Cimafunk

Erick Iglesias Rodríguez, the twenty-nine-year-old Cuban singer known as Cimafunk, has an uncanny ability to control the energy in a room. When he’s onstage, it can feel like he’s turning a tap on and off, at times oozing quiet intensity with cool aplomb and then bursting into a kinetic tangle of waving arms and gyrating hips. As a showman, he has been compared to James Brown, but his flair comes from the Afro-Cuban rhythms that inspire his music. (His moniker is derived from cimarrones, the Spanish word for the African runaways who escaped enslavement.) Cimafunk’s magic is at its peak when he’s singing live, and this month presents a pair of opportunities to see him: at National Sawdust, on April 17, and at Drom, on April 23. (National Sawdust; April 17 and April 23.)