There are 14. The thunderous silence for the 45th anniversary of Son 14
In spite of not being very given to absolutize, there is one thing I am very clear about: son is the most powerful cultural asset of the Cuban nation. This is corroborated, above all, through the customary global impact of the son complex. International, yes, because from within it is difficult to sustain the affirmation.
Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of the founding of Son 14. And what happened? Nothing, literally nothing. Yesterday should have been a day to celebrate the Cuban son, the one that many people should be passionate about, those who don't give a damn.
Son 14 achieved what was thought to be impossible: the massive organic impact at the Latin American level -and in some North American and European redoubts- of a new Cuban son project, with the added impact in Cuba, without living in Havana. It must always be clear that the way everything is organized, to have an impact in Cuba from outside the capital is almost impossible. It is a privilege that has been given to very few who may even have won an easier lottery. Imagine that before Son 14, at least from Santiago de Cuba, in those two decades of the 60s and 70s -almost 20 years- only the orchestras of Mario Patterson, Chepín Chovén and Los Taínos were able to release records. They stopped recording too much. Did it matter?
But many things changed with Son 14 and for that reason alone it should be the object of eternal worship. The duo of Adalberto Álvarez and Eduardo Shark Morales -the same outfielder of the Granjeros, the same left-hander who hit the first home run in the field in our national series- became history. The narrative of Cuban son is not the same without the two of them, although I would also like to highlight three other names among that very valuable group of soneros who inhabited the group over the years: Andresito Hernández, Lázaro Rosabal and Geovanis Alcántara, because they were the ones who best held what Adalberto left behind. When the split occurred, the repercussion of Son 14 in Cuba diminished in an extreme way. But the "conjuntísimo" continued "giving jan" at international level, to such an extreme that the Take care of Vladimirby Andresito Hernández, is hardly known in these parts, but it was a hymn in Colombia, for example.
Today, when the soundtrack that is imposed on us has nothing to do with son, opportunities such as those offered this month to bow to the complex, about the genre, should be well taken advantage of. That in this November 2023 the 45th anniversary of Son 14 and the 75th anniversary of Adalberto coincide and nothing happens is an indication that son is not important indoors.
The more time passes, the more we will realize that one of the worst things that has happened to Cuban culture is the premature death of Adalberto Alvarez. With him we lost a lot, both musically and socio-culturally.
That the son is absent in our daily soundtrack is multifactorial. But in that expansive wave of musical denaturalization that we suffer, the heirs of those legacies should understand that their role is not musical and that's it; as they have the benefit of consolidated brands, they have the commitment with the genre, with the musical movement that their parents magnified, with the Cuban culture.
Adalberto is gone and the Day of the Cuban Son is just one more of those that pass without sorrow or glory. Meanwhile, this year the Latin Grammy is celebrated in Seville -not in Madrid- on November 16, during the World Day of Flamenco.
