Carlos Varela Begins National Tour in Holguín

By Leandro Estupiñán / Sunday, April 19, 2009. leandro@ahora.cu.
Photos: Amauris Betancourt.
It happened in the Marqueta Square; there was a red ceramics factory many years ago, a concert hall to-be now. I thought the place inappropriate, but I was wrong. The spot proved to be rather small for a national tour starting concert which will take troubadour Carlos Varela along to 12 other places in Cuba. Today, Sunday April 19, he will be in Gibara, in the Humberto Solás International Non-Budget Film Festival, where he has been, year in year out, to return his affection and friendship to his late friend moviemaker Humberto Solás, who passed away last September 2008.

Varela wore black (as he always does) and had five talented musicians keep him company. Singer Diana Fuentes sticks out. Down, before the stage, a sea of young people (teenagers and thirty-and-odds people) and some other from different ages. The first song was 25 thousand lies on the truth. The last The woodcutter without forest, a usual request from fans included in his CD Like a fish (1995).

The first time I listened to Carlos Varela, Like a fish was an underground hit. He was not played in the radio when I got to Havana in 1995 for the second time. Varela had a handkerchief to cover his hair and held a cup at the height of the nose. With a hand, he covered the mouth of the container inside which a fish swam.
The poster, on a street lamp post in Reina street, promoted a concert and, according to what I knew many years later, it had turned out to be legendary due to the crowd it brought together and because, for the first time, he was thrown coins at when singing Coins to the air as a promotion to the video clip where the very Grethel, the muse whom Varela saw through Jim Morrison's eyes, was dancing. It had happened almost one year before.

I found that poster many times those days. The CD Like a fish rendered a successful production with fabulous songs like Small dreams, Family pictures, Habaname or Like an angel. He included also harsh criticisms to Cuban reality like Politics does not fit in the sugar bowl or The woodcutter without forest. It was not difficult to understand why his songs were radioed, “only sometimes”, (if by any chance they were radioed in the nineties), even though his friend and protector Silvio Rodríguez had said that “the ones plotting against Carlos Varela erred, because they think him very hypercritical."

The troubadour questions the world around him, but his criticism is based on a hypersensitivity that seems to get hold of him. He sings to an amusement park tearing apart, to the city getting destroyed, to a misunderstood young girl, to a relative fleeing the country, to contradictions landing on his nose and, next, he warns: “If you knew the pain I feel when I sing to you and you do not understand this love”. It has been thus since Jalisco Park (1989) where he included themes like Guillermo Tell or Tropicollage and where you can notice the personality of someone born in April 1963, four years after 1959.A curious thing turned out to me with Varela. When I got to Havana to major in journalism in 2 000, I ran into the old poster that had confronted me with the musician. Then, he was launching Clouds (2 000), a CD that, although with dreadful songs like Walls and doors, he seemed to me stepping backwards, a capitulation in his background as an artist and reality iconoclast. Maybe I believed Varela had fallen down because I only liked that song out of Clouds.

It was logical, I thought: The hardest years seemed to have gone, and with them all poetical Carlos Varela's amphibology met an end. I was mistaken again. He came out with Seven (2 003) and so dreadful lyrics like the one adorning the melody in Behind the window-glass, a song where he came back stabbing us with a cold and cruel sensibility shouting: “The ones that fled cry, the ones that stay cry more”. That was the Carlos Varela I had always been interested in. The troubadour whose lyrics of love stem from reality and its symbols and circumstances. Now, after having turned 46, he has started this national tour to promote his new work, entitled It is not the end. It is not either for his career: He is a mature man; Voice and fans keep him company. Last night (Saturday, April 18), the Marqueta Square was full with young people singing his songs. And I discovered him in a poster, stuck on a Havana street lamp post in the nineties!The image in the poster stayed there, two or three years right after the XXI century had already begun. I remember they were four pieces of a scratched paper surviving time when I saw it last. I was heading down Reina street to do something I do not remember, while a man sold orange juice nearby the street lamp post. He knew those things were not big things, but they were his dreams. What was it supposed be done about it?

Holguín Closes Successfully Classical Music Festival

Text and photos: Amauris Betancourt.

The large audience packing the Ismaelillo movie-theater to enjoy the closing ceremony of the XXVI Classical Music Festival approves the claim of having a concert hall, in the building currently, in Holguín city. Several people could enjoy the concert but had no seats in a room that turned out too small for such a Festival held yearly.

