The new album released today by the Cuban salsa artist Isaac Delgado, “Lluvia y fuego”, pleases the taste of the most demanding dancer, what characterizes him, and comes with various aromas such as the feeling and the bolero with which he grew up in his country.
With “Lluvia y fuego”, which includes eleven songs he composed together with Jesús “Jesusín” Cruz, and which comes out under the Cuban national label Egrem, contains tributes to the legendary singer Benny Moré, on the centenary of his birth, and the Puerto Rican salsa artist José “Cheo” Feliciano, whom he admired, on the fifth anniversary of his death.
“I wanted to make an album with the ‘feeling’, which I like, I was born where the movement of ‘feeling’ arose, and I also listened to a lot of bolero” at home, said “Chévere de la Salsa” in a telephone interview with Efe .
“I am happy with this album, it was months of elaboration, of doing a job with which one way or another I felt happy and also get things from inside because they are experiences that one has had,” said the interpreter, which included topics that They talk about love in their new project and said they are always present.
According to Delgado, to make an album “you have to be in love” to be able to identify with the themes, either your own or others’ stories.
This album, which from today will be on all digital platforms and streaming services, arrives after three years without entering a recording studio, from “Made in Havana”, which he made in Cuba after returning to his country, from the USA and after an absence of ten years, in which he mixed the pure sauce with the “timba”.
Delgado recalled that for this project he worked with “Jesusín” Cruz, who had written several songs when the composer was only 18 years old.
“When I saw him I said ‘finally we’re going to do something together'”, he recalled, after explaining that together they composed new songs but left the original music “because it was very tasty”.
The singer, who began his career at age 18 in Cuba, says that “Lluvia y fuego”, elements that are present in the songs, is “a love album that has the aroma of the feeling, the bolero, the son, the bossa nova, the guaracha and the rumba “, mergers that are recurrent in their work.
“Everything is in there, I always talk to the musicians in the studio before doing each song and I say ‘I want it to sound like bossa nova, or cha cha chá … let’s change the rhythm’ … is that when you work with such excellent musicians, who know all genres, it’s a blessing, “he says.
In this new project, Delgado pays tribute to the legendary Cuban singer and composer Benny Moré (1919-1963), “who used to listen to my house all the time” when he was growing up, and the Puerto Rican salsa player José “Cheo” Feliciano (1935-2014), ex-member of the Fania Stars, with whom he shared the two years he lived in Puerto Rico.
The rich “Medley Pa ‘Cheo East” and “Medley Pa’ Benny” follow the line of all the compositions that lead to move the body from the first chord.
“Cheo was like a mentor, when I lived in Puerto Rico he called me and we met, I learned a lot from him, he was a person from the town, everybody loved him, I have a lot in my interpretation and I know it’s from listening to Cheo For me, it was a school, “said the salsero.
As in other albums, Delgado, 57, has guests on this album, among them the “Caballero de la Salsa”, Gilberto Santa Rosa with whom he plays “El que siempre dino”, which he wrote when he lived in Puerto Rico, and who made a video in Havana.
“It’s a brother, singing along with him is a pleasure,” says Delgado, who will present the album during a concert tomorrow in Cuba, at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana, which will also be the closing of the Cubadisco International Fair 2019.
