« Vacation | Main | Canadian Victoria Cross winner Ernest (Smoky) Smith, dies »
August 8, 2005
Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club
I remember sitting in a nightclub in Havana one evening and just being totally blown away by the music. I'd lived in New Orleans, and I'd occassionally find myself in Preservation Hall or some little dive off of Bourbon street when you'd walk by and think "man...who is that guy on the trumpet?" and stop in for a hour or so. So I was really surprised to be sitting in Havana, listening to music that was so familiar.
What I learned was that, before Fidel drummed out that criminal Batitista, the cities of New Orleans, Key West, and Havana had been inextricably linked in this fusion of jazz-afro-caribbean music.
Ibrahim Ferrer was a classic starving artist. He'd sung his whole life in obscurity, fronting for traditional Cuban polyrhythmic "son" bands. I'm not sure what he did when he wasn't singing, but you have to do something to keep the local CDR(Committee the Defense of the Revolution) man at bay. I've seen people refilling disposable lighters for a peso, if that gives you an idea what it's like down there.
The Rolling Stone reports:
"An angel came and picked me up and said, 'Chico, come and do this record,'" Ferrer said in 1998 of being approached by Cooder years after his retirement from singing in 1991. "I didn't want to do it, because I had given up on music."
The Seattle Times reports:
Disappointed at singing in obscurity all his life, Mr. Ferrer originally declined to join the group that earned a Grammy for its 1997 self-named "Buena Vista Social Club" album. But the organizers, U.S. guitarist and producer Ry Cooder and Cuban bandleader Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, were persuasive.
"He was sitting in the lounge of the recording studio in Havana and had the kind of look of a southern blues player," Cooder said yesterday. "We put up a mic — he hadn't been singing and was making a living shining shoes and selling lottery tickets. Out comes this purity, a vocal sound of another world. ... "
They released a self-titled debut album in 1997, which won a Grammy in 1999. Ferrer is featured on the cover, walking to work through the streets of Havana. He just completed a month long tour of Europe, after finally achieving international fame. Ferrer died Saturday in Havana, apparently from emphysema. He was seventy-eight years old.
Posted by Peenie Wallie on August 8, 2005 at 11:28 AM
Comments