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Latin America – March 2023
Vicentico Valdés “The elastic voice” of Bolero in Cuba and the Caribbean
“The earrings that the moon lacks I have kept to make you a necklace”.
Vicente Valdés was born in the neighborhood of Cayo Hueso, Havana, on January 10, 1921. He was the younger brother of Alfredito Valdés (1908-1988), a versatile singer who performed with numerous sones groups, ensembles and orchestras in Cuba until, around 1940, he settled outside Cuba, mainly in New York and Mexico, where he continued his artistic career.
Two of Vicente’s other brothers, Marcelino and Oscar, stood out as percussionists, and the latter also as a singer in the Irakere group.
Also known as “La voz elástica” Vicentico is one of the most celebrated interpreters of the bolero with a great interpretative strength and dramatization in his performance for the benefit of couples in love who enjoy his songs to this day.
Valdés was part of “El Septeto Nacional”, the orchestra of Cheo Belén Puig, “La Cosmopolita”, the orchestras of Noro Morales, Arturo Núñez and Tito Puente,
In 1937, recommended by Alfredo, Vicentico sang for a short time with the Segundo Septeto Nacional, a group that had been founded to share the multiple artistic commitments that the renowned Septeto Nacional of Ignacio Piñeiro received at that time. He was also a member of the sones sextet Jabón Candado.
Later, he replaced Alfredo as a singer in the orchestra of Cheo Belén Puig, one of the most famous Cuban groups of the charanga format. Later, he joined the jazz band Cosmopolita, led by Vicente Viana and later by pianist and composer Humberto Suárez.
Together with Marcelino Guerra Rapindey and Cristóbal Dobal, among others, he was part of the sextet Los Leones.
In the mid-1940s, due to the difficult economic situation in Cuba after World War II, Vicentico, like many other Cuban artists of the time, went to Mexico to explore new horizons for his work in music.
In the Mexican capital he performed with Humberto Cané’s conjunto Tropical, and the orchestras of Arturo Núñez, Rafael de Paz and Chucho Rodríguez, with whom he later recorded with Benny Moré. In those years he received his first ovations on the stage of the Follies.
In Mexico, between 1946 and 1947, he made recordings for the Peerless label, backed by the orchestras of the Mexican Rafael de Paz and the Cuban Absalón Pérez.
The repertoire chosen for these records consisted almost entirely of guarachas, afros and sones montunos, which had been popularized in Cuba by Orlando Guerra Cascarita with the Orquesta Casino de la Playa.
Vicentico was hired as a singer of the musical group of the Puerto Rican pianist Noro Morales in New York at the end of 1947. In that city he had a successful season at the Hispanic Theater which, according to the chronicles of the time, “consecrated him in the taste of the Latin community”. He also performed at the Million Dollars, Park Plaza and Puerto Rico theaters.
In 1948 he joined Tito Puente’s orchestra as a singer, along with his brother Alfredo. With Puente he recorded his first boleros (among them “Quiéreme y verás”, by José Antonio Méndez) for the Seeco label. Until then he had been used mainly as an interpreter of upbeat numbers. With Tito Puente he made numerous recordings throughout his career.
In 1953, the Seeco record company promoted a group of recordings with the Sonora Matancera, which had great repercussion in Cuba, where he was hardly known, and in other Caribbean countries.
Among the pieces recorded in Havana in November of that year were two boleros (“Una aventura”, by Elisa Chiquitica Méndez and “Decídete mi amor”, by José Antonio Méndez), a genre in which he achieved the greatest triumphs of his career.
From then on, in New York, with great studio orchestras conducted by René Hernández, Joe Cain, and later Charlie and Eddie Palmieri, he made new recordings that were quickly distributed throughout Latin America.
Their repertoire during this stage (early 1960s) included boleros and songs by authors of different tendencies and styles; the Cubans René Touzet, Javier Vázquez, José Antonio Méndez, Piloto y Vera, Pepé Delgado, Juan Pablo Miranda, Marta Valdés and the Rigual brothers; the Puerto Ricans Silvia Rexach, Myrta Silva and Rafael Hernández; the Dominicans Rafael Solano and Manuel Troncoso; and the Mexicans Manuel Prado, Luis Demetrio and Armando Manzanero.
