2023-07-11 23:53:40
In the galaxy of Cuban music, some composers are positioned, due to their dimensions and irradiation, as authentic constellations. There are, of course, shining solitary stars: who dares to discuss the singularity of Bola de Nieve, or of the unique and integral Rita Montaner, or of the unrepeatable Benny Moré. But there are those musicians who act as gravitational attraction nuclei. Without Leo Brouwer the Cuban guitar school cannot be explained; without Dámaso Pérez Prado, the saga of the mambo; without Chucho Valdés, the course of Afro-Cuban jazz in the interior of the island; without Juan Formell, the development of danceable timba.
The same thing happened in the second quadrant of the 20th century with the son complex; only that divided into two poles of the Cuban geography: in the West, the imprint of Ignacio Piñeiro; in the East, that of Miguel Matamoros. Different but complementary styles and the same common platform: the mixture of African and European music.
Miguel Matamoros (1894) was a well-established mulatto from Santiago, who came to music by way of the troubadour guitar, learned with teachers more seasoned in empirical knowledge than in academic rigors. He lived the world of family parties, serenades, social evenings in friends’ and neighbors’ rooms until, with the reputation he quickly earned as a guitarist, he entered other spheres: from coffee to theater. At the same time, the avidity for creation grew in him; from the songs sung for the enjoyment of friends and colleagues to those with which he broke into the fledgling recording industry.
Meanwhile, while he waited for the opportunity to devote himself professionally to music, he had, like the vast majority of popular cultists of the time, to seek livelihood in various jobs: carpenter and house painter, messenger and farmer, motor vehicle mechanic and driver.
Carrying out this last task, the young Matamoros saw the heavens open for his artistic career. Although his first works were registered in 1923 – three versions of one of his emblematic pieces date from that year, they are from the hillin performances by the duo Pablito y Luna (Columbia label), the Cruz quartet (RCA Víctor) and the Villalón trio (Brunswick)- luck came to unleash his enormous talent as a result of the 1928 visit to Santiago de Cuba by the scouts of the Victor Since May 8, 1925, Matamoros had already had the trio that would elevate him to the top –along with Siro Rodríguez and Rafael Cueto, meeting for the first time that day- and one of the directors of the record company convinced him of the way of doing of the three young people during a presentation at the Aguilera theater, in which they won the public’s palms.
Barely three weeks later, the trio entered a recording studio in New Jersey, United States. They recorded 21 songs, sones and guarachas from Matamoros. From there came a plate with 78 revolutions per minute, which on one side contained the sound He who sows his corn and on the other the bolero Forgot. To travel to the northern nation, Miguel asked his employer, a merchant from Santiago named Bartolomé Rodríguez, for a month off.
Back in Santiago, in the last months of 1928, he ordered Miguel to stop the car in front of the establishment where Víctor’s records were sold. There was some agitation at the counter, since dozens of people wanted to buy a license plate that had just arrived from New York via Havana. Rodríguez bought the record and, after all these, Matamoros in silence. The boss listened and enjoyed the two pieces and the next day, while Matamoros was polishing the body of the car, he asked him if that Miguel Matamoros at the head of the trio and author of the works was him. The musician spoke: “Do you remember the permission I asked for? It was to travel to the United States with my friends, hired by Víctor. But don’t worry, that won’t affect my services”. A few hours later, Rodríguez called Matamoros and told him: “With that intelligence of yours for music, forget about the steering wheel; dedicate yourself to what you know how to do best”.
And look how well he did for decades, in his incombustible trio and in a septet where he signed none other than Benny Moré, reeling here and there sounds of irreducible flavor and boleros with incredible melodic inflections, works to fall in love with, remember, dance to. or just have fun.
Where did Don Miguel come from and where did he go? The musicologist Danilo Orozco refers to how he takes the traditional Cuban troubadour melodica, a result that in turn has European lyrical roots, adapted and restructured in the Cuban through typical phrase closures, specific inflections and special phrase segmentations, among other features. All this has the Hispanic spark, but at the same time, the way of segmenting from the African Bantu root, adapted to the context where the Cuban would crystallize.
Miguel’s musical work, the specialist points out, is also nourished by some old Hispanic ballads and songs, which he receives from the environment in which he grew up. At the same time, he contributes certain accents and counter-accents, and “the reflection of a link of exterior and interior gestures of the music”, assimilated and developed by troubadours and soneros that followed him in time up to the present day.
The way through Santiago de Cuba and Cuba appears in the music of Matamoros, in whom I discover again and again that window to open and oxygenated ways of understanding and extending beyond the island, the sound identity of which he was the bearer, lights of a constellation that illuminates us every day.
#Matamoros #galaxy #Cubaperiodistas