However, such a statement is not based on space availability but on the growing quality of Holguín musicians, ranked among the best nationwide, according to some noted figures attending the Festival like Frank Fernandez, Honorary President, maestro Guido Lopez-Gavilán, vice-president, and the absent guitarist Leo Brower, National Movie Prize.

The event’s closing ceremony started with a special tribute to pianist Frank Fernandez, born in the city of Mayarí, Holguin province.

The Holguín Symphonic Orchestra (OSH in Spanish), headed by Orestes Saavedra, opened the musical banquet with the interpretation of Vals Cubano (Cuban Waltz).

Then the OSH invited Colombian cellist Laura Ospina first and Italian clarinet player Ivan Petruzziello later to play with.

The OSH’s general director, Harold Ricardo Corella, had already praised Petruzziello in a press conference: “He is young but very talented."

Mexico joined in with maestro Marco Natanael Espinosa as director and soprano Alejandra Lopez who interpreted “Piensa en mi” (Think of me) by Mexican composer Agustin Lara.

Then Alejandra sang “Jurame” (Swear), accompanied by Cuban tenor Yunior Galano, a piece by also Mexican composer Maria Greever. Maestro Natanael Espinosa was given a warm welcome by the audience.

The Gala had an excellent closing with maestro Guido Lopez-Gavilan’s Guagancó, Orfeón Holguin and the Codanza dance company dancing it.

"Music has been without a doubt the queen of the Classical Music Festival in Holguin…," said Jorge Luis Sanchez Grass, the artistic general director. Each edition overcomes precedent ones, and ideas and dreams hardly stop but go on far from being utopian. Let’s see what will happen next year.

Then we are in debt with Harold Ricardo Corella, one of the most important figures in the organization of the event these last years. God willing, we will have more room next year, because the La Periquera Museum is too small for such a big event as the the Classical Music Festival.

Tribute to Cuban pianist Frank Fernández

Text and photos: Amauris Betancourt.

Cuban Pianist Frank Fernández was paid homage to at the La Periquera Solenm Hall as one of the activities of the XXVI National Classical Music Concert Festival, for his half a century of artistic life accompanied by success nationally and internationally.The Orfeón Holguín Choir played two works: “Vertigo of rain”, Frank's text and music by Guido López Gavilán, and “Dream that sings the breeze.”The Pizzicato Quartet played a version of Ausencia, written by A. Villalón.Next soprano Norkristián García sang The Afternoon from Sindo Garay.Karla Martínez, to the piano, and Frank Ernesto Fernández at the oboe.Harold Ricardo joined in with his violin with Sequence of Solitude and Rebirth in January, this last a homage to the Cuban Revolution by Frank Fernández.The Holguín Chamber Orchestra, Karla, Frank Ernesto, and Ellis Regina in Adagio for the Oboe, Cello, Cuerdas and organ from G. Zipolli.At the end the Raúl Gómez García art school infantile choir closed.A special Recognition was given to Frank: “Things like these can not be thanked with words”, he said filled with emotion, heading for the piano and did it in the language he knows better.

XXVI Holguín Classic Music Concert Meeting’s Inauguration

Text and photo: Amauris Betancourt.

The 26th Holguín Classic Music Concert Meeting started 9.00 a.m. with a pilgrimage to the city cemetery to pay homage to Holguín late musicians José María Ochoa, Raúl Camayd and Manuel de Jesus Leyva, three outstanding exponents of the Cuban culture.Next a concert was held at Julio Grave de Peralta park by the Cacocun municipality Concert Band.The day went on with a conference on the Contribution of the Holguín Orfeón Choir to the Cuban choral art at the Iberia-American House by musicologist Ana Luisa Tamayo, Ana Arriaza, founder and first director of the Orfeón Holguín Choir, Marilín Aldana, its present-day director and the founding member María Fermina Durán and Oliver Hechavarría, who remembered its founding in 1964.The inauguration concert, in the evening, included two choir from Eastern Cuba: the one from Santiago de Cuba and the one from Holguín. The latter is paid homage to for its 45th anniversary together with late musician Rodrigo Prats in his centenary and to Frank Fernández's 50 years of artistic life.Headed by master Guido López Gavilán the inauguration concert came to an end with a Messiah selection, Glory to God in the Heights, Amén and Aleluya, from Händel, brilliantly interpreted by the Santiago de Cuba and Holguín Choirs, and the Holguín Chamber Orchestra.

