The Future Will Come to You: Arema Arega and "Ay"

Today's random tune is called Ay and is performed by Cuban singer-songwriter Arema Arega. Born in Voronezh, Russia to an Ethiopian father and a Cuban mother, Arega grew up in Cuba, discovering music at the age of 14. She currently supports herself with her music and doing illustrations and drawings for books and magazines - a skill she learned when she thought she wanted to be a painter. Her repertoire consists of over 200 songs, and once during a practice session in Havana's Plaza de Armas, she impressed Sting and gave him a CD. He said he'd be in touch, but later she realized she never gave him a way to contact her. However, her music is all over Havana's radios. She can play in styles ranging from soul to rap to trova, and she can sing in multiple languages, including English and French. A couple of years ago, Gilles Peterson found her and asked her to appear on his Cuban compilation album. Ay is from that album, called Gilles Peterson Presents Havana Cultura: Anthology, released in 2016. The song reminds us to live in the present, and not to worry about the future because the future will come to us.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Source: https://havana-club.com/en-ww/havana-cultura/arema-arega