The five-day concert series and cultural exchange tour in January 2020 is presented by the Trombone Shorty Foundation, Cuba Educational Travel and the Havana Jazz Festival.
New Orleans groups Soul Rebels and Tank and the Bangas are set to join Cuba’s current stage sensation Cimafunk for “Getting Funky in Havana,” concert series and cultural exchange tour set for January 14-18, 2020, presented by the Trombone Shorty Foundation, Cuba Educational Travel and the Havana Jazz Festival.
The event is being organized in the wake of an Oct. 25 announcement from the Trump administration that commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuban airports other than Havana will end on Dec. 10, the latest in a series of measures restricting travel to Cuba and reversing diplomatic and economic measures that had been put in place by President Obama to restore relations between the two countries.
"Cultural travel and music have been important drivers of bringing people and nations together, at good times and bad,” Collin Laverty, president of Cuba Educational and one of the producers of Getting Funky in Havana tells Billboard. "…I believe the bands and organizations involved are demonstrating that the historical, cultural and people-to-people ties between our two countries bring our people together despite policies aimed at keeping them apart."