Félix Baloy & The Afro-Cuban All Stars
Live in the UK, Alive in Cuba (DVD)
Tumi (www.tumimusic.com)

Sonero Félix Baloy needs no introduction for anyone who follows Cuban music, but this DVD (directed by Charles Wood) offers an informed if at times romanticized examination of the life of one of the island's greatest living singers, and the society in which his musical legacy has thrived. Like many veteran Cuban artists, Baloy pursued a variety of vocations, working as a shoemaker, grocer and railway laborer by day, while singing at night. Against a Havana backdrop, the video captures Baloy's warmth, humour, patience, generosity and single-minded dedication to his music and to Afro-Cuban religion. He describes hanging out as a young boy at the Havana club where Beny Moré held court, peering through the window to see and hear his idol. His wife Lázara makes clear that she controls the household, however, describing her husband as so completely wrapped up in his activities that he loses the house keys and cannot keep track of time, living purely in the moment. She also confronts him, thumbing through a stack of photographs with a variety of younger women on his arm; he good-naturedly replies that "they're just friends" he cannot avoid meeting as a celebrity.

The documentary follows Baloy as he visits his spiritual advisor, hosts a party in his old neighborhood, practices and performs, while reminiscing at length about his life. Friends and fellow musicians offer their own take on Baloy, interspersed with ample footage from a UK tour (in Brighton and Hyde Park) and local performances in Havana. Also featured is Buena Vista Social Club producer-singer-tresero-guitarist Juan de Marcos González, who was the tour's musical director. Backing Baloy on eleven concert-length tracks is a host of superb musicians, among them singer Fernando Ferrer Rodríguez (a powerful soloist in his own right), David Alfaro and Luis Lang Morejón (piano), Luis Alemañy and Julio Padrón (trumpets), Juan Carlos Marin and Antonio Leal (trombones); José Espinosa Martínez (timbales), Rolando Niño Mentira (congas), and Jorge Reyes Hernández (upright bass). A welcome innovation for international audiences is the inclusion of two discs (in PAL and NTSC formats), with subtitles in English, Spanish, French, German and Japanese. This is an endearing portrait of Baloy's prodigious talent, his humanity and his world. - Michael Stone

DVD available from cdroots

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