VA - Transmisiones∶ Cuba (2026)

Transmisiones: Cuba brings together fifteen Cuban artists who emerged in the post-pandemic period, offering a panorama of new DIY musical creation on the island. Some are linked to bands that participated in the Human Noise festival (2023), an event that helped articulate part of a new independent rock scene in Havana. However, in a context where sustaining a band through self-management (recording and producing concerts) is especially difficult, individual creation from a personal computer and accessible digital tools has consolidated itself as a more flexible and viable format.

Since the mass adoption of mobile internet in Cuba beginning in 2018, the island’s music production has started to transform. What once circulated through alternative and non-institutional networks (such as the “paquete semanal,” personal exchanges, or informal connections with Cubans abroad) began to move more immediately through online platforms and channels. YouTube and Telegram became common spaces for sharing music, references, and releases. Expanded internet access not only facilitated production tools, but also a constant flow of musical information.

The artists gathered here (currently between 20 and 30 years old) belong to a generation that grew up within this environment of digital openness, listening to, discovering, and appropriating styles that circulate globally. However, this expansion has not translated into smooth access to international streaming platforms or to formal systems of distribution and payment, which remain difficult to reach due to financial and technological restrictions affecting the island. Added to these limitations is a daily reality that shapes the creative process: the instability of the electrical system and the frequent power outages that affect large parts of the country.

This context outlines the map of this compilation. What appears here does not correspond to a single sound or a closed identity, but it does share a common inclination: an introspective search attentive to atmosphere and texture. There are strands of art pop (Ki Dei, Junios, Humana, Gangarria, Branch), projects that approach the guitar from a perspective close to post-rock and atmospheric folk (Lushed, Daku, Tendernesst), ambient explorations (Ilirya, Æterna Fragma, cubalibre.exe, Lahelvetica, CosmicLatte), and more textural and dense works (Thesis, Buffalo Attack).

More than a showcase of isolated projects, the compilation proposes a transversal listening experience that allows affinities and tensions to emerge between artists who, although working individually, share the same generational horizon.

Many of these artists have already released material on their own, and several participated in the compilation Ruidos en el sistema (2025), released by the Havana-based label Ultramar, also driven by musicians connected to this same scene. That project gave a first collective form to a sensibility that had been taking shape. Transmisiones: Cuba situates itself within that same moment, documenting a scene that is beginning to recognize itself as such.

While Cuba has a tradition of electroacoustic music and an active culture of club electronics (several of the names gathered here have also developed careers as DJs), this new scene defines a space of its own. An intermediate territory often sustained through fragility: some of these artists have already emigrated, and continuity is not always guaranteed. Nevertheless, what emerges here represents one of the most creative and distinctive focuses within recent Cuban music.

Transmisiones: Cuba is released via Buh Records digitally and in a limited cassette edition. Mastered by Alberto Cendra Woodman. Cover photo by Daku.