This man is an island
Brendan Murphy
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Cuba: The gift who keeps giving
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Alex Cuba and the huge love for both his B.C. home and the island he takes his name from
When Alex Cuba talks about Canada, it sounds almost like tourism board propaganda. It begins with how the Juno-winning musician feels about the small British Columbia town in which he and his family now live."It is a very small town, like the one I come from in Cuba," says Cuba. "Many of the things are the same. They are very intelligent people because they are people who know how to take care of themselves, to do things themselves."
The love, it seems, is a two-way street.
"They have made me like one of their distinguished sons - the first time I won a Juno, there was a limo the town had sent waiting for me at the airport."
Cuba, born Alexis Puentes in Cuba (he declined, with a laugh, my suggestion that he change his name to "Alex Smithers, B.C."), grew up playing guitar and moved to the Great White North in the late '90s after marrying a Canadian woman. As he explains it, he moved at a critical and affecting point in his musical career.
"I was just a bass player in Cuba and I started singing and writing here, so what I feel is that Canada hasn't changed my music, Canada has given me my music. I have found who I am in Canada."
Before you all well up with hoser tears, let's be honest: This country has given the world as much awful music as it has good. Wise, then, that one of Cuba's first musical collaborators was Ron Sexsmith.
"That man is unbelievable. We translated
the song [Lo mismo que yo] from Spanish to give him an idea of what I was talking about and he wrote something very beautiful." Cuba is about to cross the country with a new, self-titled album of "world music" songs about Canada sung in a language that much of the country doesn't speak. But if there's one thing that Canadians love, it's someone or something that loves them back.
Alex Cuba
At L'Astral (305 Ste-Catherine W.), Nov. 27, 8 p.m.
