in February 1933. They played in symphony orchestras, jazz groups and dance bands around Cuba, and Orlandohimself was to play many forms of music. His grandfather, Pedro, had passed his talent for bass-playing to his father, Orestes, and his uncle, Israel, who was known as Cachao (hence Cachaito , little Cachao ). In the late 1930s, the two brothers added some African rhythms to the local music and effectively laid the foundations for mambo music.