Sixth Sense: “The idea is to sacrifice as little as possible”

Always on the edge of the stereotypes that can hunt four Cuban singers whose vocal work, artistic quality and rigor in choosing repertoire, has been more dramatic than her slender figures and beauty as sober as natural, now the Sixth Sense members lead the group’s musical career by uncertain and shifting terrains.

After initial disks as Cuban Bossa (2003) and My Feeling (2006), they have extended their interests to other genres and even jumped into the field of composition with The Way (2011). That broadening their perspectives continues this year with the production Brujas (Witches), which surprised the home crowd after the return of the quartet, from a European tour where they began to release the single included in this phonogram.

Unmistakable thanks to the peculiar style when singing live or recording graceful harmonies in four voices, which provides warmth and at the same expressive power to compositions ranging from jazz to R & B and then the success that meant the song Guajiro, Arlety Valdes, Karla Vicens, Yudelkis Lafuente and Wendy Vizcaino are immersed in another area of popular music in order to explore new possibilities considered as valid as the previously ones advocated by them. Lafuente, director of the Cuban band, talks to OnCuba:

Why this new CD comes with a new look and a new stage projection? 

The new image is due to the type of genre that we are using, which is a mixture of pop with electronic music that can be called electronic pop, but in our case we merge different R & B songs with Caribbean genres, with many other things. I think the world of electronics and pop takes a very different picture of what jazz is and the kind of music that we were making before the Brujas CD. It is simply a change for this album, to be in tune with the work we are doing now and that we will defend.

Is not it too risky? 

Yes, it is always a risk, any change is always a risk, but in many years working we’ve learned that sometimes you have to take risks, and we have suffered much more significant changes that a change of genres. For example, we changed some girls and I think that’s super important. At first we thought it was not going to work, it was almost impossible but no, we did it and it was fine. I think if gave us a lot. So why not change? Furthermore, it is a long race and we still keep making music. This is simply a stage that we wanted to develop for a while; we had pending something much more commercial.

This risk entails, of course, tradeoffs towards achieving others, what are the sacrifices and what do you want to achieve? 

I think the idea is to sacrifice as little as possible, in the sense that while we’re making this record, on par we will be doing the other part of Sixth Sense. For example, for the show Night of witches we have to work a lot because as what we normally do, that is, it takes a choreography and think of a show. However, in other areas we come up with something more like what we normally do and likewise we will be presenting the album The Way, which is very nice too, out of which are only known Guajiro and Angry boy, but includes many other songs all of them pretty, with more than jazz. The idea is to divide up and do it all. Probably one of the two jobs always take longer than the other, but that we will be determine it along the way.

Not at all.

It really is great competition, but also in the other work that we do we face extremely tough competition internationally and in the end, for example, there are people who have heard the album, people who listen to this kind of music usually-and realize it, they tell us, “but in the voices we can tell it is you.” And that’s a relief for us and something that takes away a little fear. If you get to listen well in Brujas, it’s us, because the vocal work, though not complex, is present. We are not afraid, no … you just have to have fun and you have to try to make things a little commercial too because, even for our artistic development sometimes we have to do things that mean profits and on par to do what we like.

According to you, in the genres that Sixth Sense usually moves in, there is strong international competition, whereas nationally you were almost exclusively the only representatives of a vocal quartet format, which practically does not exist … what is left to the national public that likes that music?

We have an age where we can still give us that pleasure, to change a little bit and try new things. I don’t think the public of the previous albums will suffer much, because we intend to keep both works. And we have to work much harder in Brujas because eventually, every time someone calls us to do past things and now we are who have to make another public also listen to our music and know us otherwise. It is to cover some more, fight to get a space among this audience that consumes more electronic pop. I know it will be a tough race and it will be difficult to achieve, but we have to defend the record we did. In short, this music we’re doing now is for the masses. It’s not like jazz, R & B, which have a smaller audience, even internationally. So I think the public is not going to get mad or jealous of that, because we will keep doing what we were doing, we will keep both.

So obviously you guys will come back in future productions to those genres and the style that identified YOU and the usual audience, let’s say, have more affection to? 

Yes, of course. The fact is that we have spent many years doing a full vocal and now we’re bringing in another way. But of course we are going back, and honestly I do not know what the next album is going to do exactly, but what we do not want is to stay on the same line, we want to explore everything and also satisfy our tastes. The vocal work has that advantage that fits very well with all kinds of things. You use it in jazz, you can put in the R & B, and you can put it in Yoruba music. Now, for example, we made a song, a Canto a Eleggua, and harmonized it, we made a nice vocal arrangement, and had tremendous success on Facebook, on Youtube … I mean, that’s one of the projects we need to do. We need to do an album a capella. Everyone sometimes identify us with a group that sings a cappella, and we never have done … maybe one or two things, usually on request. And people liked it because the voices alone are very rewarding.
We have to work hard because what we don’t want is to stay still.

