Cuban Music Keeps Moving: Cimafunk, Albita Rodríguez, and Obsesión on Roots, Reach, and Resistance

Few people in the U.S. really understand how deep Cuban music runs, and that blind spot has everything to do with decades of paternalistic, then openly antagonistic treatment of the island’s closest neighbor. What gets missed in the process is the sheer range of a scene that keeps thriving anyway: through longtime émigrés like Albita Rodríguez, newer U.S.-based artists like Cimafunk, and Havana groups like Obsesión, who have never left home.

Cimafunk

Cimafunk’s sound draws from James Brown, African rhythms, EDM, and the music he grew up with in Pinar del Río. Before leading his own project, he worked as a session arranger in Havana and later passed through the influential collective Interactivo. His solo breakthrough arrived with 2017’s Terapia, followed by El Alimento, which earned a Grammy nomination.

He has since added two more Grammy nominations to the list: one for “Todo Colores,” his collaboration with Tank and the Bangas, and another for his 2024 album Pa’ Tu Cuerpa (For Your Body). Based in New Orleans for the past few years, Cimafunk has been touring steadily across the U.S., playing headlining shows and festivals while remaining, by design, largely outside the conventional industry machine.

He traces part of his early momentum to El Paquete Semanal, the low-cost digital bundle launched in 2008 by Cuban entrepreneurs to move media around a country where broadband access was scarce. “Those kids created this huge mechanism of promotion, and it was 100% effective,” Cimafunk says. “You couldn’t be famous in Cuba without El Paquete.” For many Cubans, the Package is still the main source of entertainment media.

Even from abroad, he says the social rhythms of Pinar del Río still shape what he makes. “People are really close to their neighbors,” he says. “Really communicative.” That closeness, in his view, comes through in the music. “Everybody does it their own way, but they collaborate.” He also describes the scene there as less cutthroat than Havana or Santiago de Cuba.

The name Cimafunk itself points back to cimarrón culture, a reference to communities formed by escaped slaves during Cuba’s colonial period. He says adopting it marked “the beginning of my way to say things” about identity, roots, and the slave trade. Still, he resists turning that symbolism into a burden. “I don’t take it as some responsibility or some work that I have to do,” he says. “I’m just chillin’ with that.”

Albita Rodríguez and Chucho Valdés. (Photo by Martin Espino / Innercat Films)

Albita

Albita Rodríguez is one of Cuban music’s major figures, full stop. The Havana-born singer has collected 15 Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations, with one win, and built a career around Cuba’s country and folk traditions. She is a key interpreter of guajira, a poetic style with Flamenco textures, and she began performing as a teenager in the late 1970s.

Her debut, Habrá Música Guajira (There Will Be Guajira Music), arrived in 1988. “With its rhythm and simplicity, guajira music has a unique ability to connect with the deepest part of the human soul,” she says. “Through its melodies, you can feel the very essence of Cuba.”

Now living in Miami, Albita remains deeply connected to the culture she came up in. “Over the years, Cuban music has evolved constantly, adapting to new influences without losing its identity,” she says. “Cuban musicians have always been very skilled at merging the best of other cultures while creating something entirely their own, something ‘Cuban.’”

For her, that ability to absorb and transform is part of why the music lasts. “Even for those who don’t speak Spanish or don’t know our culture, Cuban rhythms manage to convey vibrant and sincere energy that transcends words.”

Her latest record is Masters of our Roots, a collaboration with Chucho Valdés, the pianist and bandleader who is also a seven-time Grammy winner and one of Cuban music’s defining names. “We managed to blend the best of Cuban tradition with contemporary touches,” Albita says, “creating a work that, while respecting the root, also shows a modern vision of our music.”

Her view of the mission is simple enough: “Not staying in the past but knowing how to carry that tradition to new generations, adapting it without losing its essence.”

Obsesión’s El Tipo Este and Magia Lopez. (Photo courtesy of Obsesión)

Obsesión

Obsesión, the pioneering hip hop duo made up of Magia Lopez and El Tipo Este, has been based in Regla, the industrial district across Havana Bay, since 1996. Early releases came out through EGREM, Cuba’s national record label, which meant U.S. distribution was limited almost by default. In 2003, the duo toured the States and shared a bill with The Roots at the Apollo.

El Tipo Este says the mix of hip hop and Cuban musical tradition never felt forced to him. “We can’t deny or separate ourselves from who we are, so turning to the rich Cuban music never cost us much effort, it was truly organic and inevitable. It’s in our DNA.”

He points to the country’s racial makeup, noting that more than one-third of Cuba’s population is Black or mixed-race, and says those roots are central to Obsesión’s work. “But I would say that more than expressing the Afro-Cuban experience, we are the Afro-Cuban experience,” he says. “Our songs are influenced precisely by the fact of being Black people in Cuba today. Every social variable takes on a particular nuance when an Afro-Cuban person experiences it.

“The themes we explore in our lyrics are very diverse,” he continues, “ranging from the simplest and most everyday in the form of street chronicles, to the most controversial social, political, and human issues.” He says the group is always reaching for “a positive message.”

That positivity gives Obsesión’s music its lift even when the subjects are serious. Their 2025 album Luciérnaga: Crónicas de Luz (Firefly: Chronicles of Light), released digitally by Oakland-based Round Whirled Records, blends hip hop and big band jazz in a way that feels broad enough to travel well beyond Cuba. If U.S. radio ever gave it a real shot, it would likely find listeners across a lot of different scenes.

El Tipo Este is realistic about the bigger picture. “I think there’s still a lot of ignorance in the U.S. about Cuban music. There’s a lot of diversity. And Obsesión is proof of that.”

Even with the economic pain intensified by the U.S. blockade and the exodus of more than 1.5 million Cubans in recent years, roughly 15% of the country’s population, the music carries on. One place, El Tipo Este says, sits at the center of that cultural life: Fábrica de Arte Cubano, the converted cooking oil factory in Havana that now functions as a multidisciplinary arts space.

“In that single space, young people and the general public can enjoy a wide range of artistic offerings,” he says. “F.A.C.’s fusion of expressions not only enriches aesthetic enjoyment but also stimulates a more critical, diverse, and sensitive perspective.”