2024-05-05 03:01:00
The Rolling Stones are on tour to promote their most recent studio album, Hackney Diamonds. In this way, they revalidated the “title” of “oldest active rock group”, with almost 62 years on stage (the debut at the Marquee Jazz Club in London was on July 12, 1962). However, in 2018 it was concluded, after a study, that the longest non-military musical formation in action is the Municipal Symphonic Band of Seville, created in 1838. Now, the oldest Caribbean music group in continuing to record repertoire has a name: The Sonora Matancera. What about if He cuban ensemble celebrated on January 12 the first centenary of its foundation, two months (and two days) later the celebration was extended with the appearance of a new song, “Carnaval con La Matancera”.
Among the many milestones of La Sonora Matancera, the internationalization of the career of Celia Cruzand having put the Río de la Plata on the map of son, bolero, rumba and guaracha, by adding Argentinians to its staff of guest singers Leo Marini and Carlos Argentino, as well as the Uruguayan Chito Galindo. And this represents just a small percentage of all the talent that passed through his ranks. Until the ’80s, musicians, composers and performers from Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico made generations of audiences dance. Although the group never stopped working, Javier Vásquez Lauzurica, son of co-founder Pablo Vásquez and brother of bassist Raymundo Vásquez Lauzurica, stepped aside in 2003 to leave him the address to Rogelio Martinez Jr. And they took up residence in Las Vegas (USA).
Tresista Valentín Cané founded the group in the city of Matanzas, although with the name of Tuna Liberal. He did it at the request of a local political party to liven up their rallies. It also emerged in the middle of the son boom, a musical phenomenon that was enhanced with the arrival of radio to the island in 1922. The turning point of the genre, and one of the many that La Sonora Matancera had (it adopted several names until 1935), occurred when the then president of the country , Gerardo Machado, publicly asked them to play on his birthday. After making your first recordings for the RCA Victor label, on January 12, 1928, the band opened the game to new musical styles and left aside the prominence of acoustic guitars by adding other instruments. In fact, His first pianist was Dámaso Pérez Prado, later known as “The King of Mambo.”.
“La Sonora Matancera is known in Cuba, and in the countries where it was popular since the ’50s, as ‘The Dean of the Cuban Conjuntos’, because it was the oldest when it was given that name. And it continued to be so because of its musical history,” he tells Page 12 the Cuban philologist and researcher Rosa Marquetti. “When Tuna Liberal was founded in 1924, the Sexteto Habanero and other sonera groups already existed, and the first recordings of sones and guarachas had been made. In its most glorious era, La Sonora Matancera was not an orchestra but an ensemble. Celia Cruz was not part of the official staff of La Sonora Matancera, like other singers who had the guest category. She led her career as a soloist in parallel, and with success. What she did have exclusively was a contract to record with the group and for the North American label Seeco Records.”
The period between 1947 and 1959 is considered in Cuba the golden age of La Sonora Matancera. Before calling his first singer, the Puerto Rican Myrta Silvathey had already incorporated the Puerto Rican vocalist Daniel Santos. They paved the way for the entry of Celia Cruz, as well as foreign performers of the caliber of Bobby Capó, Nelson Pinedo, and the Argentinians Leo Marini and Carlos Argentino, whose first recording with the group was “Una Song” (hybrid of tango and bolero authored by Aníbal Troilo). “In the ’50s, Cuba was the place where everyone wanted to work and the showcase for the United States, precisely because of the rise of the gambling business and the big cabarets,” explains Marquetti. “Not only Argentines came to Havana; Musicians of many nationalities worked there.”
The owner and director of La Sonora Matancera, Rogelio Martínez, designed a work model based on the incorporation of non-Cuban singers temporarily, as a means of marketing and sound renewal for the group. That helped attract new audiences. “Leo Marini and Chito Galindo reinforced the boleristic line, at the same time they learned to sing guarachas, while Carlos Argentino (during the splendor of pachanga in the ’60s, was nicknamed “The king of pachanga” and even dedicated him to Boca Juniors a song in that rhythm: “Pachanga de Boca”) had an enjoyable charisma that conquered the Cuban public,” describes the researcher. Although in the rest of their respective solo careers the shortlist was notably influenced by La Sonora Matancera, before their time in the group they had made a name for themselves in the epicenters of Afro-Caribbean music.
The group was presented in Argentina in 1957. And three years later, her story changed forever. On June 15, 1960, with the “Guarachera de Cuba” on board the plane that was going to take them to Mexico to perform a series of shows, La Sonora Matancera left to never return to their country. “La Sonora Matancera, which was already a classic at that time, was censored in Cuba, as were all the artists who decided not to accompany the changes that Fidel Castro’s government had brought,” says the author of the books. Celia in Cuba (1925-1962) y Chano Pozo, life (1915-1948), as well as the blog “Desmemoriados: stories of Cuban music.” “The cancellation caused the disconnection with the history and development of La Sonora Matancera. Although the arrival of the Internet facilitated access to what is forbidden, for many Cubans who live in Cuba the set is a vague memory, while for the vast majority it is a perfect unknown.”
Although Buena Vista Social Club once again universalized the rhythms popularized by La Sonora Matancera, the fate of these heroes of Cuban music was similar. “The musicians from Buena Vista decided to stay in Cuba, while those from La Sonora Matancera chose to leave”Marquetti clarifies. “Both suffered the passage of time and the renewal of musical tastes.” The influence of “The Dean of the Cuban Ensembles” encompassed the Latin community of the United States and several Latin American countries. “It is one of the great groups of Cuban popular music and one of the most widely spread internationally, especially after 1959,” reflects the academic. “With sustained work, and a lot of confidence in the sound they achieved, Rogelio Martínez strengthened that comfort zone and preferred not to risk avant-garde innovations.”