Cimafunk, Erick Iglesias Rodríguez, is a former medical student whose solid beats and infectious stage presence gets everybody dancing. He was the hottest singer in Cuba in 2019.
News
Cimafunk & La Tribu, featuring Chucho Valdés and Pedrito Martinez; plays Cuban timba at the Blue Note in Greenwich Village; Thursday-Sunday, September 28 – October 1, 2023, at 8 and 10:30pm (6 & 10pm doors). From $52. 🇨🇺 🇨🇺 🇨🇺
Cimafunk is “the James Brown of Cuba”
Cimafunk bubbled up out of Cuba, the artesian well of Latin music in 2017-18. The whole world wants a drink now. He’s known for Me voy (I’m going).
Billboard magazine named Cimafunk one of its “10 Latin Artists to Watch in 2019.”
Singer Erik Iglesias Rodríguez is from Pinar del Río, a small city in tobacco country in western Cuba. It has a slightly different cultural and musical heritage than Havana or Santiago de Cuba.
Timba is the Afro-Cuban funk-folk-jazz dance music that came up on the streets of Havana in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, it took a different spin when Cuba was completely isolated after losing its Soviet patron. Timba keeps evolving but it is Cuban dance music for Cubans.
Cimafunk is perhaps more funky. He brings that funk thread back a little deeper in the music. The Miami Herald called Cimafunk “the James Brown of Cuba.” Like James Brown he’s fun. He’ll make you wanna, “get up, get on up, get on the scene…”
Cimafunk Albums
Terapia (2017)
For us, music and dance is therapy. It’s how we have always survived the hard things that life sometimes brings.
When you have a problem, you go and talk with the village priest or priestess. They tell you which angel has taken you. You devote yourself to that angel. They probably have the same problem as you, but because they are an angel, they overcome it.
By devoting yourself, you begin the process of healing yourself. But because you also sing and dance to the angel in front of everyone, the community understands what you going through and knows how to help you too.
This is terapia (therapy). Let’s dance.
Cimafunk in NYC
Cimafunk has played these New York venues:
- Blue Note
- National Sawdust
- SummerStage
- Webster Hall