tracks/canciones
1	MUJERES ENAMÓRENME
2	MARIA CRISTINA
3	RUMBA BLANCA
4	LA MAZUCAMBA
5	FILIBERTO
6	PARA QUE APRENDAS
7	SE ME FUE LA MONTUNA
8	MARIA ISABEL
9	FRUTAS DE ESPAÑA
10	MI SON CUBANO
11	SABANIMAR
12	EL TELEVISOR
13	NO VUELVAS POR MI PERDÓN
14	A PRIMERA VISTA
15	UN BRUJO EN GUANABACOA
16	OJOS PERDIDOS
17	MISERIA

Paolo Franco (vocals), producer, creator of the Club Musical Oriente Cubano project,  also sung in a few tracks, selected the songs to be recorded and contributed with his ideas to the arrangements.

Ismael Borges (vocals and maracas) is a fantastic singer and one of the best maracas player of all times. He is a great sonero, a formidable guarachero, and a member of the Septeto Santiaguero.

José Luis “Cheo” Losada: (vocals and guitar) is a very good singer, guitarist and composer, former member of Sones de Oriente, Estudiantina Invasora and many other groups. He wrote one track, the previously unedited Ojos Perdidos, and contributed to most of the arrangements.

Grisselles Gómez (vocals) is a talented singer, member of the famous Coro Orfeón de Santiago de Cuba. On one track, La Mazucamba, she sings all three female vocals, just listen to it and judge for yourselves!

Victor Lussón (vocals), of Congolese origins, is the Afro – side of the project;

Felix Reyes (double bass, choir) swings! He should be named el ciego maravilloso (the wonderful blind man) if Arsenio Rodríguez had not already taken – and indeed deserved - that name.

Lázaro Rosabal (trombone), musician, composer and former musical director of the well known group Son 14, arranger of many tracks, presently lives in Havana where he leads his big band, Lázaro Rosabal y su Banda Tropical.

Comments by Paolo Franco producer, creator of the Club Musical Oriente Cubano project

Back in the summer of 1997, my brother said, “Listen to this CD. It’s good. It’s Ry Cooder with Cuban musicians.” It was the Buena Vista Social Club and the album drove me wild.

Many new listeners of Cuban traditional music, conquered by Buena Vista Social Club, still tended to identify Cuban music with Havana. However, the cradle of this music was actually the Eastern Region, and after all Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, Eliades Ochoa had all been born and musically trained in Santiago de Cuba.

In 1998, after I had become a huge Cuban traditional-music fan, I travelled to Santiago de Cuba. There, in the Casa de la Trova – a place that is to son what the Cotton Club was to jazz – I met Victor Lussón, whom I later consider one of my best friends. Working there as a waiter, I didn’t suspect he had been a singer and one of the founding members of Melodias de Ayer, the group that originated the Septeto Santiaguero. I told him my idea of making a musical project, based in Santiago, as a reply from Eastern Cuba to the West, and Havana-based, Buena Vista Social Club.

The spirit of the project had to be that of the contestaciones (replies) in vogue in Cuba in the 1930s, when the lyrics of Sindo Garay’s and Manuel Corona’s teams’ songs replied to each other, creating a spirit, therefore, of emulation rather than of imitation. Victor liked the idea and a new project was born: the Club Musical Oriente Cubano, meaning Eastern Cuba’s Music Club.

As a deep connoisseur of Santiago’s musical scene, Victor introduced me to many local musicians, and among them, we began selecting the singers and performers for the first album. There had to be many, because, like in the Buena Vista project, the musicians all had to vary according to what each song required. Our main goal was choosing a repertoire of outstanding but lesser known songs, and I felt the right moment had come to actually start the project when in 2000 the son of Ñico Saquito made me listen to an unreleased live demo of one of his father’s uncountable songs, En mi Viejo Santiago, whose lyrics also provided the album’s title, Caña, Tabaco y Ron (Sugarcane, Tobacco and Rum).

