Latin Jazz Maestro David Cultura Releases Debut Album
Panamanian-born saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist David Cultura is proud to announce the release of his highly anticipated debut jazz album, Cultura, out today via Devon Allman’s Create Records.
With Cultura, David Cultura delivers more than an album, he offers cultural connection, rhythmic storytelling, and a deep melodic journey through the sounds and stories of Latin America, reimagined through a modern jazz lens.
“I wanted to make an album that was centered around melody,” says David (pronounced da-VEED). “I wanted it to be a jazz record that was accessible, that brought people into the music.” True to intention, Cultura has done just that in the seven-song debut simply and aptly titled, Cultura. The album is loaded with melodic hooks, taut musicianship, and infectious, insistent grooves begging for a dance partner.
Emanating from a literal crossroads, its canal welcoming a myriad of cultures and commerce, David grew up in Panama City, Panama, learning saxophone, guitar, flute, and percussion, first under the musical tutelage of his father, then accenting his natural abilities with formal training. He moved to the United States, settling in another gateway locale, St. Louis, and performed with various bands, including Tonina, where he developed a friendship with guitarist Jackson Stokes.
Stokes would introduce David to Devon Allman, singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, and founder of Create Records. Allman, whose trusted ear for burgeoning talent had been honed over decades as a bandleader with The Allman Betts Band, the Devon Allman Project, and Honeytribe, among others, invited David to join the Project in 2022. Two years later, David and his group would decamp to Sawhorse Studios and, with Allman as producer, track the lucky seven that comprise Cultura.
With a panoramic scope widely informed by Latin and Caribbean rhythms, the set opens with the title track. Ironically, not a representative of David’s home country, “Cultura” was written years ago in St. Louis, and is instead a breezy nod to Stevie Wonder and to L.A. soul. “I’m always inspired by my surroundings,” says David, now a Southern California resident, having transplanted to San Diego. “My songwriting often reflects a place, or a moment in time.”
Next up is “Murga,” seducing with a smoldering sax intro, only to shift into a fifth gear of groove that bops away on a looping, relentless theme.
On “Vidrio,” David’s flute rides the trade winds, dancing on delicate keyboard flourishes and a locked-in, percussive pendulum, while “Jefferson Gravois* takes us back to intersecting streets in St. Louis, alternating between angular jazz riffs and polyrhythmic stabs.
Closing out the album is a pair of odes ot love, coincidentally both initially composed on guitar. First, there’s the exotic swing of David’s homage to his daughter on “Mia’s Lulaby,” that begins as a bedtime ballad, only to morph quickly into an up-tempo swell of repeating figures and furious, resounding drums. The finale is “Ring,” drawing its motivation from the symbolic piece of jewelry, and marries the lilt of David’s nimble ensemble with a stretch of horn-work that crescendos as confidently and as buoyantly as anything on the set; a parting burst of expression before resolving, once more, in the melodic spirit that runs throughout Cultura. Check out more music news here.