Kirsty MacColl's Cuba

Part Two

Broadcast on BBC Radio 2, 7th February 2001

Before the 1959 revolution swept Fidel Castro to power Cuba was considered America's playground, and singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl searches out the songs and venues that were the backdrop to the pre-revolutionary parties. She visits Havana's world famous Tropicana nightclub, which played host to stars like Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra, and hears from one of Cuba's top female vocalists, Omara Portuondo, a one-time dancer with Carmen Miranda who sang with Nat King Cole when he appeared at the club in 1957. There's music from Cuban legends Beny More, Perez Prado and Lucille Ball's husband Desi Arnaz, who became America's best loved Cuban in the early 1950s.

Septeto Nacional: Echale Salsita

At the end of the 19th Century in the sugar cane and coffee plantations of the Cuban 'Oriente' region, two different music styles began to combine: the rhythms of African slaves and the songs of Spanish heritage. The result was a new music: the Son Oriental whose popularity, in the beginning, was limited to the rural areas of its origin. Later, Habaneros fell in love with the new rhythm and immediately put their peculiar stamp on it, speeding up the tempo, and playing it with six musicians. A young musician named Ignacio Pineiro still was not satisfied by the existing sound of the Son groups. In 1927 he created his own group using for the first time in the history of Son a trumpet as lead instrument. Son quickly became the most celebrated music in Cuba. Young gifted talents continue the tradition founded by Ignacio Pineiro and his Septeto Nacional.

El Son De Altura / Música Latina. "International Music"

Desi Arnaz: Cuban Pete

Desi Arnaz was born in 1917 to a wealthy Cuban landowners but at the age of 16, Desi and his mother had to flee to Miami because of their troubles in Cuba. It was a struggle, but he went on to work with the Siboney Septet and Xavier Cugat's band , finally putting together his own rhumba band in the late 30's. He met Lucille Ball on a movie set and married her, with the resulting TV series of course.

Cuban Originals / RCA 74321 699 362. Composed by Jose Norman.

Omara Pourtuondo: Yo Como Candela

In more than 50 years of professional life Omara Portuondo has walked Cuban songs throughout the world. Gifted with a ductile voice of wide registers, she sings the same a bolero as a ballad going through guaracha, son or jazz without loosing color or expressiveness. She is also an excellent communicator capable of establishing a musical dialogue of high complicity with the public. "Its because if I´m singing and in a given moment I say I'm in love, I must feel it and show it, because if I don't it will all seem very empty and false".

La Collección Cubana / Nascente NSCD068. Composed by Chappottin.

Beny Moré: Que Bueno Baila Usted

Beny Moré was a wonderful singer and composer, perhaps the most well rounded artist in a country known for producing outstanding musicians. He had a unique style of singing rumba, boleros, guaracha, mambo and guaguanco. Benny could step off the stage dancing without losing rhythm or beat, move through the entire room singing "Guantanamo, here goes my son" and improvise messages for audience members sitting at their tables! He was also an artist at mimicry; he transmitted sensations recreated by the band with his eyes, mouth, hands, legs and entire body. It was his style of acting and of directing the band. He alone was the show.

Cuban Originals: Beny Moré / RCA Original Masters 74321 69935 2. Composed by Beny Moré.

Celia Cruz: Para Tu Altar

Celia Cruz was one of Latin music's most respected vocalists. One of 14 children from Barrio Santra Suarez, Cruz was drawn to music from an early age, singing in school productions, local talent shows. Although her father attempted to guide her toward another career but Cruz later said "I have fulfilled my father's wish to be a teacher as, through my music, I teach generations of people about my culture and the happiness that is found in just living life. As a performer, I want people to feel their hearts sing and their spirits soar." Via the Conservatory of Music, Cruz joined the revered band la Sonora Matancera in 1950 and remained for 15 years, touring throughout the world. With Fidel Castro's assuming control of Cuba in 1960, Cruz refused to return to her homeland and became a citizen of the United States. Cruz launched her solo career in 1965 with a band formed for her by Tito Puente. She subsequently began appearing with the Fania All Stars, with her international popularity reaching its highest level when she appeared in the 1992 film The Mambo Kings.

Queen Of Salsa / Movie Play Gold B000005MXL. Composed by Mendoza

Pérez Prado: Guaglione

Though diminutive in stature, Pérez Prado was a giant in the world of post-war popular music. Dubbed "The Mambo King," he reigned supreme as one of the most influential pop orchestra leaders of the early 1950s. As the mambo rhythm spread across the continents, a society emerged from the dark years of World War II to shed it's inhibitions and embrace the frenzy of this Afro-Cuban beat. Prado's conception of the mambo began to develop in 1943. He later said that four, five, and sometimes six musicians would often play after hours jam sessions on the tres (a small Cuban guitar) and the resultant cross rhythms and syncopation give him the idea. Ralph J. Gleason reported that "Prez" talked to him about the mambo as being an Afro-Cuban rhythm with a dash of American swing. According to Prado, the mambo is "more musical and swingier than the rhumba. It has more beat." He also explained, "I am a collector of cries and noises, elemental ones like seagulls on the shore, winds through the trees, men at work in a foundry. Mambo is a movement back to nature, by means of rhythms based on such cries and noises, and on simple joys".

King of Mambo / RCA ND90424.

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