Below are biogrpahies of just a few of the
luminaries and legends of Cuban music featured in the documentary.
OLGA GUILLOT
Latin
Grammy winner Olga Guillot became one of the most popular performers
of Cuban bolero during the '50s. After moving to Havana from
her native Santiago de Cuba, she joined her sister in Dúo
Hermanitas Guillot, debuting on a radio show called La Corte
Suprema del Arte (The Art Supreme Court). Later, she studied
music and joined a foursome, called Siboney, making her debut
as a solo artist in 1945 while singing at Havana's Zombie Club.
In 1946, her fame reached the U.S. after recording a Spanish
version of "Stormy Weather." She
got the opportunity to make her first record in 1954 after signing
up to an independent label and released "Miénteme," composed
by Mexican Chamaco Domínguez. On October 31, 1964, Guillot
became the first Latin artist to perform at New York's Carnegie
Hall.
GENEROSO JIMENEZ
Although
the trombone often gets short shrift behind vocals, flute or
even saxophone in Cuban music, Generoso "El
Tojo" Jiménez is noteworthy as one of the best trombone
players in Cuban history. He was born in the small town in Cruces,
in what is now the province of Cienfuegos, on July 17, 1917.
As with any aspiring musician from the provinces, his path eventually
took him 150 miles northwest to Havana, where the legendary pre-revolutionary
nightlife had attracted musicians and music lovers from all over
the world. Jiménez thrived in this environment, eventually
winning a coveted spot with Beny
Moré's wildly popular orchestra in 1955. He stayed
with the band as a composer and lead soloist until 1959, but
his time there is still marked by the coros of Moré's
hit "Que Bueno Baila Usted," where the band sings out
repeatedly "Generoso! How well you play!"
After leaving Moré's orchestra, Jiménez recorded
several albums with his own orchestra, including El Trombón
Majadero, meaning "The
Unruly Trombone," which was re-released in the United States by Bembé Records
in 1997. By that time, Jiménez had been retired for decades and was
living in obscurity and near-poverty like most other Cubans. The re-release
aimed not only to revive some great Cuban session playing, but also to provide
a supplement to Jiménez's income, a bonus that was a richly deserved
perk of the rekindled American interest in old Cuban music.
BENY
MORÉ
Beny Moré is
the greatest singer of popular music Cuba has ever produced.
In the years since his death, no Cuban vocalist has emerged to
fill his shoes, and he remains as close as ever to the hearts
of the Cuban people. Few singers in this hemisphere have consistently
matched his interpretive gifts, vocal virtuosity, and comfort
with a range of styles.
Moré's genius lay in his synthesis of two of the major
currents of Cuban song -- Afro-Cuban son and the Spanish-derived
guajiro music of the Cuban countryside He was equally successful
with boleros as with mambos and rumbas. Most important is what
he conveyed with his singing: a tenderness and direct emotional
appeal in his boleros, a hip-shaking exuberance in his mambos.
He also doubled as a bandleader and assembled a powerful big
band comprised of talented musicians like trumpeters Alejandro "El
Negro" Vivar and Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros,
and trombonist and arranger Generoso "El Tojo" Jimenez. His was the
quintessential Afro-Cuban big band sound of the 1950s: brash, multi-textured,
dynamic. But unlike New York bands like Machito and his Afro-Cubans, Moré was
not pushing the boundaries of Latin jazz. His music was more "pop" than
Machito's, but it was anything but formulaic.
Born Bartolome Maximiliano Moré in 1919 in the village of Santa Isabel
de Las Lajas in Las Villas Province, Cuba, Moré left for Havana as a
teenager and for several years worked a variety of odd jobs while performing
as a street singer in the city's port area. His big break came in 1945, when
he accompanied the Miguel
Matamoros conjunto to Mexico. In the late 1940s, Mexico City was a magnet
for Cuban entertainers seeking to make it big in the Mexican film industry.
After touring Mexico, Matamoros returned to Cuba, but Moré decided to
stay behind. Before leaving, Matamoros counseled Moré to change his
name since "bartolo" meant donkey in Mexican slang. Rechristened
Beny Moré, in a year or two he was discovered by Mario Rivera Conde,
the director of RCA/Victor Mexico, who paired him with a series of high-caliber
orchestras, including those of Perez
Prado and Mexican composer Raphael De Paz.
Moré returned to Cuba in 1953 and assembled his own big band, with
whom he crissed-crossed Cuba until his death. Moré was intensely loyal
to his musicians, referring to them as his tribu (tribe). Because
he always insisted on having a large band, he was known to have gone out
of pocket on his RCA recordings to pay his men. They responded by embellishing
his songs with subtle, ornate orchestral playing. Moré's great legacy,
though, is clear on the recordings themselves: a voice that can evoke memories
of lost romance, or make you dance with joyous abandon.
