Ry Cooder is an iconoclast and a searcher, and when he chooses his collaborators, he tends to ally himself with characters just as fiercely enigmatic. This is to be expected from a man who pores through discarded, cheap guitars, looking for a sound or tone he hasn’t yet heard (except in his mind).
It was during his visits to Cuba for the Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club project that Cooder first made contact with the otherworldly jazz-surf twang of guitarist Manuel Galbán (formerly of doo-woppers Los Zafiros). Galbán is a big man with thick hands who uses guitar strings heavy enough to tether a boat in a storm. He learned his craft on the traditional, three-stringed tres, and you can hear the vestiges of that training in his bright, rhythmic runs on the electric guitar.
Mambo Sinuendo is remarkable not only for Galbán’s playing and an unearthly musical meld (Afro-Cuban, high-art twang, ’50s pop-jazz and mambo), but also for Cooder’s sheer generosity and intelligence as a collaborator. While Galbán lays out his bold liquid tones, Cooder hangs back and weaves textures, often announcing himself in response to one of Galbán’s flourishes. The effect is often that of one instrument, with Cooder sublimating his own personality to dissolve into the muse of his collaborator.
A Cuban rhythm section supplemented by Ry’s son Joachim and super-drummer Jim Keltner bolsters the album, which was recorded in Havana. The guitars are the show, however, and when the arrangement is stripped back in Faine/Webster’s “Secret Love” to just Cooder, Galbán, and some unobtrusive rhythm, the result is pure grace. Galbán feels and noodles his way along the unfamiliar landscape, gorgeously evoking a little Duane Eddy here and there, until Cooder merges with him. In these moments, there seems to be four hands and one heart.
The point of departure for Mambo Sinuendo was the Americanized pop-jazz with which Perez Prado filled Cuban nightclubs in the late 1950s. The result, however, is music from another realm — one in which embargoes crumble and the great finned Cadillac of the album cover drifts through the streets of Havana.
