Shaun de Waal
CDs OFTHEWEEK
Compay Segundo will be familiar to lovers of the Cuban music brought to international attention by the Buena Vista Social Club CDs and documentary. In case you’ve forgotten, he’s the nonagenarian who smokes those big fat cigars.
The first singer to record a 78 in Cuba (in 1934), he was half of the phenomenally successful duo Los Compadres, with his cousin Lorenzo Hierrezuelo, from 1942 to 1955. The jaunty, sometimes bawdy, recordings made in the Fifties by the duo are collected on one of three CDs of Cuban music just released by Edenways.
Segundo joins forces with another Buena Vista Social Club star, guitarist Eliades Ochoa, on Ochoa and Segundo, backed by the latter’s band, the Cuarteto Patria. The interplay between the two recalls Segundo’s past as half of a singing pair, and draws enticingly on the Cuban tendency to make much of male harmonies. Together, they give new life to the Cuban folk tradition.
Ochoa is much younger than Segundo (he’s in his 50s), but he is also a repository of the traditional sounds of Cuba. On Son de Santiago he celebrates the music of his home town. For all I know, many of his songs may be tragic in content, but the feeling they transmit is one of sublime enjoyment.