One hundred years of the bolero, that is, of Olga Guillot

She herself said that she went to the airport directly from the runway of one of her shows, from one runway to the other, and that she managed to raise the money for her ticket thanks to a donation from her fans. In her story everything has the look of a legend, of a night tale that becomes more and more spectacular and with melodrama and soap opera overtones. Because that was already part of her entrance to the stage and after living it so much, it was no longer clear where her life as a singer began and where the life of this woman born in Santiago de Cuba in 1923, a century ago, began. She sang with her tessitura of mezzowith her eyes and with her hands. And without her presence, the bolero, which of course already existed when she became Olga Guillot, could not be explained so clearly, so precisely, because it was this singer who redefined it, and also knew how to connect it with other rhythms and ways of doing throughout her extensive career. That was her kingdom, the bolero. Even when she sang the novelties of feeling, ballads and erotic songs, or dared with other rhythms. Everything she played and sang became a bolero. And hence her status as absolute queen. And a character difficult to supplant.

After starting her career with her sister Ana Luisa, becoming known as the Hermanitas Guillot, she made her way in Havana, where they moved after the early death of her father, until she arrived at La Corte Suprema del Arte. Among her teachers at the Conservatory was Hortensia Coalla, and tango was the genre to which she dedicated her first efforts. From there, from that love, perhaps comes the way in which many years later, before Argentine audiences, he would let himself be carried away by the echoes of tango when he gave them his version of The other afternoon I saw it rainor any of his hymns of love, revenge and farewell. He performed with the Conjunto Siboney led by Isolina Carrillo, and in New York and Mexico, where he would later appear in his first film: The Venus of fire. In 1945 he had recorded his version of Stormy Weatherthe famous song popularized by Lena Horne, and that was the beginning of her success, although the real fame and consecration would come when she recorded Lie to Meby the Mexican Chamaco Domínguez, at the request of Jesús Goris, who had to persist to get her into the studio. Another episode of her legend assures that she forgot the commitment for the recording and went to the cinema, and there she had to be called so that finally, with two cognacs in between to clear her throat affected by the air conditioning of the screening room, that version that opened so many roads and the affection of so many audiences was recorded. "I'm still a little hoarse", she said before the orchestra already ready, in Radio Progreso, and Jesus replied: "But it will be the best paid hoarse voice in America". The record, which of course circulated through Goris' label -Puchito Records-, would be the first of a long series of triumphs, unstoppable since 1954.

From then on, she began a rapid process of maturation and decantation of a style, an image from which women and men who have followed her pattern have measured themselves and looked at themselves. Because she, a woman of passion - she married five times: "I've killed them all", she said jokingly during a concert in Chile -, took possession of the lyrics of those songs to narrate without reserve pains, joys and daring. The latter, above all. The strings of Los Hermanos Castro orchestra accompanied her luxuriously in those records. Paradoxically, other brothers of the same surname would silence her voice and erase her name, at least in her homeland, as of 1961. She had been Queen of the Radio, she was the songstress and bolerista par excellence, she filled cabarets, theaters and casinos, she had made movies in Mexico and conquered other countries. But when the apartments she rented were nationalized, she did not hesitate to make public her differences with the new government, and with her daughter Olga María in her arms -the fruit of her romance with composer René Touzet- she left from the Capri to get on that plane, foreseeing that she would never return.

When she arrived in Venezuela, and later in Mexico thanks to the good efforts of José Sabre Marroquín, she already had up her sleeve all the singer and actress resources she needed to move forward. Actress, because she interpreted the song, rather than saying it, and as her best accompanying pianist, Juan Bruno Tarraza, once commented, she let herself be carried away by those feelings, making him always be alert in case she "got out of shape" giving free rein to that singular temperament. She would sing, gasp, make a silence, impose a calderon or lengthen a note. It was La Guillot, the same one who had advised Lucho Gatica to get in touch with those boys in Havana who were creating the feeling, that new way of giving life to the bolero, and the rest is history. In Mexico he recovered his strength and embarked on a new stage, in which he had to reinvent himself because not only musical tastes, but also the sensibility of the public, were changing. But after all, Reina was not going to stay at the back of the stage.

