Cuban artist Cimafunk is a true phenomenon. In 2018, he released the single ‘Me Voy’ and – so the legend goes – the whole island went crazy. Cimafunk draws from Cuban rhythms and traditions, adds African-American flavours and reaches a modern version of funk. There are nods to the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s, but Cimafunk adds enough uniqueness to create a unique result that catches on not only in his homeland but also in the US and Europe. Even George Clinton – the funk grandmaster of Parliament and Funkadelic – is a fan; « Cimafunk takes it back there while keeping it in the now. It’s what we do, always reinventing the Funk to keep it fresh. »

Yet Cimafunk is more than just irresistibly groovy music. The name of his project refers to the ‘cimarrón’, Cubans of African descent who rebelled against slavery. With his music, Cimafunk also wants to rebel against mainstream genre thinking or conservative approaches to music. In his lyrics, he describes the daily life of Cubans with clever metaphors and double meanings. And even live, he goes on a rampage as if every performance could be the last. It even earned him a comparison to James Brown in The New Yorker. Well, who are we to question that? Let’s go!