Kenny Young, Founder and Trustee of APE, explains how the project emerged: "The project was sparked off by the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The idea came in to do a project with The Buena Vista Social Club to fuse their Latin sounds with Western artists and their familiar popular songs. The project evolved when more environmental disasters struck—the Asian Earthquakes and Hurricane Katrina. But the big picture was climate change. You can call these natural disasters but after all the research and scientific data, we know that we're at least partly to blame for some of these disasters. Global warming is now in the news daily. If we don't act in the time frame our experts give us, our grandchildren will curse us eternally."[1]
Thom Yorke comments, "We need a law, we need to have the Government put climate change in its place. If you leave industry to sort it out on a voluntary basis that's never going to happen. So everybody, if they've got any concerns about climate change, has to register that concern with their Government officials because it's the only way to go."[1]
Charity
Album proceeds benefits the environmental nonprofit organization Artists Project Earth, which raises awareness and funds for climate change projects and for disaster relief efforts. The artists on this album fully support the record as a commitment to the music and to the cause that it endorses.
Music
The main recording sessions took place in Havana at Abdala Studios from April 2005 to June 2006 and mixed at Lazy Moon Studios (UK). While the majority of the vocals remain the same, the musicians of the Buena Vista Social Club reworked the original orchestration from each song and created something utterly unique, casting their trademark mastery over each track. Rhythms Del Mundo includes restructured tracks such as "Clocks" by Coldplay, "Better Together" by Jack Johnson, "She Will Be Loved" by Maroon 5, "High and Dry" by Radiohead, "Dancing Shoes" by Arctic Monkeys and "Modern Way" by Kaiser Chiefs, as well as other popular songs.
In Summer 2008, the first follow-up album, Rhythms del Mundo – Cubano Alemán was released in Germany, with some popular German artists recording Cuban remakes of their songs in Cuba and other artists sending their songs to Cuba, waiting for a Cuban remake to rerecord the voice over the now Latin music recorded in Cuba by Cuban artists. The CD was a charity project for a climate protection project, "Artists' Project Earth".
AMG rates Rhythms del Mundo: Cuba with 4.5 out of 5 stars and goes on to praise the flawless musicianship, the inspired arrangements and also the timeless quality of some of the tracks.[2]