La Sonora Matancera among others no less important. He also excelled in other genres such as Mambo, Guaguancó, Son and Guaracha.
He was an exceptional singer with a particular style that set the standard and also spread the best Latin American bolero composers, particularly those of the Cuban Feeling, of which he was a valuable promoter at an international level. His career as a soloist was impeccable.
He died in a New York hospital on the morning of June 26, 1995, according to a heart attack.
Source: En Caribe
Tata Güines known as Manos de Oro, Cuban rumbero and percussionist
Known as Manos de Oro, he modernized the tumbadoras and played with the most important musicians of the island of Cuba.
He was born in Güines, Havana on June 30, 1930, in the bosom of a family of musicians, son of Joseíto “El tresero” and Niñita, who from a very young age used to play a boot-cleaning box in the corner of the Chapel of Santa Bárbara, in the legendary neighborhood of Leguina, where so many congas and bembés have been made and will continue to be enjoyed.
Artistic trajectory
Saying Federico Arístides Soto Alejo may not say anything to some music neophytes, but when you say Tata Güines, things change radically and everyone thinks: That is the tumbadora made soul and flavor.
He became attached to percussion instruments, especially the tumbadora, which, as a Cuban, groaned under the effect of his prodigious hands. Under the influence of Chano Pozo, whose touches bewitched him and gave him the key to create his own style.
He was formed as a musician among the drums and the religious festivities of his neighborhood. He adopted his nickname as a child -el Tata-, and as a surname the name of the town where he grew up. Music was in his blood: his father and uncles made music with their hides.
He played double bass in the group Ases del Ritmo. He was part of the Partagás group, led by his uncle Dionisio Martínez, and later founded the Estrellas Nacientes orchestra and performed with the Swing Casino orchestra in Güines.
In 1946 he performed in his hometown with the Conjunto de Arsenio Rodríguez.
}In 1948 he moved to Havana, where he was a member of the orchestras La Nueva América, led by Pao Domini; La Habana Sport led by José Antonio Díaz, Unión, led by Orestes López, La Sensación led by Belisario López, and in 1952 he joined Fajardo y sus Estrellas, with which he traveled to New York in 1956.
He joined Los Jóvenes del Cayo, with which he appeared on the radio station La Voz del Aire; later he performed with the ensembles Camacho and Gloria Matancera.
He accompanied the trio Taicuba as a bongo player, and worked with Guillermo Portabales, Celina y Reutilio, and Ramón Veloz. He participated, along with Chano Pozo, in the comparsa Los Dandys de Belén; also, Los Mosqueteros del Rey, Los Mambises and Las Boyeras.
He recorded with Arturo O’Farrill (Chico) and with Cachao y su Ritmo Caliente, Frank Emilio, Guillermo Barreto, Gustavo Tamayo and others. He was part of the Quinteto Instrumental de Música Moderna (later Los Amigos), led by pianist Frank Emilio; Guillermo Barreto, timbal, Gustavo Tamayo, güiro, Israel López (Cachao) and Orlando Hernández (Papito), double bass.
In 1955 he travels to Caracas, Venezuela, to participate in the carnivals of that city. He traveled to New York with the Fajardo y sus Estrellas orchestra, with which he performed at the Palladium, where he coincided with Machito y sus Afro-Cubans and Benny Moré, whom he accompanied on the tumbadora; he also performed at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where he worked for the first time as a soloist.
He prepared a show and shared the stage with Josephine Baker, Frank Sinatra, Maynard Ferguson and Los Chavales de España, with whom he recorded the piece “No te puedo querer”.
In 1960 he returned to Cuba. Four years later he founded Los Tatagüinitos. He offered a concert with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Manuel Duchesne Cuzán, with which he performed his work Perico no llores más. He accompanied the guitarist and composer Sergio Vitier in his work Ad Libitum, danced by Alicia Alonso and Antonio Gades.