ISRAEL “CACHAO” LOPEZ
Israel "Cachao" López
(born 1918 in Havana, Cuba),
often known just as "Cachao" (pronounced kah-CHOW)
is a Cuban mambo musician
and composer,
who has helped bring mambo music to popularity in the United
States of America in the early 1950s.
He has a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame, and has been described as "the inventor
of the mambo". He is considered a master of descarga (Latin
jam sessions).
López
played the acoustic
bass, and had his own band, called Grupo
Niche. With his late brother, Orestes
López, the brothers were heavily influential on Cuban
music from the 1930s to
the 1950s.
They introduced the ritmo
nuevo ("new rhythm") in the late 1930s, which
transformed the danzón by
introducing African rhythms into Cuban music, which led to mambo.
Lopez has won several Grammy
Awards for both his own work and his contributions on albums
by Latin music stars, including Gloria
Estefan. In 1995,
he won a Grammy for Master Sessions Volume 1. In 2003, he won
a Latin
Grammy for Best
Traditional Tropical Latin Album together with Bebo and Patato
Valdés for El Arte Del Sabor. Lopez won a further
Grammy in 2005,
again for his own work, ¡Ahora Si!.
His nephew, Orlando "Cachaíto" López became
one of the mainstays of the famed Buena
Vista Social Club group. Cachao has played with artists such
as Tito Puente,
and his music has been featured on movies such as The
Birdcage, and on the Grand
Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack. Actor Andy
Garcia produced a documentary entitled
Cachao ... Como Si Ritmo No Hay Dos ("With A Rhythm Like
No Other") in 1993 about
his music.
CELIA CRUZ
Celia
Cruz was one of Latin music's most respected vocalists. A ten-time
Grammy nominee, Cruz, who sang only in her native Spanish language,
received a Smithsonian Lifetime Achievement award, a National
Medal of the Arts, and honorary doctorates from Yale University
and the University of Miami.
One of 14 children, born in the small village of Barrio Santra Suarez, Havana.
Her first break came when she was invited to join the band la Sonora Matancera
in 1950. The group was revered as the Latin equivalent of the
Duke Ellington Orchestra. Cruz remained with the group for 15 years, touring
throughout the world. She married the band's trumpet player Pedro Knight on
July 14, 1962. Cruz and Knight eventually
settled in New York. Knight became
Cruz's manager in 1965, a position he held until the mid-'90s when he began
to devote his attention to serving as her musical director and conductor of
her band.
Leaving Sonora
Matancera's band in 1965, Cruz launched her solo career with a band formed
for her by Tito Puente.
Despite releasing eight albums together, the collaboration failed to achieve
commercial success. Cruz and Puente resumed
their partnership with a special appearance at the Grammy Award ceremonies
in 1987. Signed by Vaya, the sister label of Fania, Cruz recorded with Oscar
D'Leon, Cheo Feliciano,
and Hector Rodriquez in the mid- to late '60s. Cruz's first success since leaving Sonora
Matancera came in 1974 when she recorded a duo album, Celia and Johnny,
with Johnny Pacheco,
trombone player and the co-owner of Fania. She subsequently began appearing
with the Fania All
Stars. Cruz's popularity reached its highest level when she appeared
in the 1992 film The Mambo Kings. Cruz also appeared in the film The Perez
Family. She sang a duet version of "Loco de Amor," with David
Byrne, in the Jonathan Demme movie Something Wild. In 1998, Cruz released Duets,
an album featuring her singing with Willie
Colon, Angela Carrasco, Oscar D'Leon, Jose Alberto "El Canario," and
la India. Cruz continued to record and perform until sidelined by a brain
tumor in 2002. While recovering from surgery to remove the tumor,
she managed to make it in to the studio in early 2003 to record Regalo de
Alma. Her surgery was only partially successful and she died July 16, 2003.
The passing of the "Queen
of Salsa" left a huge gap in Latin music, but also a remarkable catalog
to document her reign.
BEBO VALDES
A top-notch
pianist/composer/arranger, Bebo Valdes (father of pianist Chucho
Valdes) was the musical director of nightclub shows at the
Tropicana in Havana by 1948. Very active in the 1950s, Valdes
was considered one of the giants of Cuban music, arranging many
recordings, composing mambos, and organizing Afro-Cuban jazz
jam sessions. In 1994, after 34 years off records, he cut Bebo
Rides Again for the Messidor label, not only playing
piano but composing eight numbers and arranging 11 songs in
the 36 hours before the first session; he was 76 at the time.
At 85, Bebo Valdés is one of the greatest living figures
in international music. His record Lágrimas negras,
with Diego el Cigala, has once again put the Cuban pianist
in the limelight and his enormous vital force allows him to
multiply himself in other projects. The record Beautiful music
together with the Uruguayan violinist Federico Britos, the
making of the film El milagro de Candeal, directed by Fernando
Trueba, together with Carlinhos Brown, etc. And now Bebo de
Cuba, a project of enormous complexity because it summarises
his musical life and tells the story of the best Cuban music.
