The Via Positiva / Via Negativa
A year in review can easily look like the Christmas letters received from family and friends filled with idealistic accomplishments and a mathematical accounting of normality. Let’s keep it real for you in that 2022 was a paragon year for Alex Cuba with achievements and challenges, highs and lows in a balance of negative and positive truly marking the creative accretion keeping the mechanism forever moving forward – yes that means new music!!
In April the Grammy win for Best Latin Pop for Mendó was the biggest highlight, with an album so close to Alex’s heart being recorded in his living room during the pandemic shutdown. Alex’s hometown of Smithers threw a block party in September and painted a mural to honour the win. In October Alex received an honorary Doctorate in Laws from Queens University in Canada. The year also saw the return to touring and travel with many dates from 2020 being performed and a return to set foot in Europe where Alex found inspiration in the solo show that he envisioned to promote the 2019 release, Sublime.
What the year saw in additions it also saw in subtractions, the challenges of restarting and the aftermath of isolation that left our sense of community fractured. Winning a Grammy as an independent artist is no small feat yet the media did not engage with the story and was not able to focus any more than any of us in this last year, they were fueled with the low hanging fruit of popularity and numbers game. Travel hiccups and the illusion of back to normal were handled with a lot of patience and was reflected in the mostly overlooked single of La Bestia that really resumed the nature of the struggle to overcome the death drive; again is it algorithms or distraction causing the lack of engagement for creative expression and settling for the overproduction of carbon copy sounds and images. Through introspection and reaching out beyond one’s comfort zone the new year was celebrated for the gains and the losses and the hope for a 2023 created.
Looking forward to the new music coming your way end of February and the production work for Flamenco singer songwriter Aaron Miguel and wishing all of you a new year filled with health and happiness, and may we accept it in whatever form it may arrive.
