Various Artists - El Boom Boom

(Tumi)

Cuban music fêted off the island is old style ‘son’, light years away from what Cubans themselves dance to. Tumi, the label mapping the Cuban scene since the 1980s, has recently released this compilation, which won the 2010 Cuban music industry prize in the ‘reggaeton’ category.

This is 100% Cuban back-to-front booty-focused ‘reggaeton’, spliced here with other pan-Latin styles from bachata, salsa and kisomba to R&B, as with stand-out highlight, El Green’s ‘Díselo’.

OK, cutting edge ‘reggaeton’ is bedroom studio-produced and this is a more ‘official’ recording, but still it captures the essential wit and vitality of the only music that matters to most young people on the island today.