Calle Salud

With age-defying suppleness, Cuban vocalist (and nonagenarian) Compay Segundo helped supercharge the 1997 smash Buena Vista Social Club and, in 1998, his own Lo Mejor de la Vida with his full-bodied voice. Calle Salud, then, comes in 1999 on the tail of both artistic and commercial zeniths and unfolds a series of songs that remains resolutely in the same laid-back realm as Segundo's other late-1990s successes. If anything, Calle Salud is more lush, more embedded in the layers of clarinets that sway as if trying to stay cool on a humid, tropical afternoon. The woody burnish of the licorice sticks, along with the loosely strung guitar and bass and the subtle bed of percussion, makes a pliable cushion for Segundo's rich vocals. He sings with a mixture of cool distance and unflinching commitment to the music's inherent romance. He sings as if at any moment his voice could drop into a full baritone and bellow forth, but instead he lays back with the guitars and keeps the music at an imaginatively rendered slow stroll. It's no wonder that Cuba has nurtured--whether on purpose or not--such talents as this, what with the island's legs in the Afro-Caribbean and its heart worn on its songs. Even in his 90s, Segundo leaves listeners feeling as if something both supremely new and deeply ensconced in tradition has happened in their presence.