Victoria Cardona | Que Pasó Review

by Elberton Cisnero

In Que Pasó, Victoria Cardona steps forward as a singer and instrumentalist that creates vessels of memory, a channel for generational stories, and a cartographer of emotion. Her debut album is a collection of songs curated with a fresh resonance. What begins with the rhythmic heartbeat of Havana in the title track unfolds into a richly layered exploration on identity, exile, joy, grief, and return. Cardona navigates the terrain with catchy melodies and daring lyrics, allowing tradition to speak while we dance with it.

A Cuban-American multi-instrumentalist and loop artist trained in jazz guitar, Cardona bears the marks of both lineage and liberation. Raised on the mighty echoes of Celia Cruz and Gloria Estefan, she brings their spirit into dialogue with a global jazz vocabulary to her songwriting. Her collaborators here include Justo Almario, Jimmy Haslip, and Bill Payne. Under the guidance of producer Tim Goodman, the album becomes a living room of intergenerational voices, each track a parlor where ancestors whisper and futures are imagined.

The album opens with “Que Pasó En La Habana,” a visceral portrait of Cuban struggle under communism. Its layers of percussion, woodwinds, and brass surge like a tide of protest and persistence. The tres guitar anchors the song in tradition, while the organ and horn swells suggest spiritual endurance. This framing device, beginning in socio-political truth, echoes throughout the album as its grounding.

What follows is a procession of vignettes: the spectral layering of Cuban influence in “Ghost,” where grief and celebration share the same breath. The buoyant mischief of “George From Heaven,” a calypso postcard to a past encounter punctuated by horns and percussion; the sun-drenched joy of “Me Voy Pa La Playa,” whose rhythmic core practically demands bare feet and sensual dancing. In “Rhodes Royale,” funk and jazz flirt on a Grecian bluff while Cardona’s steel drums wink knowingly. Even the album’s covers, like the bolero classic “Dos Gardenias” and Little Feat’s “Spanish Moon,” are creative tributaries, braided into the river of Cardona’s storytelling.

The emotional architecture of Que Pasó is as deliberate as its musical one. Tracks like “Slow Burn” and “Tuesday Rain” showcase her ability to build a song like a memory by starting with the faintest echo and arriving at something undeniable. Meanwhile, “Camarena Baila” and “El Carretero” root the album in familial soil, one honoring a grandfather’s hands, the other celebrating a family’s dance toward freedom. These songs are tactile; one hears not just melody but footsteps, stove tops, and soft rain on sugarcane.

What makes Que Pasó resonate beyond its grooves is its integrity. Cardona has crafted an album that holds space: for her ancestors, for the listener, for a Cuba remembered and a future reimagined. Her voice, warm and unpretentious, carries clarity and talent. The songwriting breathes with room for the musicians to shimmer and the stories to unfold. Even the production feels organic in nature, yielding a studio project that pulses with the energy of the street and the intimacy of a small concert hall.

Cardona offers a contagious phrasing style in her singing that respects lyric and language. For songwriters, the album shows how to translate world music and life into song without succumbing to sentimentality. For producers, it is a reminder that world fusion songwriting, when done with heart and roots, is not a trend but a tradition reborn.

Que Pasó is a statement of artistic vision, cultural homage, and creative courage. Cardona has opened a door through which her music dances forward, and the music lingers long after the warm tones fade.

 

 

Artist: Victoria Cardona
Album: Que Pasó
Label: Leggero Records

Release Date: June 27, 2025