Havana. Cuba. - The stories of extraordinary characters of Cuban music, like singers Celeste Mendoza, and Freddy, or jazz woman Numidia Vaillant, are rescued from oblivion in the blog Desmemoriados, (Forgetful) by researcher Rosa Marquetti. The above-mentioned singers are the stars of the homonymous book that has just been published.
These artists, who decades ago sang, created, danced, or were virtuous instrumentalists in diverse rhythms and genres, from Son and Rumba; to a romantic bolero or Jazz; appear in 20 texts, taken from the website, in the 430 pages of Desmemoriados. Historias de la musica cubana.
Marquetti explains in an interview with EFE that the book has allowed her to unleash her "obsession" about personalities of Cuban music somewhat forgotten. They were all affected to some extent by their situation in the diaspora since 1959, after the triumph of the Revolution.
She has also been able to "connect" with "disconnected" Cubans - because they have no access to Internet - and with people who’d rather read on paper the book now presented by Ojala Publishing House, as part of the program of Havana 2019 International Book Fair.
The musical researcher refloats stories that motivated biographical approaches in her second book after the title Chano Pozo. La Vida (1915-1948), in which she went over the percussionist’s career in New York, where he conceived the mixture of Afro-Cuban elements with Jazz that was brewing in the United States then.
With an elegant and seductive style, her queries summarize the life stories of 20 names, such as percussionist Armando Peraza, eccentric kettledrummer Chori, showman Dandy Crawford, the musical icon of the 1960’s, Myriam Acevedo; singers Miguelito Cuni, Moraima Secada, the temperamental La Lupe, Maggie Prior, pianist Zenaida Manfugas, or the legendary jazz dancers of Santa Amalia neighborhood, in Havana.
The author describes her exhaustive compendium as "an unprejudiced fresco" of different periods of the vast Cuban music scene, whose starting point was the blog in which the rule of publishing on Internet: "little and short" was blatantly ignored.
She admits that the story of Pilar Morales, a Cuban singer who still lives in Barcelona, where she settled in 1955, is particularly dear to her. Pilar married the next year, talented blind pianist Tete Montoliu, considered the great father of Spanish jazz, and one of the most singular of the genre in Europe.
The book tells the tale of how Morales made her way after her arrival in Spain, where she was baptized as the "Voice of the Tropic", until her successful career waned through the years..
Marquetti says she likes to talk about success, but also about the setbacks that musicians suffer in their lives, such as the creation of Batanga rhythm by that great pianist, composer and orchestrator Bebo Valdes (1918-2013).
Batanga is a genre considered by musicians as a creation as important as Mambo, but lacked the commercial support in its time to become an international hit. “Nonetheless, it is musically one of the greatest Valdes’ works, the musicologist pointed out.
In fact, Valdes, who left Cuba for good in 1960, was practically anonymous until 2002. In that year, he was featured with other musicians in an album that was nominated to the Latin Grammy Award. In the same year, he recorded the all-times hit Lagrimas Negras, with cantaor (flamenco singer) Diego el Cigala, selling 700,000 copies.
One of the last chapters of Desmemoriados ... revives Freddy, a powerful voice closely attached to the nightly songs of Salon Rojo cabaret, of Capri Hotel, which for Marquetti was a "musical milestone”, regardless of her chubby "anti-diva" body.
Freddy was immortalized as a great star in the novel Tres tristes tigres, written by Cuban Guillermo Cabrera-Infante.
The author also retrieved La Lupe, an "extraordinary myth" of Cuban show-business, with a "very peculiar" approach to the artist, who monopolized looks with her incredible "performances" in Cuba before her success in New York’s Latin exile.
Marquetti assures that she did not mean to attach priority to feminine referents, which in the book total 11, including one that stirred great curiosity, when she published it on her blog.
"Divina y terrenal" (Divine and earthly) Celeste Mendoza emerges before the reader. She was baptized in her prime as the "Queen of Guaguanco", a musical genre born from rumba, in which she shined, for being the woman who raised it to the greater stages of the island.
Written by Raquel Martori for EFE
Translated by Pedro A. Fanego
