La Música de Mi Juventud

My mother, the daughter of Spanish aristocratic land-owners, was born in Cuba. My father, a poor merchant from Spain, travelled there in an attempt to open a business. They met soon after his arrival, and fate brought me into this world in the capital city of Havana, through the now abandoned hospital of Clínica Cardona in 1969. I lived in Cuba for a number of years, and have strangely vivid memories of the music that filled my home back then.
While there has been a renaissance of several music scenes throughout the island in recent years, there was also a time when most new music was banned. If you wanted to spin a record, or catch a local act, there wasn't much to check out besides what was already in existence before the Castro takeover. Besides a handful of illegal Beatles 7"es my mother played, and an 8-track of Spanish-Celtic bagpipe songs my father would occasionally pop in, the local mix of trova and orquesta (troubadour folk and orchestral jazz-salsa) was the sound of the era, as well as of my early youth.
I thought it fitting for my last No Echo piece to go back in time, and cover some of the artists that helped shape the motor and auditory areas of my parietal lobe.
Forget Buena Vista Social Club! We're going way back…
I'm glad to say that the most famous player in this scene is not only a woman, but a woman of color: Celia Cruz. Considered world over as the most popular Latin artist of the 20th century, she is often called the "Queen of Latin Music". With over twenty gold records, she received the National Medal of Arts from the United States Congress, which was presented to her by President Bill Clinton in 1994.

Though Cruz actually made her first record in Venezuela (1948) singing songs from the Santería religion, she made a name for herself a little after joining the Conjunto Sonora Matancera orchestra, in 1950, when their original singer - Myrta Silva - returned to her native Puerto Rico. After Fidel took power in 1959, she was banned from the country, and became a US resident. In 1966, Celia and Tito Puente began to collaborate (releasing eight albums on Tico Records), and after her 1974 album with Johnny Pacheco, Celia y Johnny (on Fania Records), she joined the Fania All-Stars. In 1990, Cruz won a Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Performance, and - two years later - starred in The Mambo Kings, with Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas. After receiving the honor from Clinton, Celia was inducted into Billboards' Latin Music Hall of Fame, and later inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in '99. After travelling the world with close to 1000 concerts under her belt, Cruz passed away in 2003 from brain cancer, but left an amazing legacy that is now revered even in the land that once turned its back on her.
Another popular songstress, though not as well-known worldwide, was Elena Burke.

Starting her career in local Havana radio during the 1940s, she gained notoriety after joining pianist Aida Diestro's vocal quartet, Cuarteto d'Aida, in 1952. After going solo, she became the top female singer by the time of the Cuban Revolution (1959), reinterpreting classic Cuban boleros and Afro-Cuban son. Burke also collaborated with Orquesta Aragón and Pablo Milanés, soon gaining the title "Señora Sentimiento" ("Lady Feeling"). She died in 2002, still living in Havana, but her gift keeps on giving through her daughter, Malena Burke, and granddaughter, Lena, who are also well known Cuban singers.
Next up is someone from my personal life, and a friend of the family, René Touzet.

Picking up classical piano at only four-years-old, Touzet enrolled at the Falcón Conservatory in Havana in the 1920s. In 1934, he joined Luis Rivera's jazz band, and later formed his own 16-piece orchestra. In 1944, René moved to Hollywood and collaborated with Desi Arnaz (of I Love Lucy fame, and husband of Lucille Ball). From 1956 to 1966, he recorded ten albums for GNP Crescendo Records, and his most popular song "No Te Importe Saber", was rerecorded in English as "Let Me Love You Tonight", by Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. In 1972, he moved to Miami, and retired from performing, but still kept busy writing music, which blended classical, jazz and Cuban folk. He received a number of awards, including Miami mayor declaring September 9th as "René Touzet Day" in 2001, but died two years later due to heart failure. Though he is now championed in many Latin music history classes, I will always remember him as the sweet old guy on the piano at the parties throughout my childhood.
One artists that succeeded in the Cuban music scene, but got there the hard way, was Benny Moré.