Faustino Oramas, the Street Minstrel

By Lydia Esther Ochoa lydiaesther@radioangulo.icrt.cu

Music and rain played a good combination to see Faustino Oramas Osorio off two years ago in a burial that congregated thousands of people in Holguín.

His fellow-men could not believe the Pun King had yielded his crown forever, away from his earthly existence in the kingdom of Cuban idiosyncrasy where guaracha and music, loud laughter and reverences stood up for symbols.

Several generations kept him company in a non-stop journey while his music goes on being a reason to rejoice, and the lyrics, an alibi to make use of good humor.

Singing with the band "El Guayabero"

Faustino Oramas did know how to walk life trails when back in the 1930s –he was born in 1912- he was already a young minstrel singing his sorrows and joys at different places in Holguín, even on buses.

He was like an ebony Quixote facing poverty's mills in a society that divided Calixto García park in two, for whites and blacks, while the outcast artist passed his hat for tips among bus passengers living in the city between Jigüe and Marañón rivers.

The Guayabero would tell many years later he took off his hat after ending up singing and say coming close to passengers: “Cooprate with the Cuban artist”, and thus one and another day, until he could push his way through an unjust and unfair world.

When evoking those times he did not do it with grudge. It was joy rather when remembering his first self-taught artist years as a son singer, a street minstrel and a lifetime troubadour, able to overcome fate in the mid 20th century, a lesson of constancy and love for his homeland.

As Faustino Oramas said, “… and then the Cuban Revolution came”; and so did acknowledgement for his work linked to his merit, “… that I did not deserve but receive thankfully. He shared the stage with Pablo Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez, Pancho Amat, Eliades Ochoa and other big Cuban artists.

Unveiling his natural size statue at the Provincial Center for the Music and Shows in Holguín.

His home was a meeting place for music goers and singers who could not do without sharing the stage on improvised concerts lasting till dawn, just like his no-end birthday parties, with people stopping by to congratulate him very early in the morning and leaving next day, June 4^th, with the sun rise.

The Pun King, the greatest Cuban Minstrel, the troubadour, the son singer, the Guayabero are Faustino Oramas’ nicknames, who passed away on March 27, 2007, when he was about to turn a hundred years. He lived in two different centuries and jumped in the new millennium bringing about a storm of laughter in his natal Holguín, as well as in other towns and cities of Cuba, and in Spain and Mexico, because humor, when it is original, makes everybody laugh.

Frank Fernández, 50 Years Devoted to Art

By Amauris Betancourt.

Pianist Frank Fernández sticks out among the most genuine representatives of the musical art in Cuba. Born in the municipality of Mayarí, he will turn 65 next March, out of which 50 have been linked to music.

Frank, citing an interview granted to the young journalist Leandro Estupiñán for the weekly Ahora! “…I am convinced there’s nothing that can be done about the past and the future does not exist. The only important thing is the now.” It happened so during the concert at the Ismaelillo movie-theater in Holguín last January 31, as a way to start celebrations for this half a century dedicated to the study and interpretation of the piano.

People from Holguín could enjoy his interpretations of Schubert's Ave María; and The Waltz of the Minute, Sad Waltz, from Federico Chopin; A Memory, Invitation, Pecking, Bye to Cuba, and Three Blows from Ignacio Cervantes. And some others like the soundtracks from the TV series The Great Rebellion and the soap-opera Brave Farm, as well as Joropo Waltz, Noon Conga, Habanera and Zapateo. He played besides, to please the public's loud and insistent ovations, Sea Pearl, from Sindo Garay; The Comparse and Malagueña, from Ernesto Lecuona; Ritual Dance of the Fire, from Manuel de Falla and the musicalized poem Thanks to Life, from Chilean Violeta Parra.He thanks very much Altagracia Tamayo, mother and piano teacher, his first studies of piano in his natal town, where there was a rich cultural environment linked to art's prestigious Cuban personalities like Sindo Garay, a brilliant musician, one of whose relatives became his godfather.

