The album is a tribute to the 75th anniversary of Cuba’s accession to UNESCO and to the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
This project took place in a room of the National Museum of Fine Arts, during an intimate meeting, without concessions to the media and experts. This initiative is sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Havana.
It offers 15 songs containing a multitude of genres such as rumba and guaguancó to the choral songs of the arará matrix, passing through afro, funk, reaggue and songo.
“It is an album of entertainment and reflection that musically covers many edges of Afro-descendant origin, although it is not a folk album”, explained the famous Cuban artist in an interview. with the blog La Habana in clave de Sol (Havana in the Key of the Sun).
The author of the iconic song “Sábanas blancas”, also said that this project was conceived more than a decade ago and brings together themes that “seem to him as recurring to ethnography, raciality and other aspects…”, some of which he had composed in the 80s and at other times.
For the musical production, the Cuban label Egrem was in charge, and the arrangements of the themes of “La ruta del Esclavo” were in the hands of one of the most important Cuban musicians, maestro Joaquín Betancourt.
The director of the mixing group was Pablo Menéndez, who brought the sound of electric guitars to fourteen of the songs, Daysi Bravo and his band Obba Aré Anlé, and saxophonist Janio Abreu, among others.
With more than 30 years of artistic career, Gerardo Alfonso has accumulated numerous nominations and national awards in the recording industry.
He has composed soundtracks for local television programs as well as for the cinema of the island.