Like a House Afire, on an Afro-Cuban Foundation

When Eddie Palmieri and Yerba Buena appear at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday, Los Angeles fans will get a cross-generational glimpse of Latin music from New York. They’ll have the old guard and the vanguard on the same stage.

In his day, Palmieri was the rebellious and unruly innovator, with his raucous trombones and eerie, meandering piano. Today, it seems strange to label the bearded genius as an old-school figure.

But with the passing of Tito Puente, Palmieri now sits as the de facto dean of salsa survivors from the boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Now it’s Yerba Buena’s turn to upset the Big Apple cart. This upstart multiethnic “collective,” as members call themselves, doesn’t even have a recording contract, but it’s drawing critical acclaim for its unusual mix of styles and its hard-driving performances. The band has done only a couple of dozen concerts in its short life, but some of those were opening for Celia Cruz and Dave Matthews.

Part of the reason Yerba Buena is getting so much early attention is the reputation of its key members: producer Andres Levin and singer Xiomara Laugart. Those may not be household names in pop music circles, but they ring big bells for fans of rock en espanol and genuine Afro-Cuban music.

Yerba Buena is really Levin’s dream project.

He’s 32 and calls himself “an exile baby.” His grandparents fled Germany during World War II, and his parents escaped Argentina’s military regime in the 1960s. Levin wound up being born in Caracas, Venezuela. He came to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music and settled in New York in 1989.

He was just 21 when he produced “Contribution,” the critically praised album by British singer Mica Paris.

“It broke a lot of R&B; rules,” says Levin of the 1991 release, “but kind of by accident because it was my first one.”

Since then his musical credits have been as diverse as his roots.

Levin has written and/or produced for soul stars such as Chaka Khan and Tina Turner as well as for Brazil’s Caetano Veloso and world-music maven David Byrne. Though he doesn’t have the high profile of his West Coast counterpart, Gustavo Santaolalla, Levin has also worked with the top names in the Latin alternative field. In a 14-month period in the late ‘90s, he produced key albums by Colombia’s Aterciopelados, Mexico’s El Gran Silencio and Los Amigos Invisibles from his native Venezuela.

And if that were not enough of a mix, he’s working on Ricky Martin’s next album.

Levin obviously is not interested in finding a musical niche. He says he’s more interested in “the way all these music [styles] collide.”

In 2000, he called that collision Yerba Buena, an evocative Spanish name for mint leaf, which literally means “good weed.”

Levin sees “a common denominator” in clashing styles, such as cumbia and hip-hop, rumba and boogaloo. The band blends all these musical palettes over an Afro-Cuban foundation.

Says Levin, “Basically, it’s just breaking down the rules of each style of music in a responsible way. It’s a great model for experimentation, and it’s a lot of fun.”

The band centers on Laugart, known to Cuban music aficionados as one of the island’s undiscovered vocal treasures.

At first blush, Laugart appears an odd choice for such a funky street band. In Cuba, she was known for her sophisticated style and poetic lyrics, based in the New Song tradition.

But her career on the socialist island stalled, as she recalls, after Cuban undercover police aborted one of her concerts and took her away in handcuffs.

It happened during a 1994 performance at Havana’s Teatro Nacional, carried on radio and television. During the show, Laugart says, she vowed that “until there was freedom and democracy, I would never sing again.”

The singer was in custody for a week, she says, but was never charged. For two years, however, she was “punished” by not being allowed to record, perform or tour.

In February 1996 Laugart gave a classy comeback concert, unpolitical but unrepentant, at Havana’s Teatro Mella. The show is available on CD, released by Cuba’s Bis Music label.

Laugart, 29, says she was granted political asylum after deciding to stay in New York four years ago, leaving her child and parents back home in Cuba. She now sees a positive side to the upheavals in her career.

Like Palmieri four decades earlier, Yerba Buena is stepping into a void in Latin music.

Palmieri’s scrappy street band, La Perfecta, came along at the end of the big-band era, typified by the troika of Puente, Machito and Tito Rodriguez during the ‘50s at the Palladium ballroom. His aggressive style helped ignite the salsa explosion of the 1970s, which launched the Fania All Stars.

Today in New York, salsa is in one of its periodic slumps. The resurgence of the ‘90s, marked by the rise of new stars such as Marc Anthony and La India, has faded. With the famed Fania label in limbo and Ralph Mercado’s RMM label in bankruptcy, there is no major promoter of Latin music.

At this point, anything could happen. And that’s the whole idea behind Yerba Buena.

“I’m kind of making a statement,” says Levin, “that new music needs a format to come out. The record companies are so blind to new styles that if they can’t categorize it, they can’t conceive how to sell it.”

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Yerba Buena, with Hugh Masekela-Eddie Palmieri and Ozomatli, Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., 7:30 p.m. (323) 850-2000.