Aquella Boca, Grupo Cañambú, recorded by author on August 1st, 2004, with permission

It’s really winter here in Paris. No snow, but lots of fog and cold rain. When I’m waiting for the train on the elevated platform at metro Dupleix, and I feel my butt start to go numb, I try to remember the steamy, drippy heat of long nights in Santiago de Cuba.

There’s a tiny little club in Santiago, just slightly hard to find, called “La Casa de las Tradiciones.” It doesn’t feel like a club - more like a living room, with a guy serving drinks through the window out to the back courtyard. At night there’s just enough room for people to dance close, wrapped around each other, while a band plays son crammed against the far wall.

This band, called Cañambú, make Buena Vista look like the avant-garde, not because they’re old or anything - in fact, most of them are in there late 20s - but because they really stick to the old style son. Here’s their version of “Aquella Boca,” a tune recorded by the Septeto Habanero in the late 1920s. Listen to that tone in the voice of the lead singer, like the insistent whine of Abelardo Barroso when he sang with Habanero, and imagine that tiny room filled with dripping, hot dancers, bobbing and swaying as one mass, swinging together.