Alex Cuba had to leave his birth country to find his own voice. “From my heart, I can tell you that I don’t know if I would be singing if I had stayed in Cuba,” he says. His new album, Agua del Pozo, spotlights a soulful voice that takes cues not only from the powerful musical heritage of his homeland, but from Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, and—if you count the vintage Gibson guitar—Elvis Presley. The disc could easily find itself alongside Yerba Buena or Aterciopelados, in the collection of a Latin Alternative fan, or alongside Jamiroquai and Prince, in the collection of an eclectic listener with soul and jazz leanings. 

“There is definitely a cliché in Cuba of what a singer is supposed to sound like,” Alex continues. “Cuban music is mostly performed in large ensembles. Ninety-nine percent of the time the singer is somebody that has a huge, bright voice, to command that force, right? Because of that, my father, my first music teacher, didn’t understand the quality of my voice.” Meanwhile, Alex’s fraternal twin Adonis does have “a Cuban sounding voice.” Their father was completely sold on the idea that Alex was going to be an instrumentalist. He was doing well as a bass player developing a name for himself; even winning Best Album at Cubadisco (Cuba’s equivalent to the Grammys) in 1999. But everything changed right around that time when Alex moved to Canada.

It was a symbolic moment that year when Alex walked into a second-hand store and for some reason a pair of flair cut jeans jumped out at him. “I tried them on and they were my exact size; they were just right,” remembers Alex, who wears his hair in an unabashed afro, with sideburns to match. “I realized those pants represented a lot of my musical influences. When I went to Canada I found it to be a very open place; a new country, in many ways. They will take any form of art, as long as it’s natural or honest. So I found a lot of space here to be myself. I put on those pants and that look was very in tune with my sound. The ’70s had a great impact on my music even though I was born in 1974. I believe I am now a mix between the ’70s and somewhere in the late ’90s and on to the future. When I step on stage, that is the first thing you will get from me. You can see my identity as well as hear it in my music.”

When Alex visited Cuba this year, some Cubans spoke to him in English, thinking he was a foreigner with his style of dress. One woman looked at him and said, “Hey you, Michael Jackson. Where do you come from?” The unexpected combination of Alex’s style and his new home spurred Exclaim Magazine to write: “Five years ago it would have been inconceivable that some of the most inimitable Cuban music today was coming not from the land of the son or the barrios of New York but an isolated, rural area of British Columbia, in the form of a baby-faced, afro-haired, Cuban immigrant that could surpass Seu Jorge in coolness factor.” But it is just this juxtaposition that gave Alex the freedom to find his own voice, exploring sounds that resonated from his past, Cuban and otherwise.

The “Feeling” movement in Cuba, which uses a blues and jazz guitar approach to boleros, had a strong impact on the music of Alex’s father. Alex also remembers his father playing Spanish versions of Elvis Presley and Beatles songs. “I didn’t even realize they were Elvis songs until I saw a Canadian reacting to him playing in our kitchen!” says Alex. Alex had stayed away from the electric guitar because he thought everyone would think, “There’s a Latin guy with an electric guitar. He must think he’s Santana.” But once he was in this new setting, where he could draw freely from whatever moved him, he realized he liked the old electric guitar sound and got himself a vintage Gibson, which is featured throughout the new album. “Plus I found out that whoever had the guitar in his hand is the leader of the band,” chuckles Alex.

“In Cuba we all play for musicians. If you look at the Buena Vista Social Club, an American producer flies down there, puts a bunch of old people together and changed again the way the world looked at Cuban music,” exclaims Alex. “It took an outsider to find the most important thing in Cuban music: the essence. That is what is going to appeal to people. The rest will appeal to musicians, but the song will appeal to people. And there are more people in the world than musicians,” laughs Alex. “I want to play for people. I try to play the essence.”