Cuban music usually gives you images of old men playing beautiful arrangements that evoke the 1950’s, old cars, cigars and rum usually come to mind. You don’t hear a lot of music by new, young artists, so this album produced by Irish producer Bob Jackson is something different.
Erdwin Garcia, a 26 old singer songwriter who lives in Trinidad de Cuba, makes a living playing gigs and teaching. Erdwin recently made a set of demo tracks for an album, which he and his accompanying musicians decided it needed to be re-recorded – from scratch, no loops or edits, it had to be played properly.
The story
Trinidad is a city on Cuba’s Caribbean coast, about five hours drive from Havana, it’s a UNESCO world heritage site full of old buildings, cobbled with history and culture, it’s everything Havana isn’t – relaxing and easy to get around according to Erdwin. There are venues everywhere, once it gets dark in Trinidad it’s like there’s a music festival in full swing – every single night! A place ideal for the Cuban singer songwriter to develop his skills.
In July 2009 Irish producer and lecturer Bob Jackson was on holiday in Cuba. At the opening of an art exhibition Bob heard Erdwin Garcia and his band, they were introduced and spent the next few days recording a demo using a handheld recorder. Bob flew back to Ireland, edited and mixed the demo and sent the CD’s back to Erdwin.
July 2011 saw Bob back in Trinidad with a mobile recording studio he had sneaked into Cuba in his suitcase. There started a search for a suitable place to record – ‘with decent acoustics, silence and (preferably) air conditioning!’
Studios, let alone guitar strings and drum skins were in short supply. The skin on one of the bongo drums used by Pablo on this album is made from two X-ray sheets. If you look at the videos on (www.erdwingarcia.com) it’s the darker coloured skin on the smaller drum. They could even see the bones when held to the light according to the duo.
July is not the best month to record an album in a room with no air-conditioning in most parts of the world, so Cuba wasn’t exactly the best either. But having tried to get permission to use/rent locations, nothing worked out. In the end, with 6 days left the only choice was to record in a friend’s bedroom – with ‘newspaper for toilet roll, this was not Abbey Rd studios…’
In the summer of 2011, a heatwave, noisey birds and some improvisation made It was possible to record for about 12 minutes (about 3 takes) and then everything had to be shut down, fans turned on for the computer – which came dangerously close to going on fire a couple of times – and the blankets pulled from the shutters to get some air into the room.
When Bob returned to Ireland, a few more problems occurred. It wasn’t possible to send mp3’s from Ireland to Cuba, so Erdwin couldn’t give quick feedback on the editing and mixing stages of the production.
Disappearing CDs
Apparently, if you post a CD to Cuba it disappears, if you send it by registered mail it disappears. In order to send a CD that costs 12 cents you have to send it with a courier that costs over €50, even then it can take over 8 weeks to actually be delivered, so every few months when the latest versions were sent to Erdwin there was about a 3 month delay in getting feedback. It wasn’t as easy as uploading the files to Dropbox or Soundcloud.
Bob’s side of the story also has a funny twist, when Erdwin was asked recently to have a look at the YouTube videos created for the songs he emailed back ‘What is YouTube?’.
Outcome
It seems like a story of music making in its simplest beautiful from. No distractions of the technologic kind, just a learning curve for both Bob and Erdwin. There are plans to bring Erdwin over to Ireland for some shows in the near future also.
Erdwin’s album in out Friday 27 June 2014 on www.erdwingarcia.com
**UPDATE**
a FUND IT campaign to bring Erdwin and his band to Ireland for gigs in September has just been launched, which would be Erdwin’s first every trip out of Cuba!
*Booking and website duties were undertaking by Bob and co. in case you’re wondering how he managed to make a website and not have YouTube.
RobMoro 
Cuban music usually gives you images of old men playing beautiful arrangements that evoke the 1950’s, old cars, cigars and rum usually come to mind. You don’t hear a lot of music by new, young artists, so this album produced by Irish producer Bob Jackson is something different.
Erdwin Garcia, a 26 old singer songwriter who lives in Trinidad de Cuba, makes a living playing gigs and teaching. Erdwin recently made a set of demo tracks for an album, which he and his accompanying musicians decided it needed to be re-recorded – from scratch, no loops or edits, it had to be played properly.
The story
Trinidad is a city on Cuba’s Caribbean coast, about five hours drive from Havana, it’s a UNESCO world heritage site full of old buildings, cobbled with history and culture, it’s everything Havana isn’t – relaxing and easy to get around according to Erdwin. There are venues everywhere, once it gets dark in Trinidad it’s like there’s a music festival in full swing – every single night! A place ideal for the Cuban singer songwriter to develop his skills.
In July 2009 Irish producer and lecturer Bob Jackson was on holiday in Cuba. At the opening of an art exhibition Bob heard Erdwin Garcia and his band, they were introduced and spent the next few days recording a demo using a handheld recorder. Bob flew back to Ireland, edited and mixed the demo and sent the CD’s back to Erdwin.
July 2011 saw Bob back in Trinidad with a mobile recording studio he had sneaked into Cuba in his suitcase. There started a search for a suitable place to record – ‘with decent acoustics, silence and (preferably) air conditioning!’
Studios, let alone guitar strings and drum skins were in short supply. The skin on one of the bongo drums used by Pablo on this album is made from two X-ray sheets. If you look at the videos on (www.erdwingarcia.com) it’s the darker coloured skin on the smaller drum. They could even see the bones when held to the light according to the duo.
July is not the best month to record an album in a room with no air-conditioning in most parts of the world, so Cuba wasn’t exactly the best either. But having tried to get permission to use/rent locations, nothing worked out. In the end, with 6 days left the only choice was to record in a friend’s bedroom – with ‘newspaper for toilet roll, this was not Abbey Rd studios…’
In the summer of 2011, a heatwave, noisey birds and some improvisation made It was possible to record for about 12 minutes (about 3 takes) and then everything had to be shut down, fans turned on for the computer – which came dangerously close to going on fire a couple of times – and the blankets pulled from the shutters to get some air into the room.
When Bob returned to Ireland, a few more problems occurred. It wasn’t possible to send mp3’s from Ireland to Cuba, so Erdwin couldn’t give quick feedback on the editing and mixing stages of the production.
Disappearing CDs
Apparently, if you post a CD to Cuba it disappears, if you send it by registered mail it disappears. In order to send a CD that costs 12 cents you have to send it with a courier that costs over €50, even then it can take over 8 weeks to actually be delivered, so every few months when the latest versions were sent to Erdwin there was about a 3 month delay in getting feedback. It wasn’t as easy as uploading the files to Dropbox or Soundcloud.
Bob’s side of the story also has a funny twist, when Erdwin was asked recently to have a look at the YouTube videos created for the songs he emailed back ‘What is YouTube?’.
Outcome
It seems like a story of music making in its simplest beautiful from. No distractions of the technologic kind, just a learning curve for both Bob and Erdwin. There are plans to bring Erdwin over to Ireland for some shows in the near future also.
Erdwin’s album in out Friday 27 June 2014 on www.erdwingarcia.com
**UPDATE**
a FUND IT campaign to bring Erdwin and his band to Ireland for gigs in September has just been launched, which would be Erdwin’s first every trip out of Cuba!
*Booking and website duties were undertaking by Bob and co. in case you’re wondering how he managed to make a website and not have YouTube.
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