Warapo has come a long way since its early days as a college band in Cuba in the late '90s.
The four-man, two-woman Cuban fusion band secured multiple nominations at Cuba's most prestigious music awards in 2008 with their second album, "Tengo Nada," earning nominations in the Fusion, Pop, Graphic Design and DVD Multimedia categories.
The sextet was founded in Santa Clara, Cuba, in 1998 by six university friends.
Playing radio-friendly Latin fusion rhythms steeped in the Cuban tradition, Warapo immediately found broad support, winning the title of "Best Amateur Band" in November 1998 at the 14th Artist College Festival in Holguín.
The band released its first album in July 2004. Titled "Mala Vida," or Bad Life, the album won country-wide acclaim, with the song "Dolor y Pena" (Pain and Sorrow) becoming radio's most widely played song of the year.
"The music of Warapo could be classified as Latin fusion on a basic Cuban rhythmics," says the band's website. "Such a musical product is widely accepted for more than one generation of listeners, though trends indicate a strongest preference by young people."
More recently, Warapo has expanded its reach beyond the borders of their homeland, traveling around Europe and Southeast Asia, and since 2008, Warapo has been the house band at the famous Caraville Hotel in Vietnam, playing nightly at the hotel's similarly famous rooftop bar, Saigon Saigon.
Warapo plays the FCC on July 3. The show starts at 9:30 pm.