Pop music of the 70’s

Pablo Milanes, Eduardo Ramos, Noel Nicola, Augusto Blanca, Vicente Feliu, Lazaro Garcia and Sara Gonzalez were among the most outstanding and widespread singers of the Experimental Sound Group of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) who called the attention of the young people whose music and lyrics made their own. However, this movement had an authentic content and form of expression reflected the daily life and the aspirations of the nation. I t is very difficult  to choose a song that had no spread beyond our borders of what can be considered as classic songs of the Cuban songs.

The Nueva Trova found a way to express themselves with unprecedented high aesthetic nuances from Mis veintidos anos  and Yolanda, passing by Quien merece amor, Unicornio, Rabo de nube and El breve espacio en que no estas. The epic left its mark on the new song that the youth took as their own. Fusil contra fusil and Cancion del Elegido are the most widespread songs of Silvio Rodriguez. Sara Gonzalez reflected in her songs the people sacrificed for its true independence, La Victoria is a song which she has ennobled as an authentic and dedicated song.

The new song anticipated another time, and Silvio, played his guitar with that peculiar and intimate way, as he used to sing “the era was giving birth to a heart,” and Paul was not far behind to announce with certainty that ” he will walk on the streets again from it was in Santiago bloodied and released a new sit square to mourn for our brothers who are no longer with us. And he fulfilled in 2000.

Later Amaury Pérez Vidal came only with his guitar and his songs, and then we started to feel more beautiful April. From that time the child we saw running around the corridors of CMQ, the restless young, I met in Guzman competition in 1979, began a successful career forged from its high artistic and personal values. His great popularity supported by his mature work, came to our days: Para hacerte venir, A esos encuentros, Con un amor dificil, De veras que que si, Creeme, as Vicente Feliu stated: For giving this relevant song of the Cuban music.

Reve Orchestra emerged in the late ’50s, thanks to the creative genius of important musician Elio Reve was repeated in all the records. He had already achieved greater popularity at the end of the previous decade, with input innovative young composer and bassist Juan Formell. Near the seventies came a band that achieved great popularity after the Monumental. The same is true of all Latinos and The Beard Group, which was in its infancy with the singer Beatriz Marquez.

But the beginning of the seventies he had reserved another surprise for national dissemination. I do not know if the name suggested by the slogan. I have often thought so, because Juan Formell for me is the musical chronicler par excellence that has been reaffirmed in his daily life not only in the Cuban way of life but also in anticipating what lies ahead. Was not that what you said when he said that Havana could not stand it? So for me the Van Van comes from the desire of Cubans to make a big sugar harvest in 1970, to coin the slogan ‘that go, go’. The fact is that after more than thirty-five years the Van Van is still sound public preference. And we danced with El buen cansado and felt younger to enjoy with the young family works containing the Grammy 2000.

Followed in order of appearance in spreading the group Irakere, founded by a virtuoso, pianists considered among the most prominent jazz performers of the world. Undoubtedly, the master Chucho Valdes provided a valuable contribution to the musical sound quality of radio has come to today. Not incidentally, has been awarded several Grammy. From the presentations of Chucho, I draw that allowed people to enjoy Radio Taino and Cuba vision and the show that was closed with the Benny Moré Festival 2001. The majesty of Chucho Valdes playing the piano joined one of the great voices of jazz Mayra Caridad Valdés. A concert was a honorable tribute to the emblematic singer of the Cuban popular music.

In 1976 I met Adalberto Alvarez, at that moment a young graduate from the National Art School and started running Avance Juvenil in Camaguey founded by his father Nene Alvarez. In 1978 Adalberto left Bayamo Camagüey and passed by car, to grant citizenship to a group from Santiago Son 14. With this and other issues that scooped the top spots, including the Son of the morning, broke into the national staff and almost immediately his music has expanded to other latitudes. Only months later, Son 14 was presented at the Adolfo Guzman Competition in 1979 and won second award with the song Calle Enramada Calle. These three successes and others placed the young author, pianist and director as a whole, composed mostly of graduates of the National Art School, together with the natural grace and charismatic figure of Tiburón Morales at the top popularity and radio coverage.

