19 Years Since the Passing of the Natural Countryman, Polo Montañez

November 28, 2021

It has been 19 years since the incredible passing of that Natural Countryman who did not mortgage his lyrics, nor his melodies, nor his life, nor his ways to find recognition.

In 2002 there occurred the historic musical event of seeing a country musician from Western Cuba, in the very birthplace of son music, in Santiago de Cuba, no less than invited by Elíades Ochoa, who awaited him eagerly and was his host, and what a host he was.

It was already known about the sold-out shows in Mexico and Costa Rica, the sweep through France and the idolatry in Colombia. It was also known how the Cuban people felt identified with the themes, the manners, the art full of landscapes of that man.

And suddenly, after several days of Cuban uncertainty came the shock: Polo Montañez died. It could not be believed. It was November 26, 2002 when hope transformed into tears, even beyond Cuba. He was 47 years old when he lost his life due to an automobile accident.

Polo paid tribute to life in an absurd manner, like Aquiles Nazoa, like Alí Primera, like Andrés Eloy Blanco: in a traffic accident while returning home, in this case, from Havana.

He was born on June 5, 1955 in Candelaria, province of Pinar del Río (the land of Miguelito Cuní and Pedro Junco, among others), and he cultivated himself like the planting of rich fertile earth: with the music of his fields, with the workday sung, with the melodies he heard on the radio and with the preaching of his peasant parents. Mountains and music, work and chords.

That is how one can summarize the life of this man who came to form a group to animate gatherings without knowing that José da Silva, an African native of Cape Verde and president of the Lusáfrica label, an independent record company established in France, would learn of the matter through Bernardo Quiñones, Polo's friend. It was Bernardo who brought da Silva to Las Terrazas, a locality located in Pinar del Río, Cuba's western province.

Polo was a kind of poet of the mountains, a poet who had escaped from himself.

The businessman would have to wait two days to be able to hear Polo Montañez, that is, Fernando Borrego Linares, whom the townspeople called "polaco" because of his light hair, and from polaco to polo was just one thing, there, in his field, in his land, in his work.

It should be noted that by 1994 Polo Montañez had been accepted by Cuban regulations as a professional musician. But he did not dedicate himself to exploiting such status in massive terms. He did everything in his town.

The fact is that the owner of the French label went to that very town to listen to Montañez, and fell captivated by the evidence that Bernardo Quiñones had predicted for him, for some reasons worth noting.

The first of these has to do with the authenticity of that group which even lacked strings on their instruments and yet they sounded, and how. And the most important thing for da Silva was that it was a repertoire he did not know because he heard the same thing in all the restaurants in Cuba that he visited.

And it was that among the classical and conventional themes of Cuban repertoire that are played in tourist venues, Polo decided to intersperse some of his own compositions. It was those themes that captivated the African businessman. Something completely new, and very good.

In an interview with the renowned Cuban journalist Pedro de la Hoz, Montañez recounted: "We interpreted things that people asked us to play or that were in fashion at parties and recitals in communities throughout the Vueltabajo territory. When we began to be hosts at the Las Terrazas Motel, which is located in the community where we went to live after so many years in the middle of the mountains, it gave me the idea to intersperse my creations.

I don't know if many people realized that they were my creations, born from my heart and my mind, because I must clarify that inspiration has to get to work to make music, because music doesn't fall from the sky just because you want it to. The fact was that many people who passed through Las Terrazas or heard us in other places, paid attention to some of my themes."

Polo was not very interested in the recording offer from José da Silva, but da Silva asked him to think about it, that he would return in three months, and indeed he did. The rest is somewhat more well-known history.

José da Silva returned with the Cuban employees he had at his label who would take care of Polo. It was the Cubans who confirmed to the man from Candelaria that the matter was serious and that da Silva was a man of his word.

Thus and only thus did Polo trust and sign the recording contract that would allow the world to discover the authenticity of that singer who smelled musically of wet earth, very close to the sunsets of Western Cuba, with an arrangement primarily of a septet, capable of being expanded.

Completely self-taught, that worker of the earth made a whole fusion of the rhythms he knew and liked, giving preponderance to those of his land.

One fine day Polo found himself with his companions traveling to Havana, no less than to the Abdala studios. They supposed that this would be a performance. Polo spent the money he had in reserve on a new wardrobe for the group and it turned out there was no audience. It was a recording. He regretted it for a good while, according to what José da Silva recounted.

This is how Fernando Borrego would begin the three years his extraordinary journey lasted, cut short on a highway. An unforgettable trajectory with only two albums, "Guajiro Natural" and "Guitarra Mía", and a posthumous album.

When he died he had only 47 years and, like Césaria Évora, who belonged to the label that signed him, the world knew him as an adult, without prior fabrication in the studios. And it became clear that Cuban youth knew how to differentiate because in the midst of the noise boom Polo was able to capture their attention, get them to dance and show them, with his music, another part of Cuba. Quite an achievement.