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Her discovery of a young songwriter named Lolita de la Colina was providential. They didn't want to record a song that was too daring, and Olga said: "I'll record it for you". And so it came The woman who loves youShe began a new phase of hits with the erotic ballad as the centerpiece, in addition to the hits by Armando Manzanero, Luis Demetrio or Roberto Cantoral, from which her already famous repertoire was nourished. While bolero declined, she managed to keep going. Her devotees did not abandon her, and came to see her in Spain, Peru, Puerto Rico or at Carnegie Hall where she sang in 1964. She was the mistress of her audience, whom she pampered with jokes, witticisms of her Cuban and Santiago humor, knowing that she was already in a dimension that only the greats reach. Like Celia Cruz, the other great absentee of Cuban radio stations during those decades, she had become distant, but she remained irreplaceable. If in the days of her first triumphs the now forgotten Rita María Rivero was one of the songstresses to have as a model in Cuba, there, on the island devoted to other utopias, she was not mentioned, but other disciples kept her legacy alive, even if unconsciously. Annia Linares was one of them, and thanks to her television appearances I knew that Olga Guillot existed, the singer who despite so many changes and readjustments continued to be my mother's favorite.

There are numerous anecdotes about her character. A famous Mexican couturier called her stingy and ungrateful, but it was Olga who generously suggested her stage name to José José, according to another legend that she herself started. In a tribute in Miami to Lola Flores, the PharaohAfter singing Burundanga with Celia Cruz, she brought on stage "that monster of the song", her friend La Guillot. La Guillot, as simple as that, the diva that repeated without exhaustion I am the forbidden, What do you know, Pruebo... and who took advantage of the new boom bolero, driven by the series romances Luis Miguel, to return to the studio and record his new -and last- album. I was missingThe CD, released in 2001 and where he revives some of his hits, starts with a composition by Meme Solis, that little blond boy he discovered in Santa Clara and to whom he gave him the advice that would make him not stop until Havana.

The closest I got to Olga Guillot was actually through her daughter, Olga Maria. In 2013, when the Koubek Center in Miami reopened, she gave a brief concert that she had to repeat in two sets, given the number of admirers that filled the hall. It was not her mother, of course, but one could distinguish from which lineage this other woman came from, balancing in her own delivery the echoes of the one who brought her into the world, while my dear Lazaro Horta accompanied her at the piano. I could recognize on that other side of the mirror what was finally mine when I returned to Santa Clara with her recordings, to please my own mother, and hear in the same thread of music her voice and that of the Queen of Bolero, united above time, separation, political differences, the bitterness of a History that can only be restored from the small other history of the biographies of each and every one of us who have lived something that fits in the time of a bolero, beyond the din of a slogan.

When in 2007 he was awarded the Latin Grammy for Excellence, he seemed to have already achieved almost everything. Not returning to her homeland was a pain that she confessed she had not overcome, and when she passed away, at the age of 86, in Miami, in a way it was also the end of a myth. But not to what she gave to bolero, which undoubtedly has been able to resist so many waves and fashions, to continue identifying us as something that the Latin community already carries in its blood. And as long as that way of singing idylls and breakups is alive, she will be. That she left an imprint capable of crossing those fires, is unquestionable. In the final scene of Pepi, Lucy, Bom and other girls of the crowdAlmodóvar's first feature film, his name comes to the fore. In his short film Trailer for lovers of the forbiddenIn 1985, Manchego also confirms his love for the voice of this Cuban who was, without a doubt, the Great Ambassador of the Bolero. Of a way of feeling, more than of singing, in which we have all been able to add an anecdote or an experience, which she would gladly interpret for us, sure of the praise with which she would end another triumphant night. "It seems like yesterday", she was amazed in one of her hymns, that her name became flesh and skin with the bolero. One hundred years after that miracle, of her reign, of the bolero itself in her throat, it is worth remembering what Agustín Lara said of her: "After heaven, Cuba; after Cuba, Olga Guillot".