International tours
He toured California, Chicago, Miami, Puerto Rico, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Martinique, Monte Carlo, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Hungary, where he participated in the Jazz Festival; Soviet Union, Finland, Spain.
Musical Validity
Tata Güines was a master of masters of Cuban percussion. His death represents a notable loss for Cuban culture. Nobody like him in Cuba to make percussion an art.
In front of Tata Güines, the leather of the drum seemed the most delicate and expensive silk. He would place his agile hand on the tanned skin stretched by the fire, and with his fingernails he would achieve the saddest of laments as well as the most contagious smile.
Few knew him as Federico Arístides Soto Alejo, but everyone knew that he had modernized the tumbadoras, that he was a master at placing the “loose” beats in a song, as if “carelessly”, but that the piece could not survive if it lacked that imprint of someone who let himself be carried away by the rhythm of the claves, by his very fine ear and by the demands of a body accustomed, since he was almost a child, to music.
He died on February 4, 2008 in Güines, Havana.
Awards and recognitions
National Music Award 2006
Félix Varela Order 2004
Alejo Carpentier Medal 2002
Read also: Carlos “Patato” Valdés one of the best percussionists in the history of Latin Jazz
Jesús “Chuito” Narváez the Atheist of La Guaira and the pianist of the golden age of the Latin Dimension
Jesús Chuito Narváez was born in Margarita on August 26, 1950. He began his musical career as a player of stringed instruments such as the guitar, cuatro and bass.
On Monday, January 16, 2006, at 6:00 a.m., Jesús “Chuito” Narváez, pianist of the golden age of the Latin Dimension, died in La Guaira at the age of 55 due to a liver disease.Especially for the guitar instrument with which he debuted with “Los Tremendos” in La Guaira and under the tutelage of Edgar Evers in the late sixties and early seventies.
Precisely in 1971, the famous Estrellas Latinas of composer Cheo Palmar (a group that included Canelita Medina, Joe Ruiz, Calavén, El Flaco Bermúdez, Cheo Navarro, among others), made a record in which Chuito recorded the guitar on one of the sides of the 45 rpm.
In that group Los Tremendos bought a piano so that Chuito could learn to play it, and it is when he had the opportunity to replace Nano Ladera, pianist of Los Satélites and they recorded the LP: “Saltando el Muro” in 1972, an album that reached the first places in NY especially for the song: “Traicionera”.
Cheché Mendoza’s Satélites, after jumping the wall to fame in other yards, constantly traveled to achieve the success that in their own land they were denied, one of those frequent travelers was Chuito himself, a fact that prevented him from recording the first album of Dimensión Latina in its entirety, where there was the need in the song Julia to use the piano of Professor Franklyn Stuart or Eddie Frankie or rather Tony Monserrat, who like a serious madman leaves that string of madmen who were the members of the Latin Dimension, so when Chuito returns from his trip to Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire he must make the difficult decision to choose between the Satellites (with whom he had recorded another album : “Cheché himself, disillusioned by the little affection in his homeland, encourages him to go with the Dimension, where he begins a fruitful career of 14 long durations.
In 1979, Dimensión Latina had already suffered the loss of Oscar D’León in July 1976, in February 1978 Wladimir to go with Oscar, until after a series of rumors Chuito together with Rodrigo Mendoza also left the group fulfilling contracts until March 15, when he was replaced by the excellent Colombian pianist Samuel Del Real.
Chuito Narváez and Rodrigo Mendoza formed the Orquesta Amistad in April 1979, recording three albums: “Presente y Pasado” in 1979, “El Poder de la Amistad” (1979), and “Calavén y Yo” in 1981, with the legendary Negrito Calavén replacing Rodrigo who had left with La Salsa Mayor.
With the Orquesta Amistad Chuito changed his structure with the dimension and incorporated three and four trumpets, two trombones and the flute of the young Natividad Martínez.
Chuito himself once declared: I am not pedantic, because I don’t like that, but my aspirations are to have one of the best orchestras and to be able to alternate with those who are said to be the best. In his first album, the vocalists Rodrigo and Tito Gómez compete with one of his greatest hits: Ritmo de Azúcar (1979).
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