As you gaze into the space where Cuban vocalist Eme Alfonso performs her Tiny Desk (home) concert, you enter a place where music becomes a spiritual language. So much of her history and music is centered around the Afro-Cuban spiritual practice that some know as santería. In the 1980s, her parents started Síntesis, a pioneering band that performed secular versions of that musical liturgy through electric jazz fusion. In fact, her parents, Carlos Alfonso and Ele Valdés, join her on vocals on this three-song set, which she recorded in Havana.
