Cimafunk bubbled up out of Cuba, the artesian well of Latin music in 2017-18. The whole world wants a drink now. He’s known for Me voy (I’m going).

Billboard magazine named Cimafunk one of its “10 Latin Artists to Watch in 2019.”

Singer Erik Iglesias Rodríguez is from Pinar del Río, a small city in tobacco country in western Cuba. It has a slightly different cultural and musical heritage than Havana or Santiago de Cuba.

Timba is the Afro-Cuban funk-folk-jazz dance music that came up on the streets of Havana in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, it took a different spin when Cuba was completely isolated after losing its Soviet patron. Timba keeps evolving but it is Cuban dance music for Cubans.

Cimafunk is perhaps more funky. He brings that funk thread back a little deeper in the music. The Miami Herald called Cimafunk “the James Brown of Cuba.” Like James Brown he’s fun. He’ll make you wanna, “get up, get on up, get on the scene…”

Cimafunk is a cimarrón (fugitive slaves who settled in the Cuban mountains to lead a free life), a free being defying classification, a pilgrim in search of new musical miscegenation and the reunion of black music. He believes in nothing but the power of the Groove and the cathartic communion of dancing bodies. A renaissance man, conscious of his roots and musical ancestry, Cimafunk’s music looks firmly into the future.