Alex Cuba Relishes Tiny Desk Appearance and First Grammy Win

Since moving from his native Cuba to Canada in 1999, singer-songwriter Alex Cuba has accumulated a number of significant awards and built his musical resume with guest appearances and production credits. He just won his first Grammy, and that award follows four Latin Grammys and two Canadian JUNO Awards.

The songwriter behind half of the Spanish language album by Canada’s Nelly Furtado, Cuba also recently paid tribute to Carlos Santana at the 24th Annual Hispanic Heritage Awards alongside the Black Pumas and Juanes and has collaborated with Latin artists such as Pablo Milanés, Lila Downs, Leonel García and Cimafunk. Most recently, Cuba was recognized as writer and producer on a track Omara Portuondo’s Latin Grammy-winning album, and he delivered a rousing Tiny Desk performance, something he describes as one of 2023’s highlights.

“To be completely honest, I had expected to do [the Tiny Desk series] a lot sooner in my career, but I was grateful it happened,” says Alex Cuba via phone from a Canadian studio where he was doing some recording prior to embarking on a spring tour that includes a May 1 stop at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “It’s quite the thing. You have to change the way you play. It’s a tiny place, and you have to play super quiet. You’re there, and you go, ‘Really? This is what it is.’ Some musicians go there and break down. They’ve been dreaming and then they realize you need to play differently. But it was an amazing experience. My fans around the world loved it.”

Cuba grew up in Cuba and immersed himself in music at a very young age. He joined his father’s jazz group of 24 guitarists and toured the globe with them, learning from his father’s “encyclopedic knowledge of Cuban music.”

“I had a pristine youth,” he says. “I compare it now to where I am, and I can’t help but to feel very lucky. All of the conditions were there for me to naturally grow into music and harvest what it takes to be a musician. I had opportunities that a lot of people don’t have today.”

Even at an early age, Cuba, whose music draws from rock, funk, jazz and pop, embraced a wide range of musical styles. At age 11, he saw Michael Jackson perform on TV, and the experience was life-changing.

“Life was changed from that point forward,” he says. “ To this day, I don’t know how Cuban TV put Michael Jackson on TV. Maybe someone made a mistake and was fired the next day. I’m very grateful. All of a sudden, I heard [Jackson]. it was so impactful that I ended up learning how to dance like Michael, and I started dressing up like Michael, so I could look like Michael. Music started calling inside of me.”

At age 14, he saw someone playing an electric bass and decided he just had to have one.

“I saw this instrument for the first time in my life, and I said to my dad, ‘What is that? I want one,'” he recalls. “My dad was a teacher at a house of culture. It’s a music center where they teach all forms of art to kids for free. It’s an amazing program. My father knew there was an electric bass there that nobody was interested to play. He got it for me. That’s when life when got interesting. I went into jazz, jazz fusion, rock, blues, punk. I closed myself in my room and never saw the sunlight again.”

He’s exaggerating, of course, about never seeing the sunlight again, but at that time, he also started writing his own songs and channeling those influences into his music.

His career took another turn when he got married and moved to Canada, where he began his career as a singer-songwriter based in Smithers, BC. His solo debut, Humo De Tobaco, earned him a Juno award for World Music Album of the Year in 2006. Cuba as steadily recording and touring when the pandemic hit in 2020. Unabated, he recorded at home in 2021. The resulting album, Mendó, took home the 2022 Grammy for best Latin Pop Album. It was Cuba’s fourth nomination and first win.

The album kicks off with “Hablando x Hablar,” a funky tune that finds Cuba collaborating with the Grammy-nominated Cuban musician Cimafunk.

“It was super meaningful,” Cuba says of the Grammy win. “I have won four Latin Grammys before, but in the music world, the ‘American Grammy’ as we call it, is the Holy Grail. We’re always aiming for that. It happened when I least expected it. I recorded the album in the middle of the pandemic by myself in my living room. I didn’t have a studio. We added all the guest vocalists and horns that we did in Cuba.”

Last year, Cuba released his most recent album, El Swing Que Yo Tengo. With its thick bass grooves, the title track really shows off his love for funk.

Cuba says he looks forward to returning to Cleveland and is a fan of the Rock Hall. And if the Johnny Cash bus is on the plaza and open to the public, he’ll be the first in line.

“I love Cleveland,” he says. “I’ve been there to check out the Rock Hall, and the last time I was there, I really wanted to jump on Johnny Cash’s tour bus, but they wouldn’t let me do it.”

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