Orishas

Amenaza in Havana, Orishas in Paris

The group began in the early 1990s in Havana as Amenaza, a rap crew led by Joel Pando that was the first in Cuba to put racial identity in Cuban society at the centre of its lyrics. In 1998 members travelled to Paris and signed a European record deal; the following year they took the name Orishas, after the deities of Santería.

The timing was unusual on both sides. In 1999 Fidel Castro hosted a party for the group — the first occasion on which the Cuban government publicly backed a hip-hop act — and in December 2000 two homecoming concerts in Cuba drew tens of thousands of young Cubans. By then the band was already a European export, built around Yotuel Omar Romero Manzanares, born in Havana on 6 October 1976, the singer and tres player Roldán González Rivero, and Hiram Riverí Medina, known as Ruzzo. A fourth member, Flaco-Pro, left in 2002.

The formula was set early: rapped verses in Spanish over son cubano, guaguancó and bolero rather than over imported American breaks, with Roldán's singing carrying the melodic weight. Nothing about that has been renegotiated since.

Five albums and a borrowed songbook

A Lo Cubano arrived in 2000 and did the work of an introduction — the title track still functions as the group's calling card a quarter of a century later. Emigrante followed in 2002 and remains the high-water mark: it won the Latin Grammy for Best Rap/Hip-Hop Album in 2003 and picked up a Grammy nomination, and its subject — leaving Cuba and what that costs — has aged into the band's central theme rather than out of it.

El Kilo came in 2005, the compilation Antidiótico in 2007 and Cosita Buena in 2008. A second Latin Grammy arrived in 2007 for Best Urban Song, shared with Calle 13 for 'Pa'l Norte', on which Orishas guested. In July 2009 the group played the Paz Sin Fronteras II concert in Havana.

Then a long gap. The band reunited to record in 2016 and released Gourmet on 25 May 2018, which stands as the most recent studio album. Speaking to a Peruvian interviewer on 12 August 2025, Yotuel made the lack of output sound like policy rather than drift — there is nothing finer, he said, than not having to reinvent yourself — while Roldán argued that music is worked at with patience and tenderness, not released monthly to feed an algorithm.

The split, Patria y Vida, and three years of public argument

Yotuel announced the group's split in January 2021. A month later came 'Patria y Vida', recorded with Descemer Bueno, Gente de Zona, Maykel Osorbo and others, which inverted the Cuban Revolution's slogan 'patria o muerte' and became the shorthand for the island-wide protests of July 2021. It won Latin Grammys for Song of the Year and Best Urban Song. Ruzzo's membership of Orishas ended in 2021.

In late September 2023 Yotuel announced that Orishas would return the following year with a new album and two replacement members — all Cuban, he stressed — rather than Roldán and Ruzzo. On 6 October 2023 Roldán answered in public: there is no Orishas without Ruzzo, without Yotuel and without Roldán, he said, and continuing with substitutes would be a grave error, comparing it to a Beatles comeback with only some of the Beatles. He added that he had been recording with Ruzzo, including a track called 'Caribe'.

The reconciliation was announced on 3 March 2025 through Yotuel's social media, in the language of a man conceding a point: the greatest battle, he wrote, is not against others but against ego, pride and time, and the only way to win is together. Roldán was back. Ruzzo was not, and said so — he had not been part of Orishas since 2021 and had no intention of rejoining. The 2026 Orishas is therefore a duo, with a hired band and DJ behind it.

Represent Cuba: where they are in October 2026

The current tour trades under the name Represent Cuba and has been running since 2025, when the reunited pair returned to Lima's Anfiteatro del Parque de la Exposición on 3 October after thirteen years away from Peru.

The 2026 leg has been heavy on Latin America and on festivals. Orishas played the Alternative Stage at Lollapalooza Chile on 14 March at Parque O'Higgins in Santiago, going on at 22:30 with a twelve-song set, their fourth visit to the country and the first in seven years. The next night, 15 March, they headlined Tokio Marine Hall in São Paulo, a first show in that city in seven years, running from roughly 20:20 to 22:00. Picnic Festival in Costa Rica followed on 21 March at the Centro de Eventos Pedregal.

The autumn run took in S.O.B.'s in Manhattan on 19 September, Le Bataclan in Paris on 3 October with doors at 20:00, and Pandora in Seville on 9 October. Argentine press confirmed on 24 September that the group plays Teatro Vorterix in Buenos Aires on 24 October, their first Argentine date since April 2019, with tickets through AllAccess. One advertised date remains after that: the Latino stage at Festival Bamba, the new Juanes-co-founded festival at Parque O'Higgins in Santiago, on Sunday 25 October, alongside Çantamarta, Paloma Murphy, Ráfaga and Amigo de Artistas, with Fito Páez, Carlos Vives, Bomba Estéreo and iLe on the main stage the same day. Tickets went on general sale on 19 May.

The band now lives in Europe, and says plainly why. In an interview published on 15 January 2026, Yotuel described Cuba as a beautiful country with remarkable people living under a dictatorship, where musicians cannot leave freely and a band that tours abroad risks never being allowed home. Outside it, he said, they have freedom of expression and freedom of movement and can go anywhere without asking the government's permission. That position is now part of the show as much as the music is.

Guantanamera, and what November is supposed to bring

The record in progress is called Guantanamera and is framed as a tribute to Cuban women; Yotuel has said a mass casting will be held in Cuba to find the woman who appears on the sleeve. One confirmed track, 'Duele', is a duet with the Chilean musician Boaz, which he trailed before the Santiago festival set in March.

The scale being briefed is unusual and worth treating as an ambition rather than a tracklist. In the January 2026 interview, Yotuel described an album of more than fifty songs with more than fifty guest artists, due in November 2026 and followed by three years of touring. Nothing has yet been released from it, and no single has surfaced as of mid-October 2026, which makes a November arrival tight.

Whether it lands on time matters less to the live business than it would for most acts. The catalogue being sold on this tour is twenty-six years old and the audience is buying the catalogue.

What the show has become

The 2026 set opens quietly and deliberately. Roldán sings 'Quizás, Quizás, Quizás', the Osvaldo Farrés bolero from 1947, before the group turns to 'Represent' and 'A Lo Cubano' — a sequence that tells the audience in two songs exactly what the band thinks it is, a Cuban song tradition with rap attached rather than the reverse.

From there the set is built from the first three albums with the Cuban standards 'Chan Chan' and 'Guantanamera' folded in, and closes on identity material: 'Patria y Vida', then 'Nací Orishas'. In São Paulo, Yotuel came through the stage barrier during 'Mística' and sang surrounded by the crowd, which is the moment the Brazilian coverage led on.

What is gone is the third voice. Audiences who last saw the group before 2021 are watching two men do work that was written for three, with the band's pre-recorded and session elements filling the gap. On the evidence of the 2026 dates, that has not cost them a room.