Canter Bridge

If politics were not what they are, Cuban artist Nora Mirsy would be well-known to North American audiences, her sound refined by some powerhouse recording empire or another, her pockets quite full of royalties in the manner of a medium-sized talent.

Instead, you need to meet and hear Mirsy at a Cuban hotel like the one whose lobby hosted her on a warm night in Santiago de Cuba in 2006 or the Valentine’s Day celebration in public square of that same city two years hence. She reminded me then of a Latin Tracy Chapman and she does still. The resemblance is not close in formal terms. For me, it exists more at the level of the longing and simplicity that find themselves melded in her voice, a quality I take to be practically a Chapman signature.

Mirsy’s music is scored for a simple conjunto of traditional Cuban instruments.

The final of thirteen tracks of Como Lluvia Fiel is an artistically stirring rendition of the revolutionary paean, Hasta siempre comandante, a staple tribute to Che Guevara.