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Aguabella was born on October 10, 1925 and grew up in the drumming tradition of Matanzas in Cuba.

On May 8, 2010, Francisco Aguabella “El Tamborero de Cuba” passed away in Los Angeles, United States. Bravo and virtuoso percussionist of Afro-Cuban ritual music, Latin/jazz and jazz.

Of remembered links to Tito Puente’s band, Mongo Santamaría, Cachao López, Eddie Palmieri, Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Jorge Santana’s group “Malo” and his own “Latin Jazz Emsemble”.

In 1953 he emigrated to the United States and settled in California as an olu batá (bata drummer).

Batá drumming is a ceremonial musical style that plays an integral role in the African-derived Santeria religion practiced in Cuba, Puerto Rico and since the 1950s in the United States.

No other music of the Americas bears a more striking similarity to West African music than the batá. Its set of three double cone drums reproduces the Nigerian Yoruba drum set of the same name.

Many of the rhythms closely resemble their African prototypes, and the Afro-Cuban language of Lucumí, in which Aguabella sings, is clearly a derivation of Yoruba.

Prior to 1980, Aguabella and Julito Collazo were the only olu batá in the United States who had been initiated into a secret society of drummers designated to perform a very sacred type of batá known as batá fundamento .

The batá fundamento is an integral part of Santeria ceremonies in which an individual’s initiation into the religion cannot be consecrated unless he or she has been presented before this sacred ensemble.

Each year Aguabella builds a shrine for his patron saint, Santa Barbara (Changó), and plays music at a birthday party held in her honor.

It’s an all-day celebration for invited friends who are primarily but, not exclusively members of the Santeria sect “Santa Barbara knows it’s her birthday,” Aguabella said, “I know how she feels.

She feels happy if I honor her, I feel bad if I don’t so on St. Barbara’s day every December 4 whatever work I am doing today I don’t do for anyone, I love this saint very much and I promised her I was going to have a party every year.

Although Aguabella is widely respected for his sacred drumming he is also known for his virtuosity in the secular forms of Afro-Cuban music.

Choreographer Katherine Dunham was so impressed with Aguabella’s drumming that she invited him to join her company for tours of South America and Europe.

The most influential of Aguabella’s secular styles is rumba, a complex of several musical genres that evolved in Cuba in the early 20th century.

Rumba was the basis for much of the Cuban dance hall music that in turn helped shape American popular music through dance bands based throughout the United States.

However Afro-Cuban rumba bears little resemblance to the ballroom dance rumba that inspired Francisco. Rumba as Aguabella said is part of daily life for many Afro-Cubans, it doesn’t have to be a special day to play rumba, we could start a rumba here without a drum.

You could play it here or there on the wall, in Cuba rumba is 24 hours a day, we gather in a corner and have a glass of rum…. And someone says: Why don’t we play a little rumba?  Some people touch the wall and someone else plays a bottle and maybe takes a cap off the bottle and ‘ca ca ca ca ca ca ca ca ca’ and the Rumba.”

Aguabella’s goal has long been to maintain the integrity of the tradition he so respects, while incorporating it into “crossover” music aimed at a wider audience.

It was his superior musical ability and commitment to tradition that led musicians such as Mongo Santamaria, Malo and Carlos Santana to bring him into their groups.

Aguabella lived in Los Angeles; where he continued to performand exert a great influence on Latin American music.

Afrontilas Music

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One of the greatest Venezuelan arrangers that Venezuela’s tropical music could have had passed away on May 5, 1979, 44 years without Stelio Bosch Cabrujas.

Bosch Cabrujas was the arranger and assistant director of both Billos and Los Melódicos and was the architect of the success of both orchestras in the 60’s and 70’s.

A remarkable musician, but completely forgotten by the new generations.

Stelio deserves to have his place of honor in the tropical music of the Caribbean. Stelio, a native of the State of Bolivar, from a very young age, entered the musical field as a musician and arranger.

His musical beginnings date back to the 40’s, when he performed “Campesino” for the then Billo’s, where he was recorded by Victor Perez.

Stelio’s musical baggage at the beginning was as a tres player for La Sonora Caracas, he worked with Pedro J. Belisario’s orchestra in the 50’s. He arranged a lot for the radio programs in the musical shows that they presented under the auspices of various commercial brands.

History of Sonora Caracas

Surrounded by an aura of mystery, elusive discography, and a special attraction as a pioneer of the son groups in Caracas. For a long time it was the musical platform for many local tours and recordings of Caribbean music luminaries, when they visited us in the golden age of radio and incipient television. Backed by more than a hundred immortal recordings, ranging from some of the first acetate recordings of Celia Cruz, to Daniel Santos and his theme forbidden by the always conservative Catholic Church.

Contrary to what some critics thought at the time, it was not a bad copy of its namesake matancera, they began under the structure of a septet, and later in their golden age they abstained from using the nasal choirs, they managed a structure of three trumpets, a clear hammer of the bongo accompanied by the congas, in a group with its own personality and that served as a school for some of the most important orchestra directors of the coming decades in our country.

The first Sonora Caracas

In September 1933, our capital was musically shaken by the visit of the Trio Matamoros, famous movie and record stars, who during their twenty continuous days at the prestigious Teatro Ayacucho, stirred up a bucolic Caracas with their sones and boleros, and when they traveled to the west of our country1, they sowed the seeds of the first son groups in Venezuela.

He was in the quintet Los Modernos, who on several occasions accompanied Felipe Pirela on TV. He was the pianist.

He worked for Los Guaracheros de Manolo (when he left Billo’s) and also worked with the Orquesta Sans Sousi.

He worked for a short time in Carlos Guerra’s orchestra and from there he made the leap to Renato Capriles’ Melodicos, recommended by Freddy Coronado when he was the director of LM.

When Coronado left the direction of LM, Stelio took over the musical direction and catapulted them to the fat and unequaled sound of lm in the 60’s, which represented a sonority like few others.

When Stelio left lm, Manolo Monterrey’s orchestra joined the harmonies, and he suggested to Manolo that he return to lm, which the Antillean cyclone accepted and returned triumphantly to Renato’s organization.

At the beginning of the 70’s Stelio goes to work with the most popular band in Venezuela and there Stelio’s arrangement work gives another big hit, his contribution is immense and Billo’s goes on to live one of the greatest decades that Billo Frómeta’s group has ever had.

The contribution of Stelio Bosch Cabrujas to tropical music is worthy of study and review, to be included in university courses so that the new generations of arrangers and musicians understand the legacy of a musician who is threatened to be forgotten, it is up to us to make sure that this does not happen and it is mandatory to keep his memory alive.

Sources:

Newspaper library of the popular music of Venezuela.

Gherson Maldonado

Iliana Capriles (Oficial)

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