You want to order? Please click here!
Back to catalogue? Please click here!
You look for distribution in your country?
Please click here!
Maduro
(RIENCD05)
MADURO (Rigoberto
Hechevarría-Ferrer): his face is known to the many patrons of the
Casa de la Trova in Santiago de Cuba, where Maduro and his quinteto played
almost every day from 1972 to 1991.They surely remember the old man: his
sly smile, his straw hat, his left-handed guitar playing, maybe they remember
his old fashioned valve-amplifier. But mostly they remember his music!
His parents
recognised his musical ability from early on. At the age of eight, he was
already playing the tres in the orchestra of the Guantanamo Music Academy.
It was there that his colleagues gave him the nickname "Maduro", the mature
one.
Four years
later, by the age of twelve, he had become a master of the cuatro, which
was to be his main instrument for the remainder of his life. The cuatro
is a small, four-stringed guitar played all over Venezuela and Puerto Rico,
but relatively rare in Cuba. It contributes both melody lines and rhythm
to group instrumentations.
By the time
he was fifteen, Maduro had already played with all the big names of his
music guild: with the great Miguel Matamoros; with Sindo Garay (1867-1968),
the father of Trova music, with whom he played for twenty years; with Ñico
Saquito; with the Hierrezuelo brothers (Los Compadres); and with Pancho
Cobas, who plays with Vieja Trova Santiaguera to this day.
Maduro's musical
roots are deep in the eastern Cuban Son and Trova music traditions. But
his style is unmistakably his own, marked by a free rhythmic feeling and
by the use of complicated, impressionistic chords, punctuated by disharmonious
notes. Like all great improvisational players, his music always brings
something original to tradition. In these ways, Maduro's music has become
a lasting influence on Santiago's younger generation of musicians.
Despite his
success, Maduro's fame never extended outside of the province of Oriente,
where he was born and died. He always followed a different drummer: unlike
other top musicians, he never wanted to go to Havana, let alone to the
USA. He never cut an album, nor let his compositions be recorded. Unconcerned
with money or a luxurious lifestyle, he was most likely to be found touring
the villages of eastern Cuba accompanied by bands he had thrown together
in Santiago.
His simplicity
is captured in an anecdote from near the end of his life: After renovations,
the Casa de la Trova was to reopen with great festivity in November 1995.
Of course Maduro, as the retired leader of the house band, was invited.
He didn't come to the party, however… because he had no shoes! No one had
known.
Rigoberto Hechevarría-Ferrer
a.k.a. MADURO was born June 24, 1914 in Santiago de Cuba and died there
April 24, 1996.