His mother taught him, when he was three or four years old, the classical piano with works from Beethoven, Schumann, Litzt, Mozart, and Schubert. At the same time, he listened to the Cuban folk music in Sindo Garay's names and Manuel Corona, personally. He also heard from Pepe Sánchez, María Teresa Vera, Miguel Matamoros. And so he mixed vernacular music with the classical and universal that so much defines his present-day artistic duty.

He is acknowledged at present as one of the predecessors of the Cuban contemporary school of piano. Despite having studied at the former Soviet Union and fed his culture with influences of recognized figures ebbing into this prestigious worldwide piano headquarters – in addition to the renowned creative historical background from the nearby European school – he gives Cuban musicians a distinguished place from whom he benefited in piano playing and composition.His brilliant interpretations have won over the compliments from the public and the press in Cuba and abroad, and at the piano's mecca: The Moscow Tchaikostky conservatory. Thus he has toured the most important piano concert halls in the world from Tokyo to Paris and Madrid where he has been awarded worldwide recognitions as pianist and composer.

Frank Fernández is a living personality in the history of the Cuban music. Such a credit does not keep him from devoting himself to producing and rescuing the forgotten musical stars from the Island because “independently that we agree or not with a way of thinking” – he tells Leandro. “Art has no boundaries, artists do.”

Frank pleases himself too motivating young people’s accomplishments and promoting his natal province’s culture. He attended last year the interpretation of the 1812 symphony: He praised at that time the Symphony Orchestra of Holguín and now he has come back to perform in an artistic homage to the Cuban Eastern Army.Frank Fernández will enjoy an intense year, among homages and recognitions, in his 50 years doing art. Holguín can hardly hide the proud that Frank has been born here and has started his celebration precisely at his birthplace province.

Cuban Troubadour Threatened by High Tide

By Leandro Estupiñan.

Photos: Amauris Betancourt.

Alta Marea (High Tide), a cultural gathering, is a proposal in the Trouba House in Holguín city headed by troubadour Fernando Cabreja. It is already 10 year old and started off in Moa. When Cabreja and his family decided to settle down in Holguín, they did not only take the color and the memory of their city as well as the mania of the trouba and the compromise to promote cultural highlights through radio programs along with, , but also brought down on their shoulders some significant projects they had created.

In his 25 years of artistic life, Cabreja has won respect over so much for his compositions as for his work as an unrelenting cultural promoter. He has kept alive the Trouba Viva Meeting against all odds. And still now, this space, forged to promote trouba and troubadours from all over the country, goes on in Moa. His commitment to Moa ties him up to keep it on.

Alta Marea, on the other hand, definitely made it to Holguín. It is linked to his passion for literature and poetry, and for local writers. That half-way sickly devotion took him to found a space thought to join friends, to fuse poem and song. Alta Marea is named after the title of one of his songs, included in the recently Como una luna en pie (Like a standing moon) CD.

Still in Moa, he was able to invite guests like poets Alex Pausides and Vladimir Zamora. Now, inviting guests is not a problem because he benefits from living in a provincial capital city.

The gathering is on Thursdays, at the dying afternoon as Sindo Garay would say. The last guests have been writers Rolando Bellido, Lourdes González and Delfín Prats. The environment is pleasant. And it would be better if fans could put apart routine and meet there enthusiastically to have a ball for a while listening to Life trouba music and true poetry.Sponsored by ARTEX (a Cuban art promoting institution), and the Book Provincial Center, the gathering was inaugurated in Holguin last October 2, with guest poet José Luis Serrano.

Poet Jose Luis Serrano.

Cabreja was then already anxiously expecting the results of his concert at the Pablo de la Toerriente Brau Cultural Center, in Havana. It was done in the famous A guitarra limpia cultural gathering, which was meant then for a CD recording.

The CD was launched last November 22 in a fortunate moment for any troubadour: in a concert by Silvio Rodríguez. Thus, next to one of his teachers and in the place where he was given a hand to make his work known, Cabreja launched his 13-track CD.

The classics of his work are there, compiled as a symbol to his honest creative work, to his sensibility, to his worries, and to his vocation as a cultural promoter, because he had invited singing guests such as Ivette Rodríguez, from Baguano municipality and Edelis Loyola, his wife. She confessed that Cabreja had courted her without empty speeches. And so it seems to be the troubadour: An enemy to schemes or, as one of his songs reads: A prisoner to illusion.