Our song / Sergio Vitier and Marta Valdés

Marta Valdés, Sergio Vitier
28.10.2022
8 min. of reading

Those of us who were fortunate enough to enjoy Havana's musical life in the 1960s assumed as a matter of course the splendor of an accompanying guitar that was the legitimate daughter of that modality of Cuban music that we identify as "Cuban music". feelingThe band is heir, in turn, to the best jazz of the 50s.

It was the case of Froilán Amézaga in full maturity, but also that of a batch of young people among whom Reynaldo Montesinos, Martín Rojas and, still close to his adolescence, Sergio Vitier stood out.

Unfortunately, this area of our way of making music did not make it to disc at that time. It was the empire of the arrangers, and the singers preferred to record backed by large instrumental formats. Very little of Froilán was formally recorded. The way in which the rest of those guitarists approached the repertoire of feelingwhich was already defining some of its exponents as classics while maintaining its momentum with new anthological pieces such as I was missing youby José Antonio Méndez or Festival songCésar Portillo de la Luz, of César Portillo de la Luz, there was no trace left, except in the memory of some stubborn people like me.

This is an album of love to the Cuban song in what it has of enduring; it is also the awakening of a zone of the musician Sergio Vitier that had left us silent, dressed in white, in some photo of the group of Felipe Dulzaides, to give way to the splendid composer and interpreter that has become later; it is the rebirth of songs conceived in distant moments between them throughout the Cuban musical history, and the confrontation between three authors that in their long trajectories, never bet on fashion. In fact, the 12 songs we have chosen are among those that have moved me the most in my life and, in my opinion, represent the most successful in the production of José Antonio Méndez and Juan Pablo Miranda and the most amazing in the case of César Portillo de la Luz.

Emotion is the common thread, the fundamental ingredient that encourages us when we put voice and guitar in this delivery. See it as a thanksgiving, as a noble way to share with the world that treasure of the island that is our song. (Marta Valdés).

Marta Valdés. Photo: Ángel Alderete.

From the enchantment of our neighborhoods, the idols of my adolescence emerge in my memory. I seem to see José Antonio with his smile, Juan Pablo's little blue suit, Portillo's hieratic figure, wandering in my memories as an impenitent early riser.

Marta would appear there, as if defending herself from a delivery that always - in the end - left us in enchantment and amazement.

These essential songs of our country have remained and will remain, always alive, and when we take them up again after so many years, we still feel the gallop of their impulse.

This is an album that proposes the interpretation from the prism of an essential composer like Marta, who respects and recreates. I tried to approach this concept and work within the style, but without aesthetic ties.

We recorded the old-fashioned way, without editing or montage, in order to maintain that impromptu vital that this music has; as did -and do- these humble gentlemen of our neighborhoods, who always accompany us in the mystery of the dawn. (Sergio Vitier).

Sergio Vitier. Photo: Ángel Alderete.

Three of the four boleros by Juan Pablo Miranda selected for this album -Something about you (1952), How difficult! (1957) and I will go on without you (1951) - have been linked since the 1950s, in Cuban musical memory, to the singer Vicentico Valdés. Those were the times of the victrolas that supplied music to daily life from the bar or the bodega on the corner, open places where for five cents you could listen to the most varied music of the moment.

a thousand sorrows (1952) has been, among Juan Pablo Miranda's boleros, the best received by singers. The version of the Mexican trio The three aces made it known at the beginning of the decade. Around the same time José Antonio Méndez recorded it in Mexico with an arrangement by Mario Luis Armengol. It was from this version that Elena Burke took it, in 1960, to include it in her first album and later to make it a classic of her repertoire of all times.

Juan Pablo Miranda was born and lived in Havana throughout his life, which spanned a good part of the century (1906-1986). Perhaps the fact that he was a flutist was a determining factor in the making of his melodies.

He was closely acquainted with the evolution of bolero and chose for his boleros the slow, lilting, danceable style that had been in vogue since the late 1940s by trios, ensembles and vocalists such as Benny Moré, Roberto Faz, Vicentico Valdés and Fernando Álvarez.

José Antonio Méndez (Havana, 1927-1989) was the best interpreter of the many who approached his songs. He figured, together with César Portillo de la Luz and Ñico Rojas, among the creators and interpreters who gave life, since the 40's, to a facet of the Cuban songbook influenced by the great American song of that time, which also includes, among us, a whole way of accompanying and singing, known as feeling or filin.

Boleros Repróchame and Why are you hesitating? were composed by José Antonio Méndez between 1950 and 1954, when the author ventured to seek in Mexico greater understanding for his art than he received in Cuba, and perhaps also greater fortune. In fact, success came to him during his long stay in those lands.

From there we received his songs recorded in the voices of the most renowned interpreters of the continent. There he recorded on his two RCA Victor albums, three of the works included in this selection: the two boleros mentioned here and the surprising song Like the othersThe work was composed between 1940 and 1944, judging by the information provided by the artist himself, and is an early work.

With Another new song culminates, at the end of the 60's, the creative work of José Antonio Méndez. He was rarely heard singing it in public and, fortunately, he left it recorded in one of his Cuban albums. It is one of his most finished and original works.

César Portillo de la Luz (Havana, 1922)[1] has lived for his work. Thanks to this dedication, we are depositaries of an impeccable collection of songs, sones, boleros, extending to chachachá and blues, ruled by originality and beauty. From his first passionate inspirations, which date back to the 40's, we are amazed by the maturity in the treatment of the texts and a high sense of that flight so necessary for a short work to take shape and culminate in beautiful and resounding endings, never strident.

Among the three really early pieces from Portillo de la Luz that we offer here -Gray concert (1946), lost love (1947), It's our song (1948)-and that sort of unique testament that is the Song for that day (1987) are 40 years of work in which this creator has been able to handle with ease, in a unique way, the ingredients capable of endowing each work with the goodness of a classic. Both lost love, as Gray concert or It's our song -much better known- could have achieved the universal success of Contigo en la distancia or You, my delirium. That is why they are reborn here now, at the end of this century, to the amazement of those who seek spiritual delight in eternal things. (Marta Valdés).

(Unicorn, Abdala Productions, 2000)