In the middle of that decade came the suggestive Carlos Alfonso group with a very defined line in making art, which has remained until today. Most of our folklore native found a high position in his repertoire. As its name has symbolized, is a true and fair summary of the purest of our cultural roots.

It made the first recordings that flooded the airwaves. Among them, Miriam Ramos, Lourdes Torres and central figure of Modernists – Leonora Rega, Yolanda Brito, Leonor Zamora, Lourdes Gil with The Gallant, Sarracent Cesar Alberto Herrero, Miguel Chavez, Jose Valladares, Héctor Téllez , Annia Linares, Miguel Angel Piña, Farah Maria, Nereyda Naranjo, Maggie Carles. Raquel Hernandez, Ojedita, Miguel Angel Cespedes y Argelia Fragoso, reached the end of the decade. For its part, Maria Elena Pena and Mundito Gonzalez became later and to this day, in vital voices of the bolero. From this moment I remember a number of Rene Marquez who popularized his daughter Beatrice spontaneously-that sounded much on the radio. Previously, Beatriz Marquez had imposed a very special way of saying, with some entries that made it so hard to become the Musicalísima. Another favorite song is ranked Soledad, Juan Almeida, and also ventured successfully into the international staff Neither here nor there, With his pale white and from that time which premiered by her in Cuba.

Raquel Hernandez once told me that she started as an amateur in the early 70s, but in 1965, together with Sara González, Lucía Huergo and other figures, students then the Amadeo Roldan Conservatory, moved to Vertientes, Camaguey, to participate in the harvest of the town and were able to record on Radio Cadena Agramonte. She, in particular, made there the first recording of her career with the song Una casa en la cima del mundo.

In 1976 I was the Cuban television presenter for a series of programs that were made in Camaguey, including a recital by Miriam Ramos, directed by Jose Ramon Artigas. For this recording, made at Ignacio Agramonte Museum in Camaguey, I had my hands the script by Orlando Quiroga. Beautiful songs as Longina and La Tarde by Manuel Corona and Sindo Garay, were recreated with high overtones for that Miriam, who, despite his youth, and showed her black hair sprinkled with silver strands as a sign of distinction. Since before and admired as one of the best voices in the Cuban song. For radio, Miriam was and is much more … For years their records perfect voice told us on the Radio Progreso that are not needed wings to get into the fabulous world of music and its main exponents. This program, written and directed by Jose Armas, has confirmed that there is no contradiction between the cultured and the popular, from Amadeo Roldan to Ignacio Piñeiro, through El manisero by Moises Simons, immortalized by Rita Montaner, or the Son of the hill, Matamoros, to enjoy a good radio show.

Also the director Eugenio Pedraza Ginori commissioned me to the television presentation of a program which was recorded at the fertilizer plant of Nuevitas. Among the subjects, one that Hector Tellez remained at the top broadcast: Look for me.

As an anecdote, on Sunday October 24, 1976 Channel 6 television broadcast its first full-color musical program recorded in studio. And it was Farah Maria and Miguel Angel Piña, accompanied on piano by maestro Pedro Coto, the chorus of the Ministry of Communications, along the corps de ballet of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television(ICRT) which inaugurated the new modality in a program in tribute to Adolfo Guzman.

On December 1st,2001, The Broadcaster Day, I met the singer Alfredo 0Rodriguez in the program “The popular disco” Radio Progreso. There, talking with broadcasters Juan Gaspar Marrero, Lilia Rosa Lopez and Victor Gonzalez, we remember the early successes of Alfredo. It was in 1968, and we agree that the issue was announced over the radio was all that you are, Ruben Rodriguez. But the first big hit was written by him as shivering. Thus began a successful career that was consolidated in the following decades, to reach the century with the digital versions of songs that can properly be considered jewels of Latin American staff, led by’m what prohibited, performed by Alfredo, accompanied by the trio Ambassadors and the set of strings of the National Symphony Orchestra.

