Global Beat: Cimafunk
Photo: Jeremy Tauriac
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It’s late January and Cuban-funk hero Cimafunk is enjoying a rare day of relaxation in New Orleans amid a truly whirlwind winter.
The singer/producer has just returned from his native Cuba, where he participated in the fourth-annual Getting Funky in Havana, a cultural exchange program organized by Trombone Shorty that included performances and workshops in Cuban schools. And he is about to fly to Los Angeles to attend the Grammys, where his electrifying third album, Pa’ Tu Cuerpa is nominated for Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album.
When Cimafunk, who was born Erik Rodríguez, speaks about the constant movement in his life these days, he’s filled with gratitude—but not surprise. This man has been itching to make something of himself since he was a child.
Cimafunk—whose friends affectionately call Cima—grew up in Pinar del Río, a small city 100 miles from Havana, surrounded by family. His fondest memories are dancing around his house with a swirl of grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, cousins and siblings all singing Cuban classics and American funk and soul music. As a kid, Cima sang in church, but his more ambitious pop-star dreams remained hazy in the background.
Bowing to family pressure, Cima studied medicine, but a trip to Havana to visit his sister blasted his eyes wide open.
“It was my first visit to Havana. I felt the environment, the flow, the feeling of people in the streets, the music everywhere. When I came back to university, I just couldn’t focus,” he says, before adding with a laugh, “Better to be a bad son than a bad surgeon.” Cimafunk dropped out of med school, packed his bags and raced back to Havana, where he spent a year bouncing from couch to couch—taking singing gigs where he could, selling his songs to other performers and earning extra cash painting houses.
Eventually, Cima landed a spot as a background vocalist for Raul Paz, a major Cuban star also from Pinar del Río. Yet his big break actually came from his refusal to fit in.
“Everyone on stage was super elegant, dressed in black. But I dressed crazy—a small red and white shirt from my sister, tight pants ripped in the knees, funky glasses. I was calling attention to myself. That performance was broadcast on national Cuban TV, and it kept getting replayed,” he remembers. “People would stop me on the street and say, ‘Oh, you’re the background singer!’”
As he developed his own material and saved money, Cimafunk spent eight months performing with several other Cubans as part of a cruise ship band, docking in Greece and Turkey. By the time he returned to Cuba, he was ready to hunker down, rent an apartment and focus on the music that became his debut album—2017’s Terapia. His years dancing with his family at home and orbiting Havana’s music scene informed a blazing fusion sound—Afro-Cuban rhythms, hip-hop swagger, smooth R&B grooves.
Terapia brought Cima into the Cuban mainstream, but it was his follow up, 2021’s El Alimento, that truly transformed him into a global force. The record received a Grammy nomination and launched him and his band, the nine-piece hurricane La Tribu (The Tribe) into tours all around the world. And it was during the quiet moments on those global jaunts that Pa’ Tu Cuerpa’s feel began to take shape in while Cima hunkered down in numerous remote hotel rooms.
This time around, Cimafunk wanted to make a fully collaborative album, capturing the shared-energy and party starting feeling so core to his live shows. Cima created each song’s skeleton on his own, then brought in friends and mentors to bring them to life. In addition to La Tribu members, several guest voices and musicians appear on seven of the album’s 11 tracks— names that Relix readers know and love. Trombone Shorty, of course, lends his horn blasts to the fast-and-furious bass jam “I Don’t Care.” (The two have been friends for years and are currently partners in Shorty’s Getting Funky in Havana.)
Guitarist Eric Krasno adds some whipping lines to the classic hip-hop jam “So Lucky.” “That’s a real, deep friendship,” Cimafunk says. “That guy plays everything!”
But the true marquee name here is none other than George Clinton, who Cimafunk calls “pure groove.” He adds, “He’s the mayor. He’s the past, present and the future. He’s the GOAT.”
Cimafunk met Clinton while recording El Alimento; at the time, a collaboration felt like a pipe dream, but Clinton agreed to lend vocals to that album’s opening track, “Funk Aspirin.” It’s hard to imagine a clearer sign of success for Cimafunk than his second album, beginning with George Clinton announcing, “The mothership has arrived.”
This time around, Clinton appears alongside Trombone Shorty on “I Don’t Care.”
However, Pa’ Tu Cuerpa’s most full-circle moment is less obvious. On the slow, syrupy funk lullaby “A tu Merced,” Cimafunk invited several beloved Cuban artists to add their distinct touch—pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, singer Camila Guevara and the iconic, Grammy-nominated Francisco “Pancho” Céspedes.
Cimafunk says he wrote the song years ago, when he was hustling in Havana.
“At the time, I was selling songs for $15, writing each one and dreaming of the right voice. I wrote ‘A tu Merced’ with Pancho’s voice in mind. Of course, I didn’t know him at the time,” says Cima. “In 2023, I finally got to tell him: ‘I wrote a song thinking of you.’ And he agreed to record it for my album. After so many years, the song finally got to the right person.”
