With “Maputo”, Cuban Swiss violinist, singer and composer Yilian Cañizares turns her forthcoming album Vitamina Y toward Mozambique, writing a Ronga language song in honour of longtime collaborator Childo Tomas‘s home country. Recorded in Paris with Cañizares on vocals and violin, Tomas on guitar, guimbass and vocals, and Inor Sotolongo on percussion, the track sits inside an album built around her closest musical partners. Released on 18 November ahead of the worldwide digital release of Vitamina Y on 6 February, it stands as one of the record’s most clearly place centred pieces.

Born in Havana and now based in Switzerland, Cañizares describes music as a life force that has carried her from Havana to Caracas and into Europe, and she frames Vitamina Y as a way of giving back what she has received from collaborators, communities and ancestors. The album grows from her long partnership with Tomas and Sotolongo, whom she calls her backbone, with “Maputo” setting Ronga lyrics and her violin and voice against guitar, guimbass and percussion, drawing directly on Mozambican traditions and the city that gives the song its title. Across Vitamina Y, similar combinations place Afro-Cuban rhythms alongside jazz phrasing and classical string writing, flamenco guitar with Moroccan guembri, Senegalese kora with viola da gamba, and West African chants with her own lines.

“I want this music to give people energy to start again, to overcome difficulties, to blossom,” Cañizares explains. “We all need that dose of vitamin sometimes.” “Maputo” sits inside that idea of music as “vitamin”, a cycle in which she passes on strength received from others and ties it to specific places, languages and long standing friendships, with this track saluting Tomas’s homeland while underlining the album’s focus on renewal.

Listen and stream the track through THIS LINK