Among the authors who recreated the sound works with radio and later years, special mention to the music of Juan Almeida and Alberto Vera, with their beautiful songs fine lyrical themes that filled the airwaves, in a very important moment. Amelita Frades, rose to the top of the popularity of La Lupe, Juan Almeida. Elena Burke, Moraima Secada, Farah Maria Beatriz Márquez, Omara Portuondo, Ela Calvo, Aurelio Reinoso, Annia Linares, Miguel Angel Céspedes, Emilia Morales and Sergio Farias, among others, recreated works that were located in the radio preference.

Around this time he released a group of five blind young called  5U4 in allusion to an electronic tube. Its director, Osvaldo Rodriguez, later became a songwriter. Like 5U4, he distinguished himself in the spreading of another group of blind people, El Conjunto Antares, which remained for some years in a program of Radio Progreso. For all those years was created Los Barba and Los Reyes with its vocalist Jose Valladares.

At the endings of the 60’s Pacho Alonso popularized Persistire will persist, and Ela Calvo and Alfredo Rodriguez, in their respective styles, Todo eso eres. But Ruben Rodriguez, also an extraordinary storyteller and sports commentator, created No puedo prescindir de ti performed by Ela Calvo likewise Asi te presiento gave life to pen ¬ tagrama other items as I can not spare you, that he gave Ela Calvo; So I feel you, who recreated Rosita Fornes, while Leon and Gina Moraima Secada incorporated into their repertoires and return to you To you, fate. Omara made him popular, this lack yours. Other topics requested by listeners of the radio were sad way, by the Joint Roberto Faz, and not even a sapling, who played Danny Puga.

The South American leadership was absorbed Victor Jara, Daniel Viglieti, Chico Buarque, Alfredo Zitarroza, Mercedes Sosa, Atahualpa Yupanqui and Violeta, Angel and Isabel Parra, among the most representative, with a song compromised. We will always remember the last visit of Victor Jara to our country in 1972. At the meeting of Latin American Music lifted his voice to say: “No revolutionary music behind the building if there is a Revolutionary” 5 Prayer of a farmer, one of his best-known songs, was awarded first place in the New Song Festival in 1969. By being killed in the stadium in Chile on 11 September 1973, his song was immortalized in any place in America where a guitar and cry a voice lift rebel to Las Casitas del Barrio Alto.

The international sound of light music filled him, including the voices of Joan Manuel Serrat Spanish, Nino Bravo, Dyango, Rocio Jurado, Julio Iglesias, Camilo Sesto. Mexico’s Jose Jose, Roberto Jordan & Steve, the Brazilian Roberto Carlos, Sergio Endrigo Italian, Argentine living in Spain Alberto Cortes, who was released to the topic in a corner of the soul. When the Dominican Sonia Silvestre still had not shown up in Cuba, became known through recordings and radio Why mourns late?

Spain also came two Cuban issues in the voice of Moncho, el Gitano del Bolero. With the seal of Benny More, My love fleeting, and Tony Tano, The scow. In an interview he conducted the journalist Henry Capetillo, Moncho said: “On Benny had heard much, but when I had the privilege of listening to his records impressed me greatly. Few performers have been able to refine the most diverse genera with the heart and the mastery of your idol forever. Since then, fleeting love is part of my repertoire. It’s a piece of my life ‘.

For his part, Luis Gardey, who in his first visit popularized a love like mine, What color is the wind, stay with me and just you and me, arrived in Havana in the year with a recording of John Brown who immediately won favor with the audience: With you.

They were joined in the popularity of the two waves of Puerto Rico Feliciano, Cheo and Joseph. I remember Jose Feliciano in 1972 included in its repertoire Contigo en la distancia, de César Portillo de la Luz. At the end of the decade of the ’70s began to gain popularity by the American Michael Jackson, a teenager who had come with his brothers in The Jackson Five, Elton John and English. But the boom of the dissemination of those years remained the Beatles, and Spanish groups who maintained a preference for sharing with prominent exponents of rock that also claimed his place in the scene.

 

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