A voice, a woman and her songs

To María Teresa Vera (Nubenegra, 1995)

By Tony Évora

A beautiful song is, essentially, a series of images turned into words that give rise to a multiplicity of metaphors. And if it comes to us tucked inside an unforgettable melody, swaying within a musical cadence that refreshes the blood of the heart, despite its complaint, its shreds of lacerated soul, then welcome because we live and relive the mystery of love, again and again.

Such were the compositions left to us by María Teresa Vera. And this collection of Cuban and Spanish voices is a beautiful tribute to a very singular interpreter, in the first centenary of her birth. In fact, half of the album has music or lyrics by Vera herself.

Addicted to an intense sobriety - at once Creole and homogeneous - that always seemed to have aged, María Teresa Vera is like a sepia photo of the Cuban song. She was a true exception in an environment dominated by men. From her beginnings, singing in theaters and cinemas, to reaching immense popularity through the radio waves, she knew how to stick to her style, the style of the street troubadour.

Why did the Cuban people love her so much? Because there was a voice with a taste of the land and evidently patriotic feelings, which, with her strings and a wide repertoire, managed to project a tremendous nostalgia. Perhaps we also loved her because María Teresa Vera had a unique idiosyncrasy, a reflection of a bittersweet people. She possessed, above all, an enormous sensitivity.

Posterity will be able to judge her from an equal perspective, based on her intrinsic vocal qualities and her compositions. Thirty years after her death, this tribute album is already part of her posterity. María Teresa was a popular idol marked by the radio era, either because she symbolized in song a republican and outdated national identity, or because it is true that Vera was a true social and cultural phenomenon. A woman of mettle, a great organizer, who possessed magnetism and charisma. Qualities reminiscent of a Rita Montaner (1900-1959) or an Elena Burke (1928-2002). In spite of continuous personal hardships, María Teresa came to mythologize almost single-handedly a memorable period of the traditional trova with her voice, her enormous dedication and her modesty.

Cuban researcher and musicologist Cristóbal Díaz Ayala accurately defined her when he published: "She has everything not to succeed: she is mulatto, a woman and from Pinar del Río. To sing in theaters it is not enough to be a troubadour, you have to have a strong voice, because there is no microphone and it is therefore a profession for men... I do not know how she managed it, but in four years she was already indispensable in the programs and doing duet with Zequeira she traveled several times to the United States to record". María Teresa triumphed, and how!

We know that he made his debut at the age of 16 at the Politeama Grande, with Mercedesby Manuel Corona. That she had been singing since she was five years old, and that it was difficult to find a second voice for her, because she always vocalized in primo with her guitar playing in second. She did not sing with a voice of extensive registers, nor did she have a school other than her own ear, nor a technically structured voice.

He smoked Havana cigars in the privacy of his own home and drank a couple of glasses of cognac to clear his voice before starting a performance. In the street he smoked cigarettes or small cigars, with great elegance. He read pink novels during the day and as he worked almost always at night, he slept until ten or eleven o'clock. She liked her stews well done and her wine at the table: she used to say that, as the daughter of a Spaniard, she had her customs well rooted. She never shouted or "echaba tacos". It was necessary to speak to her quietly and she loved to perfume herself and dress well, although soberly. La Vera was not a beautiful mulatto; she was small and of fragile structure, with a smile between kindly and subtly ironic.

Since 1916 he formed a duo with Rafael Zequeira, until his death in 1924. Together they recorded more than a hundred compositions. Desolate, she desperately looked for another second voice, and then another, and another, at a time when it seemed that the rhythm of the son would swallow everything. Thus, in 1918, a representative of RCA Victor from New York appeared in Havana; he set up a studio in a room on the second floor of the Inglaterra Hotel and hired the black tres player Carlos Godínez to form a typical son group. Our heroine becomes his first voice and player of claves, those so sonorous sticks that mark the rhythm of the Cuban cinquillo. She sings then with Manuel Corona, her favorite author. Precisely, in 1923, the slender bohemian bard composes Saint CeciliaShe would sing it ever since, considering it her good luck song. Corona taught her to play the guitar and thus fostered a great friendship that lasted until the composer's death in 1950.

