Eliades Ochoa and eternity

"Wherever I go, I will always remember that I am from here," Eliades Ochoa told me a few years ago in La Loma de la Avispa, Alto Songo. His little bohío had been repaired, and local authorities and villagers were there to re-inaugurate it.

At one side of the home where the bard was born in 1946, some cars were parked, some girls were dancing, a pig was roasting on a spike and some musicians were tuning their instruments. 

Among the artists I could see Giovanni Alcántara and Gastón Joya, who, by the way, dared to play the bass of a local and lost his fingertips, but played. 

Eliades was walking around the place and perhaps trying to remember his humble childhood. On YouTube is the video of my report where the sonero told how they slaughtered the pigs and filled the milk churns with lard, what the fields where they worked were like and described all the revelry in a bush that in the 40's was even more complicated than today, and that is quite a lot. 

After the introductions and kisses, Eliades sang several pieces with his group, they danced, uncovered the pork, uncorked local rums, there was coconut water and men and women laughed the afternoon that brought a historic downpour, because according to the locals, they had five months with the land drier than the plains of Juan Rulfo. 

In the end, we all ended up as well placed as we could inside the little house and Eliades began to tell anecdotes about his childhood. After a couple of awkward corridors with his wife, he talked about everything possible in those circumstances, surrounded by people who admired him without misery. 

The man's humbleness was thrown over those of us who were there. Sometimes his wife tried to rearrange the words because Eliades was just that, the common man from those hills who was with friends. And he would cite issues like Juanita's flesh, which moved too much when he sifted sand next to Chan Chan.

Laughter came out of the bohío's gloves and one could see happy that man who has rubbed shoulders with Polo Montañez as well as with C. Tangana. At times, Eliades became serious and would use somewhat sad words to describe his performances in Santiago de Cuba, when he had to make a living for himself. 

Thus, among other pearls, he talked about how Compay Segundo could barely play the guitar when he came to Santiago de Cuba and they got together to sing the repertoire of the Santiago troubadour; all before Repilado sang with Pablo Milanés or Juan Perro recorded his stuff and, of course, long before he became an international star with Buena Vista Social Club. 

Already when the afternoon was taking its toll, and knowing that what Eliades had built was his deathbed in Alto Songo, the singer laughingly quoted the grim reaper: "When I die, whoever wants to see me should come to this town". And he finished off the stay with a sentence with which he joked, but which in reality should be a philosophical constant that should concern us all: "I don't care when I'm going to die, what worries me is how long I'm going to be dead".