Biography
Orquesta Akokán burst onto the global music scene in 2018 with their no-holds-barred 21st century take on the venerable Cuban mambo lit up stages around the world with a fierce and unremitting joy. Chulo Records producer and multi instrumentalist Jacob Plasse, and arranger Michael Eckroth joined forces with César Lopez, Cuban saxophonist from Irakere. Together they assembled a carefully curated selection of Havana’s most extraordinary musicians as Orquesta Akokán, polishing Cuban mambo’s golden sound to a luminous, contemporary sheen. Along the way Orquesta Akokán imbued these legendary Cuban grooves with a renewed vitality and powerful sense of akokán —the Yoruba word used by Cubans to mean “from the heart” or “soul.
