Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings will release the fourth album of Daymé Arocena in September. 

Sonocardiogram is described as a vivid return to the singer, composer, and songwriter’s Havana roots. Recording sessions with her band were all held in a simple, repurposed artist studio in Havana, Cuba. We can expect a “jazz record bedded in Afro-Cuban rhythms,” and Arocena’s most “raw and arresting” outing yet.

The title is a reference to an echocardiogram, a heart scan: Arocena wanted to mimic that medical procedure with her music. “We wanted to create something that was a snapshot of who we are inside,” she says. “We wanted it to capture our personality, our world, how we hear the music.”  

An important voice in Latin music, Daymé has collaborated with influential Cuban peers like Chucho Valdés and Pedrito Martinez, and US heavyweights like Dexter Story and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. Her last album, Cubafonía, landed in 2017, also via Brownswood, where she’s also released several EPs and two more long-players, in 2015 and ’16 respectively. 

Ahead of the album’s release, Arocena has shared lead single Trilogía, a stripped-back, enchanting exploration of her Santería spirituality. Like many of her previous outings, it’s rooted in her home of Havana, and is divided into three movements, each of them named for one of Cuba’s Santería orisha deities. 

Sonocardiogram LP lands September 6, with an album teaser below, and Triologia available here now. 

Tracklisting

01. Nangareo

02. Oyá

03. Oshún

04. Yemayá

05. Interludio

06. Porque tú no estás

07. Para el amor: Cantar!

08. As Feridas

09. Menuet para un corazón

10. Not for Me

11. Plegaria a La Lupe

12. Homenaje