I think Revolution awakened within us the bug of electronics and the whole world that we really did not know well and, in fact, we have yet to learn. From Revolution we realized that mixing voices with a beat has much potential to make a hit, something that people follow. So we decided to make this record only with beat without live musicians or anything.

That was an album that was recorded with many Cuban musicians and we were called us and we made three or four songs. That was a few years ago. After recording, we started looking for more information about who the producers were and we realized that they were very famous, well known internationally. Today we say: “We worked with Norman Cook” and around the world, especially in Europe, people look at you with different eyes. We in Cuba, perhaps due to a little lack of information about this kind of music, had no idea. So perhaps due to chance, that record was an important step in our career and gave us a lot. On the album Revolution precisely that was the concept: mix the beats with musicians, including jazz-most-attended, but in this case, we let the work to the producers. We put in the hands of three different producers a full disk and chose only the beats we liked and we created songs and vocal arrangements. That is also a way of working. In this electronic world, the work of the producer includes what for us would be an instrumental arrangement with musicians and all. Or, in this case, leave the disc in their hands and we only got the texts, melodies and vocal arrangements. That’s why it turned out that way.

We had the chance. A person who always supports us said he would finance the album, which is very expensive these days. We thought it was much better in the sense that, after the disc, you have freedom to market it, distribute it, sell it, whatever … you have a little more control of your own music. That is very fashionable among artists lately, because it really gets ugly sometimes how artists work very hard and after they recorded, receive money but do not have control, do not know where his music is. The artist becomes attached to what you do and the best thing is to have the control to decide how to dispose of records and how to promote them. Being in control is a good thing, but producing an album is expensive. To us he gave us the opportunity and we took it.

If for the record  companies is difficult to put a record out and be heard, for an independent production is even harder, but at least you know what you’re doing and how far you have come, you know the limit … and in that way to us we have done better. Sometimes we have recorded with labels, such as Cuban Bossa, which we did with a Russian label and never knew where our music was, we always had to find out from people where it was sold, who had it. Sometimes even having the physical product itself was almost impossible because they were in Russia. All these things we overcome in this way, with independent productions.

In addition to the mode of production, the new look, the new genre, there are internal changes in the group … Well, Wendy Vizcaino has been with us for over three years. She wasn’t in the album The Way, but in part of the process of launching, the concerts that followed, the two video clips. In the case of Karla Vicens is a member has been almost a year with us, she entered for Eliene Castillo. She wasn’t in the recording of Brujas, but then now she is going through the same Wendy was in a moment to defend the record, she has participated in the two videos, and well … there we are. We did a casting last year because Eliene Castillo married and was going to have her family. She felt it was her time. Sometimes women have a limit for this kind of thing. Then Karla came. In a cast of over a hundred singers we chose her because she had more or less the same tastes, the same musical training than us. Even Wendy knew her from school. And, well, so far we are doing very well. She has contributed a lot to the group.

They told us they would be delighted to come to Cuba if invited. One of our plans is to see how we can make some action for them to come because it would be very nice that they can teach or give concerts here. There are many people in Cuba who knows the complete discography of Take 6.

On the tour we did in Europe, where we were more than four months, the last day before returning to Havana, there was a concert of Take 6. Overpriced entry, but we went. We saw the whole concert and there was a big empathy, yes because we stood almost right on the stage. It was a very nice theater, the audience stood, enjoying. They looked at us because they perceived that we were fans and we knew the songs. Then, later, we talk to them, sang them a little. They were very surprised. The manager knew us thanks to Chucho (Valdés). Then we made ​​contact, and then sang them, we started talking. They said they would love to come if they receive a formal invitation. Let’s see how we do that.

That is something spontaneous, not thought or anything. We started at school, at the beginning I was not in the group; we studied all together in the same classroom. The Sixth Sense we started calling it and, by chance, a playmate named us like that. At that time, Arletys Valdes had Take 6 discs, and listened to the arrangements, and tried to sing the arrangements and give a voice to every “little friend”. It was spontaneous, it was pure coincidence of musical tastes, we really liked the R & B at the time.

And then we were four , one left, I entered-and since we were like 15 years started making presentations to the public. It was after we were singing, we were still studying, of course, when people say we started, “You remind me of …” and really it was not for that influence that we had begun to sing. Then other people started, “Look, the D’Aida, Gema 4 …” Gema 4 was at that time rescuing that work. From there we began to investigate, then we went to jazz to do things, but it was very spontaneous, the road led us there, by itself. We arrived in other ways, but everything always comes back to the roots of ourselves.