Recorded in Santiago de Cuba between the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001, the first album was released in late 2002. With the Cuban music craze fading and the album being published by a small independent label, our Club lacked the live performances it needed to support the album’s release and did not become a commercial success. Nevertheless, its critical acclaim motivated me to go on. After all, All Music Guide rated it 4 stars out of 5 and was selected as an “album pick” by AMG!

Recording in 2004, I started selecting songs for the new album that will be available worldwide in all music stores on this April 9, 2007, released by FEMI, a branch of Fuego Entertainment Inc. Titled Algo Ritmo, our second album has 17 tracks with a wide variety of Cuban rhythms.

With this second release, and even more intriguing than the first, the Club Musical Oriente Cubano is still digging into the roots of Afro-Cuba and beyond, including tracks with a Cubanly-flavored Mexican bolero, a Spanish pop song turned “pop-son,” and a previously unreleased and unconventional bolero-son-cumbia penned by Club’s member Cheo Losada.

Nevertheless, Algo Ritmo is mainly a tribute to legendary figures of Cuban music, such as Pérez Prado, Benny Moré, Armando Oréfiche, Orlando De La Rosa, Compay Segundo, Miguel Matamoros, Roberto Torres, Ignacio Piñeiro, Celia Cruz, Sexteto Nacional, La Sonora Matancera, Guillermo Portabales, Manuel “Puntillita” Licea, Julio Cueva, Ñico Saquito, Reynaldo Hierrezuelo a.k.a. Rey Caney, Joseíto Fernández, Abelardo Barroso, a tribute that mainly privileges lesser known gems of these greats, in a wide range of genres.

About the songs:
MUJERES ENAMÓRENME is the perfect introduction for the band, as it was for the Sexteto Nacional back in the1920’s. MARIA CRISTINA is nothing less than a mambo by Dámaso Pérez Prado originally sung by Benny Moré when these two giants of Cuban music were still performing together. Then comes RUMBA BLANCA, a “classic” by Armando Oréfiche, leader and pianist of Lecuona Cuban Boys, followed by a delicious rumbíta by the Santiaguero composer Orlando De La Rosa, LA MAZUCAMBA, recently re-proposed in a swinging salsa version by Oscar D’Leon. FILIBERTO gives us a chance to remember both Compay Segundo, who wrote it, and Miguel Matamoros, who duetted with Compay on the original version. PARA QUE APRENDAS is a tribute to the great Cuban singer Roberto Torres, who popularized it, whereas the following SE ME FUE LA MONTUNA pays homage to the mastery of Ignacio Piñeiro. MARIA ISABEL is the first experiment on the album: a Spanish pop song of the golden decade (the 1960’s) played as a son and thus resulting in a pop-son. FRUTAS DE ESPAÑA gives the nostalgic “aficionados” a chance to revive the memory of a very young Celia Cruz singing with La Sonora Matancera. MI SON CUBANO is a proud declaration of love for Cuban music from the unforgettable author of “El Carretero,” “Don” Guillermo Portabales, the “King of the Dance Hall Guajira.” Manuel “Puntillita” Licea used to sing SABANIMAR when he was a singer in the Orchestra of Julio Cueva, the author of this anthem. And what a pleasure having had the opportunity to propose one of the most entertaining though least known guarachas by Ñico Saquito, EL TELEVISOR! The following three songs were popularized by three more Cuban super stars: NO VUELVAS POR MI PERDÓN by Reynaldo Hierrezuelo a.k.a. Rey Caney; A PRIMERA VISTA by Joseíto Fernández, the author of “Guajira Guantanamera”; UN BRUJO EN GUANABACOA by Abelardo “Caruso” Barroso. With high time for a new, unreleased song, OJOS PERDIDOS was penned by Club’s pride Cheo Losada. Finally, the closing track, MISERIA, is the second experiment being a Cubanly flavored version of a classic and countlessly covered Mexican bolero of the 1930’s.