Open the windows and let the Cuban sounds of Orquesta Akokán fill the air

For the past 17 years Daptone Records has become the country’s modern epicenter for traditional soul music, channeling the accents of R&B past through a stable of present day artists, creating at least one bonafide star — the late Sharon Jones — in the process.

The label’s steadfast view of tradition hasn’t been limited to soul, but has also never severed ties with its American roots, as witnessed by the wonderful 2016 album “Nothing More to Say,” a session of rock-steady, dub-style and reggae-fied tunes that came not from Jamaica but from a Queens-born quartet called the Frightnrs.

Friday, Daptone takes its boldest step with the debut record by Orquesta Akokán, a new band that plays vintage Cuban music as if its members had already lived a previous life through it. Some of them, in a way, have. The roster gathers native musicians devoted to the mambo tradition. Some still call Havana home while others migrated to New York. Some are artistic elders, although several are new-generation ambassadors schooled in the music’s orchestrated sway.

So the band’s gorgeous-sounding, self-titled album isn’t a modernization of the mambo, but rather a very natural and exact representation of the music as played through a battalion of cross-generational artists.

Recorded at Havana’s acclaimed Areito Studios, which boasts a working history that reaches back to the 1940s (a period that includes the famed 1990s sessions for the Buena Vista Social Club), “Orquesta Akokan” gathers what you love and, more importantly, what you have forgotten about Cuban music.

Foremost in the latter category is cool — specifically, the stately, brassy reserve that allows “Un Tabaco para Elegua” to open with a wiry, folkish string melody before blossoming into impossibly sleek rhythms. Then the band lets loose vocalist Jose “Pepito” Gomez, whose operatic sense of range and drama skyrockets the sound. The music quickly turns playful and percussive but its regal sway never abates.

The album-opening “Mambo Rapiditio” opts more for the familiar, with piano clusters from album arranger Michael Eckroth that tumble gracefully to earth, triggering the band’s ensemble glee along with melodic jabs the brass players engage in with each other. The closing “A Gozar la Vida” lets Gomez and the band bid adieu through a wave of percussion and brass that, for all its rhythmic might, never loses its cool. The effect is like that of a street parade whose musical joy lingers in the air long after the band producing it has passed from view.

As Daptone’s first Spanish language album, “Orquesta Akokán” differs from any of its previous projects. But the album’s mission of allowing musical tradition to operate as living, immediate art as opposed to remaining an under-glass museum piece is as on target as ever. With that in mind, open the windows, let the spring in and send the glorious sounds of Orquesta Akokán out into the street.

This story was originally published March 27, 2018 at 2:56 PM with the headline "Open the windows and let the Cuban sounds of Orquesta Akokán fill the air."