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Basing himself off the works of Cuban guitarist-composers José Angel Navarro and Hector Angulo, Italian guitarist Walter Zanetti intimately recreates sacred Afro-Cuban batá drum songs on guitar.

“Santería draws heavily on music for its ceremonies. This Afro-Cuban syncretic religion, sometimes called La Regla de Ocha, saw the Orisha deities of the West African Yoruba peoples codified with Catholic saints. Yoruba practitioners, brought by force to the West, continued to worship their gods under the nose of those who sought to dehumanize them by adopting their spiritual language.

The chants that became Santería’s prayers were often accompanied by the beat of the batá drum. This heartbeat runs through every invocation, through every sacred song. In the same way that the shuffling chains on the feet of enslaved African peoples dancing defiantly in Colombia birthed the distinctive rhythm of cumbia, syncretism has been present in music as much as it has in religion. It has always been about challenging the odds, about creation, creativity, and heart.

This is why Italian musician Walter Zanetti’s guitar pierces straight to the soul on his Cantos Yoruba de Cuba. The guitarist’s latest album, light-years’ seventh release and its first outside the realm of electronic music, draws directly from the work of Cuban guitarist-composers José Angel Navarro and the late Hector Angulo. The 15-track album of new recordings from Zanetti brings together six original compositions by Navarro dictated to the Italian guitarist on a month-long trip to Cuba and reinterpretations of Angulo’s nine original Cantos Yoruba de Cuba, which give the record its name.”