The grandson of a slave (who was freed at 94 years of age), Moré was born in central Cuba, and was the oldest of eighteen children. He taught himself to play music by creating instruments out of trash and discarded items. At seventeen-years-old, he left home to sell damaged fruit in Havana, and bought a guitar with the money he scraped together. He played on the street for change, and sometimes in bars, but was finally discovered when he won a radio contest on the CMQ program The Supreme Court of Art in 1941. Benny made it big when the orchestra Conjunto Matamoros need a singer to fill in for Miguel Matamoros who was not available for a set on the Radio Mil Diez Show. In 1946, he moved to Mexico, and stayed for a while, recording for RCA Victor with Pérez Prado, as well as playing with several cats about the country. In 1952, he returned to Cuba as a star throughout Central America, but unknown in his home country. The following year, he formed La Banda Gigante, and became a huge hit. He took the act anywhere a short boat ride could take it - as he feared flying - and the band toured the US, plus Central and South America. After the Cuban Revolution, unlike many of his musical compatriots Moré stayed behind - saying because Cubans were "my people" - but he died of cirrhosis of the liver soon after (1963).
Two great notable Cuban composers were brother and sister, Ernesto and Ernestina Lecuona.

Ernestina grew up in a musical family, and was made famous at only 15, when she penned Anselmo López's "Habanera Luisa", in 1897. Around this time, she taught her much younger brother, Ernesto, how to play piano. In 1936, she was invited by the Pan American Union to play a concert in New York City, and followed that up by founding a women's orchestra, which debuted at the Teatro Alkazar. From 1939 to 1942, she toured Central and South America, and though she wrote songs for a number of acts (including Los Bribones, Daniel Arroyo and Mercedes Simone), very little of her work survives besides other artists interpreting it. She died in 1951 in Havana. Still, much of her legacy was kept alive through the work of her brother, who gained recognition after playing with her in Carnegie Hall in 1948.
After lessons from his sister, Ernesto studied under Antonio Saavedra and Joaquín Nin at the Peyrellade Conservatoire. While he played recitals in Spain and Paris in the 20s, Ernesto wasn't recognized as a music writer until the premier of his Spanish zarzuela, "María la O" in 1930. After performing his "Black Rhapsody" at the Cuban Liberation Day Concert at Carnegie Hall with is sister, he was thrust to stardom, and had since written over 600 musical compositions. Openly gay, he hated Castro's repressive regime, and left for the US (Tampa, FL) in 1960. At age 68, Ernesto passed away during an asthma attack while visiting the Canary Islands.
A hugely popular Cuban singer-songwriter, who is known little outside of his home country, is Rolando Laserie.

After learning to play the timbales (a type of metal tom-tom drum), he joined La Banda Municipal de Santa Clara on percussion. In 1943, at 20 years old, he was heard singing on the street, and was asked to replace singer Miguelito Cuní in the Arcaño y sus Maravillas orchestra. Moving to Havana in 1946, he joined Hermanos Palau, and later Benny Moré's La Banda Gigante, both, back on percussion. In the early 50s, he was asked to sing some boleros for Gema Records, but they didn't capture the true vocals he would later express on 1957's Mentiras Tuyas LP. That session propelled Laserie to fame, but it quickly faded as Castro's Cuban Revolution took over, and he migrated to Venezuela. Around the late-60s, Rolando moved to Miami, where he kept a low profile, but still managed to get up on stage a number of times, until he died of a heart attack in 1998.
Possibly the most popular charanga (aka: cha-cha-cha) group in the world would have to be Orquesta Aragón.

Forming in 1939 by Orestes Aragón, the original tribe of eight musicians was first called Ritmica 39, and changed names several times, until finding their final moniker. Band leader Aragón became ill in 1949, and was replaced by Rafael Lay Apesteguía, who moved the orchestra to Havana, as well as began replacing members, and adding more singers. In 1956, RCA Victor released their first LP, That Cuban Cha-Cha-Cha, and a few more albums, but after the Cuban Revolution all the band's new music was released via the state-run Cuban national record labels, Discuba and Egrem. After the 1982 death of Apesteguía, Richard Egües became band leader until 1984, when Rafael Lay Bravo took charge. Since, and until today, the orchestra - with a rotating line-up - still plays concerts worldwide as an established institution of Cuban music.
If this gets you grooving, please check out other acts I had no time to go into, such as Xiomara Alfaro, Ñico Membiela, Moraima Secada, Ignacio Villa Fernández (aka Bola de Nieve), José Tejedor, Abelardo Barroso y Orquesta Sensación, and Ñico Saquito.
I hope to one day listen to all of this music, while standing on my native soil as a free country. Until then, I at least have my memories.

A. Souto, 2017

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