With the rapture created by the tasty dance of son in Havana, the troubadours began to decline. Many duos and trios disappeared and sextets and later septets including the bongo were formed. Avispada and ambitious, María Teresa Vera founded the Sexteto Occidente in 1925, with Miguelito García on second voice; Manolo Reynoso, bongos player; Julio Viart on the tres and Francisco Sánchez on the claves. To Ignacio Piñeiro, creator of so many famous sones and a great personal friend, María Teresa teaches him how to get a better sound out of the double bass. And so the five men and this slim and sensitive woman embark for New York, where they celebrate Christmas of the same year recording records for Columbia. Taking advantage of their stay in the cold north and changing the name of the sextet, they also recorded for Odeon and Brunswick. Everything is her idea: she is ready to jump over any obstacle.

Why did she suddenly break up her sextet Occidente? After all, she had been the first woman to become the leader of a male group. She did so for religious reasons, abandoning all artistic activity. She remained so for nearly three years, playing solitaires and thinking, thinking without singing. Dominated by Santeria or Regla de Ocha, she became a saint, which is the initiation ceremony, at the end of 1933. Maria Teresa was the daughter of Ochún, the beautiful Yoruba deity who embodies coquetry and sensuality. But in the itáHow cruel the gods can be! The voice died out, faithful to religious dogma, and he accepted his fate. Here is the other part of his racial and cultural duality: the African force that imposes a strict conduct on him. She rarely attended a drumming, nor did she hang necklaces, despite her adoration for two specific saints. She believed there was no need to display what she carried so deeply within herself. And yet, what songs she left us with! She said everything she wanted to say, in verses and chords that marked a style. Little is known of his private life. His solitary existence left us pieces of his loving feelings in several unforgettable songs, some of which are included in this tribute album that also contains other musical airs, the result of Manuel Domínguez's passion for quality Cuban music.

I never met her personally, but when I was very young, her unmistakable voice, worn and torn, got inside me forever. María Teresa was a symbol of a time of great social and economic contrasts; her inveterate modesty and her reticence to the "choteo criollo" won her the respect of rich and poor alike. But she knew how to imprint a Creole flavor to a spicy guaracha, as when she sang Over a grave, a rumbawhich is performed here by Gema and Pavel.

With Lorenzo Hierrezuelo -a thin mulatto who had never sung as a second singer, and who had been born where the son was born- he would form in 1935 one of the most important duos in Cuba, an endearing union that would last until 1962: twenty-seven years of two voices and two guitars coming from the opposite ends of the elongated island. They recorded countless numbers, becoming indispensable in every popular music event organized. With the exhausting work of recording long hours at dawn for more than five consecutive years in the radio plant of Laureano Suárez (Radio Cadena Suaritos), both managed to preserve valuable interpretations that are not known for sure where they ended up.

One may ask: what validity can her music have now? I believe that she will continue to be the troubadour par excellence: an era marked by a romanticism that will never cease; a belief in spiritual and artistic values that still move, despite the materialism in which we live immersed.

The researcher María Teresa Linares, author of the following text, was very close to Vera in her last years. When she died on December 17, 1965 (the day of Saint Lazarus, Babalú Ayé for the Afro-Cuban religion), the singer had completed more than 50 years of intense musical activity, retiring ill in 1962, idolized by her people, satisfied with a life in which she had managed to collect for posterity some of the best melodies of the great troubadours. In the path of that life, she had the gift of moving us.

This recording is the symbolic gift of today's musicians to the great master on her 100th anniversary. More than a historicist tribute, we have tried to recreate for our time, the musical work and repertoire of María Teresa Vera. For this reason we chose to make new versions of her songs according to the style of the different interpreters who have participated in the work, but respecting the features that we consider essential. In this way, each song will be able to reach a larger and more heterogeneous audience.

At the beginning of the project, we analyzed all the transcribed and recorded work of the artist, which we were able to rescue from time, both in her voice and in that of other interpreters. We discovered very interesting pieces and, in some cases, totally unknown or unpublished, such as A la Virgen del Cobre, Dime que me amas, Sólo pienso en ti and Ya no puedo amarte, by María Teresa Vera or La rifa by Manuel Corona. It was a rigorous and difficult work. The final selection covers most of the genres María Teresa cultivated, such as boleros, songs, sones, rumbas, guarachas, habaneras or bambucos.