Daymé Arocena

Cuban singer, arranger, composer, and choral conductor Daymé Arocena blends jazz with neo-soul in a sound anchored in West African traditions and Cuban Santería. After completing her studies at music school as a choir director, she received an invitation to appear at Havana’s Jazz Plaza Festival, where Canadian jazz clarinetist Jane Bunnett first heard her. Bunnett subsequently brought the vocalist to Toronto for performances and included her on the 2014 Cuban jazz recording Jane Bunnett & Maqueque. Arocena also worked with Gilles Peterson on the Havana Cultura Sessions series before signing with his Brownswood label. Her first album, Nueva Era, arrived in 2015 and was followed the next year by the One Takes EP; her second full-length, Cubafonía, came out in 2017. She delivered her third album, Sonocardiogram, in 2019 and released the Eduardo Cabra-produced Al-Kemi in 2024.

Born in Havana’s Diez de Octubre municipality in 1992 and raised in the Santos Suárez district, Arocena grew up surrounded by music that ranged from traditional Cuban and Yoruban song to West African sounds, jazz, soul, pop, and blues. As a child she was initiated into Regla de Ocha-Ifá, an experience that has remained central to her creative path.

By age eight she was already performing professionally as a singer and dancer. At ten she entered the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory to study classical music, trying several instruments before committing to voice. At fourteen she became lead vocalist for the big band Los Primos and, while still a student, founded the all-female jazz group Alami.

After graduation, Cuba’s Minister of Culture invited Arocena and Alami to perform at the Jazz Plaza Festival, where Jane Bunnett again took notice. Bunnett arranged for the young singer to travel to Toronto and featured her on Jane Bunnett & Maqueque. That same year Arocena joined Gilles Peterson’s Havana Cultura Sessions project and signed with his London-based Brownswood Recordings. Nueva Era appeared in 2015 and was widely praised by journalists and outlets internationally; the following year she issued the covers EP One Takes, which contained fresh interpretations of Horace Silver’s “The Gods of Yoruba,” Eddie Gale’s “African Sunshine,” and Peven Everett’s “Stuck.”

After extensive touring she recorded Cubafonía, issued in 2017. Working with co-producer Dexter Story, she handled all arrangements except the strings, which Miguel Atwood-Ferguson directed. Reviewers observed that while Nueva Era had presented jazz pieces within robust Afro-Cuban frameworks, Cubafonía foregrounded Cuban and Caribbean rhythms—rumba, bolero, and merengue—set against contemporary jazz charts.

Two years later she made her debut at SFJazz alongside pianist Jorge Luis Lagarza, bassist Rafael Aldama Chirole, and drummer Marcos Morales Valdés. Lagarza and Valdés joined bassist Rafael Aldama on the 2019 album Sonocardiogram, which the vocalist and pianist co-produced. Its title captured the musicians’ intent to “…create something that was a snapshot of who we are inside,” mirroring an echocardiogram’s view of the heart. Recorded in a repurposed Havana art studio, the project fused Afro-Cuban elements with modern jazz across three suites whose movements drew on Santería deities and experiences of carnal, familial, and spiritual love.

After the album’s release Arocena relocated to Toronto so her husband could obtain a North American visa. The COVID-19 pandemic struck while they were in Canada, and the combined pressures of immigration, quarantine, and homesickness made 2020 and 2021 especially challenging. During that time she found complex music difficult to hear and turned instead to Latin pop and American R&B. Introduced to Beyoncé’s “Black Is King,” she felt a strong connection to the artist’s invocation of the same deities central to her own work and decided to pursue a new direction.

Arocena had first met Puerto Rican rapper, composer, and music director Eduardo “Visitante” Cabra in 2015 at a Calle 13 performance. When she later chose a pop-oriented approach for her next record, she sought a producer attuned to both that language and her experimental inclinations. She traveled to Puerto Rico to enlist Cabra, ultimately spending months in his guest room while they developed the project. Cabra brought in vocalists Rafa Pabón and Vicente García and persuaded the latter to appear in the video for “A Fuego Lento.”

Issued in February 2024, the resulting album Al-Kemi—using the Yoruban spelling of “alchemy”—recurs with motifs of transformation. Arocena and Cabra combine spiritually conscious activism with advocacy for greater industry representation of Black Latinas. Their aesthetic encompasses sleek, electronically driven production and songwriting that spans pop, soul, bossa, reggae, and contemporary jazz. The record earned widespread critical acclaim.