Decline and Fall of La Charanga Habanera

During 2011 there was a phrase that was repeated ad nauseam in every corner of Cuba: "you crying in Miami and me enjoying in Havana". The expression, part of a cruel text marked by the permanent presence of exile and distances in our history, is the musical climax of one of the most remembered songs of La Charanga Habanera, David Calzado's orchestra. Performed together with Ramón Lavado Martínez The Jackal, Enjoying Havana is, together with Luck, of the last great songs that managed to place the orchestra in the focus of preference of the national public.

Practically since the year 2019, La Charanga is not able to hit any song, as it happened during its golden age in the 90s of the last century and almost until the second decade of the present century. For the young people of today, La Charanga is a group to remember, but old; and its director, David Calzado, has remained in the sadly famous imaginary of the directs that Chocolate MC dedicated to him a few years ago.

Before asking why, in contrast to the Los Van VanElito Revé y su Charangón, Adalberto Álvarez and his Son and other long-lived orchestras, La Charanga Habanera has declined without hardly being noticed, it would take a bit of history to arrive at a time when its most recent music is barely heard, at least in Cuba.

The group was created in 1988 at the request of Mr. Bernard Lion, who was in charge of the general direction of the shows at the Sporting Club of Monte Carlo, Monaco. At the beginning, the repertoire was requested to include what has been called "traditional Cuban music", which in this case included danzones, cha cha cha, mambos, boleros, guarachas and sones; in the words of one of its founders: "any genre that had been made before 1959".

"The work in Monte Carlo was quite hard and intense, as we had to change repertoire on a weekly basis. Due to the length of the program, it was almost impossible for a single arranger to do this work, and it was then that I started as the orchestra's active arranger. At that time David Calzado did the arrangement of the song Those green eyesunder the supervision of director José Picayo". This is how Juan Carlos González, one of the most important figures in the history of Cuban music and an essential part of the ensemble's success, tells the story of the beginning of the project. article who wrote about the origins of the orchestra.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the rhythms of the traditional began to "show a new way of doing things, with a true melodic and harmonic revolution of impressive polyrhythm", to which David Calzado, who had been leading the orchestra since 1991, was not indifferent. The first song arranged to be transformed was You are thereThe group's rise in the early years was due to Calzado's ferocity in his eagerness to rebuild the group, he says. He is the one who assures that the rise of the first years was due to Calzado's fierceness in his eagerness to rebuild the group:

"His admiration for the unforgettable Benny MoréHis experience, plus his previous experience, led him to outline strategies that we had to follow on the road to success. He chose the themes with an unmistakable sense of smell, the costumes, and the scenic projection, which makes him a very special director.

Under this wake comes the first album, Cubain 1992. The orchestra premiered at the Caribe hall of the Habana Libre hotel, in the second year of the show and choreographed by Santiago Alfonso. They were dressed as dancers from break danceThey performed spectacular acrobatics, deliberately sensual and provocative gestures, aggressive and daring; they were, according to Rafael Lam in his book The kings of salsatotal irreverence".

The beginning of his success begins and does not stop: hey you crazy, My fever rises, For Havana to knowSome of them were written by Leonel Limonta, Manuel González, Giraldo Piloto and Calzado himself. The orchestra included singers such as Leo Vera, Michel Maza, Julián Oviedo, Dante Cardosa, Noel Díaz and Leoni Torres. It was with Michel Maza, son of the popular singer Beatriz Márquez to whom David had produced several albums with Egrem, that Charanga became a controversial and recognized orchestra. The "matadores de la salsa", as defined by the Spanish Magic Music impresario Francis Cabrera, began to be a reference on the dance floors and gained popularity in the street.

When the success of Enjoying HavanaLa Charanga was still characterized for being a group of musical renovation, whose fame in past decades had been based on the reconstruction of the typical charanga, creating that modern style that marked guidelines and passed into popular memory as the "charanga formula" and that David Calzado knew how to exploit so well. With LuckAs many will remember, the year 2011 came to an end in many homes and, by the way, the successful period of El Rey David, as many defined Calzado. On May 27th, his latest album was presented, Concert in Habana Latin SalsaAfter eight songs recorded live, the brightness around the group could no longer be seen. The loss of notoriety and public preference was evident.

From 2019 with Kiss of piquitoThe songs have passed with neither pains nor glories for the dancer and the public in general. It is curious how not even with the theme The mixera collaboration with the renowned delivery singer Wow Popy, managed to rebound from the success achieved in previous years. The truth is that there was a subtle decline in their strength and an abandonment in the base of their followers, who have found better proposals in orchestras such as Maykel Blanco y su Salsa Mayor or Havana D'Primera.

The Charanga has provoked discontent due to "the lack of vocal quality and an excessive focus on suggestive movements during their presentations", according to several comments made on social networks by Cuban dancers who "miss the old Charanga". This corresponds to the efforts not to lose the image of a "hot" orchestra, striving to maintain a profile that, in these times, has degenerated into a "hot" one. show in bad taste. In productions such as Urbaneando (2019) one notices a precariousness in the search for the musical phenomenon, as well as an absence of interpretative cleanliness (especially in live performances) and of the primacy of the artistic element. They have mutated, in a sentence, to an eminently commercial show.

Those who like this genre and were followers of the orchestra's hits in albums such as I'm Cuban, I'm popular (2003) y Don't look at the cover (2009), agree that the overemphasis of sexuality in the dances and costumes has become a repetitive issue and is, to say the least, distasteful. However, neither La Charanga in general, nor David Calzado in particular, has made statements about this and the line they maintain is a function of "a commitment to the fans and the will to remain the elegant ones of the dance floor", as defined by Juan Cruz, the entertainer of La Tropical, in the 90s of the last century.

When 2018 rolled around Up the stopafter a Alive and kicking deserving of a Latin Grammy nomination, it seemed that the proposal of an entirely danceable album could revive the already glimpsed decadence of the orchestra. However, apart from the relative success of If the head tells the shouldersThe production passed with neither pain nor glory. The Charanga was mortally wounded.

What do the matadores de la salsa need to reposition themselves as a preferred group?

It should not, in principle, be so difficult. First, they would have to return to their origins and find themselves in their vocation as an orchestra committed to the tradition that precedes them and to the dancing public. The next steps follow from this necessary turn of events: the focus on the search for voices and not bodies to sell in video clips, demonstrating a criterion of selection of performers in which efficiency and not morbidity prevails. It would also be necessary to work on the marked commercial character that has been devouring it for some years, finding a balance between this and the quality of the creations; to analyze the current Cuban musical panorama and to drink from it, to impregnate itself with the taste and the ear of the dancers, fans and potential followers of the orchestra. After this, it would remain to follow very closely the track that would leave the new productions and to remain alert so as not to become definitively a group remembered only by some. Otherwise, this text would be nothing more than the chronicle of a death foretold.