Mambo Sinuendo

In a career that began in 1970 and reached a high point with the production of 1997's Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club project - the biggest-selling World Music album in history - Ry Cooder has created a body of work that may represent one of the broadest ranges of material ever recorded by an American popular musician. As a virtuoso guitarist, producer, and collaborator, he has acquired legendary status among fellow musicians, music fans, and guitar afficionados. His first record as producer and featured artist in fifteen years is a collaboration with the Cuban guitarist and keyboard player Manuel Galban, a member of the 1960's group Los Zafiros - the influential Cuban doo-wop quartet - whom Cooder refers to as "the last man twanging in Havana." Galban pioneered a tough, surf-guitar style that is considered unique in Cuban music, and even in his 60's, he is still drawn to experimentation. As Cooder puts it, "I thought we might be able to get off the main road and go somewhere fun and interesting together."

That musical trip is MAMBO SINUENDO. Twin electric guitars penetrate the cool mysteries of mambo-jazz and harken back to a point in the late 50's when Cuban popular music began to hint at a fusion of American pop-jazz and futuristic creations of musicians such as Perez Prado, who were leading Cuban music away from traditionalism. The sound spread into America as lounge music and typified an era of martinis, leopard print sofas and chrome-dappled Cadillacs - like the '59 Eldorado on the cover.

If there's a certain instant familiarity to this collaborative celebration between U.S. guitar icon/musicologist Ry Cooder and Cuban fret legend Manuel Galbán, it's only testimony to how deeply the island nation's rich musical heritage permeated American pop music in the '50s, '60s, and beyond. Cooder and Galbán (a key compatriot in the American guitarist's Buena Vista Social Club project) invent a back-to-the-future sound--twin guitars fronting a Cuban rhythm section of two drum kits, congas, and bass--whose dreamy swing quotient is matched only by its sense of mirthful abandon. Thus tracks like "Dru Me Negrita" and "Los Twangueros" manage to evoke everything from Link Wray, Duane Eddy, and the Ventures to Mancini and Esquivel, while Cooder and Galbán twirl a standard like "Patricia" and the nervy title track around dueling poles of tradition and experimentation with deceptive grace. It's joyous, mercurial stuff that the two musicians conjure at their fingertips. --Jerry McCulley