Havana second chance

Since coming out of retirement and a part-time job as a shoe shiner to appear on 1997’s multi-million selling Buena Vista Social Club album, Ibrahim Ferrer has become an unlikely international star in his own right. His charisma and sense of humour shone through on both the album and Wim Wenders’ subsequent film, Buena Vista Social Club. The success of his debut solo album reflected his appeal and demonstrated his mastery of the bolero – most notably in the smouldering duet, ‘Silencio’ with fellow Social Clubber Omara Portuondo.

Currently finishing his new solo album, once again with Ry Cooder at the helm, Ferrer tours Europe over the next month with a 17-piece band featuring top class Cuban musicians such as the legendary ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal (trumpet), Jess ‘Aguaje’ Ramos (trombone) and Demetrio MuÒiz (musical director and trombone).

Over the years Ferrer has sung with many legendary Cuban bands, without ever becoming a name in his own right.

Born in 1927, near Santiago, Ferrer was born into music – literally, as his mother went into labour with him at a social club dance. A tough childhood followed which saw him selling sweets and popcorn on the streets in order to survive. At the age of 13, he and his cousin started a group and he went on to sing in various local bands – Conjunto Sorpresa, Conjunto Wilson and Pacho Alonso’s Maravilla de Beltran.

He even had a hit in 1955 when he performed on, ‘El platanar de Bartolo’ (Bartolo’s Banana Field), with Santiago’s top group of the time, Orquesta ChepÌn-ChÛven.

Moving to Havana in 1957, he worked with Beny MorÈ – one of the most important Cuban musician of the 20th century – before reuniting with Pacho Alonso’s group who had also relocated to Havana, calling themselves Los Bocucos. Ferrer performed with Los Bocucos until his retirement in 1991, to take up shoe-shining to eke out a living.

His life changed forever when one afternoon, Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, mastermind of the Buena Vista sessions, came to his house to ask him to do a recording.

“At first I wasn’t interested,” says Ferrer, speaking through a translator down a crackly phone line from Havana, (with a dog yapping in the background). “I had been disappointed by my life in music. I didn’t even know the name of the project and didn’t know the people who were involved in it.”

He was eventually persuaded to record one number with and when he arrived at the recording studio, he found Rubén Gonzalez there with Compay Segundo, Eliades Ochoa, Barbarito Torres, and ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal. “These were people I had looked up to all my life,” he says. “I started humming while Rubén Gonzalez was improvising at the piano. Eliades Ochoa saw me and started to play the Faustino Oramas tune that I sing called ‘Ay Candela’.

Meanwhile Ry Cooder and World Circuit’s Nick Gold were in the control room. “I didn’t know who they were, but it seemed they liked my voice. And when I sang the bolero ‘Dos Gardenias’, they really noticed me. I still can’t believe that I went there to record one number, and I ended up singing almost all of them!”

Since the album’s release, Ferrer has toured the world. He has moved out of his tiny flat in the old quarter of Havana to a spacious house. Now that he is famous he is happy, he says. “There is no bad side to being famous and having money. In the past I was disappointed because I wasn’t free enough to express myself as a musician. I tried to start some other projects and also found a negative answer. I am just happy now that I can do what I want. I can also represent a lot of other Cuban musicians and can represent my country.

“Only God will decide when I stop singing.”