Kassav'
Ana Carla Maza

In the early 80s, Miles Davis was always on the lookout for novelty and gave an audiotape to Marcus Miller: “They create a music they call zouk... They have a French brass section which seems Afro-Cuban, but they blend samba and rumba together, Africans beats, contemporary rock... And it sounds good!” Since then, Kassav’ has become one of the favourite bands of the bass player... And of a few tens of millions of fans all around the world, where it fills the biggest venues and stadiums with a success which has never diminished. In mainland France, the public discovered Kassav’ in the mid-80s with its hit “Zouk la sé sèl medikaman nou ni”, which means “Zouk is our only medicine” (to stand firm against life’s difficulties in the French West Indies).

It is not common to see on stage the inventors of a musical genre. Zouk is the result of a beautiful combination of West Indian music (beguine, calypso, bélé, compas, etc.), latino-inspired brass instruments and a keyboards/electric bass combo with funk influences. This unstoppable cocktail makes people dance, but it also shares a Creole consciousness. “I want a West Indian music that is recognized by West Indians and can be listened to all over the world”, declared the band’s co-creator, Jacob Desvarieux, deceased in 2021. Kassav’s concert at Jazz à Vienne will pay tribute to him.

No one can resist the whirling artist, Ana Carla Maza! Celebrating the Caribbean which inspired her third album title “Caribe”, she brings along everyone who crosses her sunny path. Indeed, she is characterized by a long musical history, composed of meetings and travels. She was born only thirty years ago in Cuba, into a family of musicians, with a choirmaster mother, a jazzman father and a grandmother interested in Santería inherited from the faraway Africa. Ana Carla Maza first started singing as a child, then she learnt to play piano and, at the venerable age of eight, she finally met her instrument she strums on, she strokes and she bangs on. It’s far from being a simple cello: she considers it as her accomplice, her dance partner and her passport to cross geographical and musical borders. Thanks to her classical training, she has a precision and a virtuosity which need to loosen up with popular music: the Cuban “sound”, the Argentine tango, the Latin jazz, the Colombian cumbia or the samba of the Brazilian carnival. Free and altruistic, Ana Carla Maza sings, plays, dances and laughs, in a great sharing. She is also full of energy and emotions. In this generous and exhilarating travel, she is accompanied by musicians coming from the Caribbean, just like her, and by European instrumentalists met during her adventures, but also by dancers: it is unthinkable to listen to her without moving!

Line-up : 

• Ana Carla Maza (voice, cello)
• Gerard Serrat (trombone)
• Mily Pérez (keys)
• Luis Guerra (percussions)
• Jay Kalo (drums)
• Oscar González (dance)
• Iván Urquiaga (dance)