Kengo

Thank you everybody who voted for us – and thank you panel for judging in our favour (and Jo Brand for giving us the deciding vote!). After an evening of amazing dance performances, we are through to the grand finale next Saturday – so please do support us again – and it’s all for a very good cause! It was an amazing experience not only working with Fatima but performing with Patrick Monahan, Oliver and Watson, Ortis and Susie and Roland Rivron! Roland’s routine of Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” routine was something special!

It’ll be a while before we’ll be able to wake up in the morning and walk onto Bondi Beach, but for now, our antipodean tour has come to an end. It has been an awesome experience playing alongside such artists as Erykah Badu, Greg Wilson, Africa Hitech, Hudson Mohawke… but we return to London and straight into the studio for 2 days of gruelling rehearsals with Fatima Whitbread in preparation for “Let’s Dance for Sports Relief.”

The Cuban Brothers will be performing on “Let’s Dance” on BBC on March 10th, with Fatima Whitbread!
If you grew up in the 80s, you would remember Ms Whitbread, a world champion and Olympic medalist javelin thrower, I remember her being so much more than just an athlete; a big personality and celebrity.
So it was with great anticipation that we met the legendary Fatima Whitbread for the first time for a rehearsal in the studio. Tune in on March 10th to see how it went down – and yes, do vote for us!

It’s a pity that The Playground Weekender has been cancelled due to danger of flooding. New South Wales has been hit with the heaviest rain in more than a century!! So instead, we will be playing tomorrow (Sunday 4th) at the USNW Roundhouse alongside Shapeshifter, UNKLE, Bonobo, Roots Manuva and Greg Wilson. Those with festival tickets will be able to enter any of the newly allocated shows and there will be tickets to buy on the door too. Rain don’t stop the party!

If you are in Sydney at the moment, you’ll see us on the cover of MX magazine – the free listings magazine! Thank you to Señor Chris Pavlich for one of the most painless and professional photo shoots ever and to Celia for organizing it. Respectos!

Hola friends! We’re enjoying the Summer over here in Sydney (sorry Northern hemisphere guys), and we’re getting stuck right in!

Splore Festival, about an hour’s drive from Auckland is set on Tapapakanga National Park. To one side of the main stage is the beach and on the other a gentle slope that makes for a natural amphitheatre. We arrived on site on Friday evening to catch Erykah Badu’s set – her performance was spot-on mixing in new material with reworked classics from her Baduizm and Mama’s Gun albums.
By the time it was our slot at 9pm on saturday evening, the crowd were really ready to party as we certainly were! We hope everyone enjoyed the show as much as we did as we were faced with a sea of smiling faces – we’d prepared some numbers from our forthcoming album so it was great to finally play them out!
Thank you to John, Amanda, Helen, Kris, JJ, Duane… and the whole Splore team for a great festival. Shout out also to Africa Hitech, DJ Qbert, Hudson Mohawke and Shortee Blitz for the good times!

The wonderful Splore site looking onto the main stage

Thursday 1st December sees the CBs, the live band incarnation of the Cuban Brothers play the prestigious Jazz Café. It’s the live band so it IS very much about the music, but also expect the usual Cubano antics of fun and action. Support will be provided by DJ Kengo San and the amazing Dirty Word.

Another fun night at the Paradise by way of Kensal Green! Check out the pictures on our facebook page!
Thanks as usual to Shelley, Inga and team and big up to the best DJ in London at the moment, DJ Khalil for rocking the crowd before and after the show.

The festival season is now over – so to review the season was the festival awards. Someone told me that 32 festivals were cancelled this year (don’t know if that’s true) but I guess that goes to show how many festivals are around these days!

Check here for a full line up of the award winners. The Cubans hosted the awards presenting best major festival to Glastobury, medium sized to Secret Garden Festival and the small festival was “End of the Road”. Fan’s favourite went to Bestival and a new category this year “Best toilets” went to Y-Not festival!

The evening’s entertainment was provided by Luke Benson, Trevor Locke – a poetry performance by John Cooper Clarke and DJing by Paolo Nutini who won the award for Best Headline Performace.

John Cooper Clarke performs his "guest list" piece