Pa Mi Tres

Yarima Blanco won the De la Tradición Sonera y Campesina (From the Son and Country Tradition) award at last year's Cubadisco (the Cuban music industry awards) and no wonder. Her prowess on the tres, the Cuban guitar, is second to none, and evident as she moves across genres from son, bolero and bachata to merengue, mambo and particularly timba on this joyous, oh-so-accomplished recording. Hailing from eastern Cuba, Blanco is the first woman to graduate in tres (in 2006) from the National School of Arts in Havana, where she studied composers from Mozart to Astor Piazzolla under maestro Efraín Amador, who encouraged her to challenge, question, innovate.

As leader of otherwise all-male septet Son Latino, Blanco's mission is to play different styles, to make dancers move as a salsa orchestra might, to use culture as a tool to promote gender equality (presumably to the point where the ‘female’ tres player label is redundant). Horns and güira vie and blend with claves, piano, vocals and Blanco's sparkling, ever dextrous tres. ‘My name is Yarima Blanco, I come playing the tres,’ she sings on the catchy eponymous opener. ‘The party has already started / this party does not end.’