Gilles Peterson and Havana Club Present: 'Havana Cultura: Anthology, 2009-2017'

In 2009, the initiative partnered with DJ and tastemaker Gilles Peterson and his record label, Brownswood, to reveal the best of Havana's unique contemporary Cuban music scene. Since then, eight albums have been released under the Havana Cultura initiative.

The latest album, Havana Cultura: Anthology, a triple vinyl set with a selection of twenty-three emblematic tracks, celebrates eight years of musical research and experimentation, featuring Cuba's musical avant-garde, curated by Gilles Peterson with the backing of the Havana Cultura project.

The Havana Cultura collaboration first saw Gilles travel to Cuba in 2008 to check out Havana's underground music scene with a view to making an album. While some might associate Cuba simply with salsa or Buena Vista Social Club, there was a new generation of artists teeming with new sounds, waiting for an opportunity to reveal their talent to the world.
That first trip was the beginning of what has now been an eight-year-long collaboration between Peterson, his Brownswood Recordings label and Havana Club's cultural platform. 

'At Havana Club, we're proud of our Cuban origins. Havana is one of the world's most buoyant cultural scenes ' particularly when it comes to music ' and we were eager to give a bigger voice to a generation of young artists whose work is decidedly modern, yet firmly anchored in the richness of Cuba's musical tradition,' explains François Renié, who runs the initiative at Havana Club.

' The Havana Cultura project gave me the chance to go deep in a country that had intrigued me ever since I was digging for Latin records as a young DJ '
- Gilles Peterson

'From the first release up to now, it's been about taking that spirit of the Buena Vista Social Club to show a new generation of artists and opening it up to as big an audience as possible. Picking the tracks for this anthology, I wanted to show modern Cuba alongside the remixes, putting it in the context of a global club culture", recalls Gilles.

Havana Cultura: Anthology, 2009-2017 was released on 18^th November and is available to purchase from Rough Trade, Sound of the Universe and Phonica. 

To order: https://lnk.to/HavanaCultura