June 9, 2000

Alma Caribeqa - Caribbean Soul

...anyone truly interested in Cuban music should check out the originals...

2 / 10 Gloria Estefan, one of the few visible Latino faces in pop for more than 15 years, has released several traditional Spanish-language albums before this one. Nevertheless, 'Alma Caribeqa...' feels like an opportunistic lunge for the new audience for Cuban music stirred by Wim Wenders' superb Buena Vista Social Club documentary, and the attendant crossover albums released by the likes of Ibrahim Ferrer.

/img/GloriaEstefan0600.jpg Compared with these records, Estefan's album can't help but sound limp. Sure, her vocals are fine; hell, from her earliest records with Miami Sound Machine, she's always suggested a vocal range beyond the sub-Madonna (with added schmaltz) fodder her career has encompassed. But it is her inability to break free of the spectre of plasticky, inconsequential mainstream pop gunk that holes 'Alma Caribeqa...'.

'Como Me Duele Perderte', for instance, boasts a stirring enough melody, but the instrumentation is too sharp (as is Estefan's vocal), too processed, to hold even the faintest candle to the cinematic sweep of Ferrer's album, while 'Tengo Que Decirte Algo' is ruined by a repulsive sub-Tom Jones (and how low is that?) cameo by Cuban-crossover legend Jose Feliciano. Elsewhere, upbeat numbers are marred by soulless, sub-drum-loop rhythms, ballads scuppered by string sections so soulless they could be synthesisers. 'Alma Caribeqa...' is a cheap, tacky knock-off of sumptuous sources; anyone truly interested in Cuban music should check out the originals.