Cubamanos

Rumba is a musical show put together by Cubamanos – a 12-musician band with four dancers; all professionals belonging to the famously rigorous Cuban Music Institute.
The artists are based in Manzanillo, Cuba, cradle of Cuban Music where traditional “son” was born. Manzanillo has a 100,000 population with its highest building reaching three storeys. The city hosts some of Cuban most prolific artists. Despite humble living conditions, they bear one of Cuba’s strongest identity and sense of belonging.

Cubamanos musical director is Pedry Rivero, who was recording with the late Jerry Masucci of New-York based Fania Records (Santana, Celia Cruz, Johnny Pacheco ) in 1997 when Claude Girard, the producer of the group and founder of Innersmile Production, met him in Havana.

Following Masucci’s passing – Pedry and Claude started working together on a regular basis. Rumba is the actual maturity achievement of the past 15 years of musical and personal relationship between the two of them. Pedry has traveled nine times to Canada and four times to Japan together with Claude, as he went broadening his horizons, always open to share his new views with his fellow musicians back home in Manzanillo.

When Cubamanos traveled for an extensive tour of Canadian summer festivals in 2011, the audience reaction was spontaneous as they fell in love with the band’s authenticity, from which developed two factors that rarely team up together on-stage: virtuosity and popularity. Rumba was born.
Rumba is a musical show that pays tribute to the incredible influence of afro-cuban music to the western world, hence presenting a repertoire that the public have related to since Chano Pozo met Dizzy Gillespie in the ‘40’s, and Mambo became the music king of cabarets around the world in the ‘50’s.