Abelardo Barroso Dargelez

A sonero of great lineage. Legendary interpreter of Cuban music. He began his career as an interpreter of song and son with the Sexteto Habanero, later performing with other son groups and typical orchestras as an interpreter of the danzonete. He distinguished himself leading his charanga López-Barroso. Starting in the 1950s, he was a member of the Sensación orchestra. He recorded countless records.

He was born in Havana, in the Cayo Hueso neighborhood—a cradle of famous rumberos and soneros. From a very young age he was forced to earn his living in various occupations, including work as a rental car driver. He was also a boxer and baseball player.

In his free time he would go sing with trovadores who performed in Havana cafés, or with son groups that performed in small and precarious cabarets on Marianao Beach, marginal refuges of son—which, born in the mountains of the eastern region, had not yet managed to overcome social prejudices and establish itself in the capital.

In the early years of the twentieth century son was censored, considered "music of uncultured Blacks." In fact, some recreational societies of the "colored" middle class did not allow it to be performed in their halls until well into the 1940s.

In the early twenties, the harassment that son suffered at the hands of the authorities diminished, and groups of interpreters began to proliferate in popular neighborhoods and areas on the outskirts of the capital.

On Marianao Beach, the young Abelardo Barroso met soneros who would transform Cuban popular music from the moment the new genre began to be recorded on discs. Barroso actively participated in the phonographic debut of the most outstanding son groups of the so-called "golden age."

In 1918—although some authors claim it was in 1920—the Sexteto Habanero had been founded, the first group to "dress son in a tuxedo," according to a commercial expression used for decades to refer to this group, the first to achieve great popularity and be progressively introduced into the salons of Havana's bourgeoisie.

On July 17, 1925, Abelardo Barroso joined the Sexteto Habanero, which was then performing at the exclusive Vedado Lawn Tennis Club. On October 29 of that same year, the Sexteto made its first recordings in Havana for RCA Victor. The second recording session took place on November 2, when one of the sons considered "classic" was recorded: A la loma de Belén, by Juana González de Cabrera. These records are among the first non-acoustic phonographic recordings made on the island.

In the Sexteto Habanero's earliest recordings, Abelardo Barroso sang and played the claves. In 1926 he joined the group of bongosero, guitarist, and tresero Alfredo "El jorobado" Boloña (1890-1964), who had been playing sons since 1915. With the Sexteto Boloña he traveled to New York in October 1926 to make a series of recordings for the Brunswick label.

In two recording sessions (October 18 and 21, 1926), the Sexteto Boloña, with Abelardo Barroso as lead vocalist and claves, recorded sixteen sons phonographically, including the famous Échale candela, by Boloña, and Flora, one of the few compositions bearing Barroso's signature.

On March 19, 1927, Barroso recorded again with the Sexteto Habanero in Havana for RCA Victor, and in October or December of that same year (the exact date could not be determined), he participated in the first recordings made in New York by Ignacio Piñeiro's Septeto Nacional for Columbia Records. On one of those initial Septeto Nacional records, Fernanda appeared, another composition of his own.

The following year, the already sought-after Barroso—whom the public called "Caruso" for the power of his voice—recorded discs with the Septeto Nacional and with the Septeto Habanero, even though both groups were rivals in the competition for supremacy in the dissemination of son, which was now very popular not only in Cuba but in other Latin American and European countries, and in the United States.

In 1929 he joined the Salmerón variety company, which performed in Bilbao, Barcelona, and Madrid for a year.

Upon his return to Cuba he began working as a singer in Ernesto Muñoz's orchestra and popularized a musical novelty, the danzonete—a modality born from the danzón—which has a son montuno at the end.

In 1933 he founded the charanga López-Barroso with Orestes "Macho" López (in charge of piano and musical direction), and alternated performances with his Universo septet until 1935, the year he founded the Pinín son sextet. The following year he began singing with Andrés Laferté's orchestra and later with pianist Everardo Ordaz's group.

In 1939 he began working at the COCO radio station with the Maravilla del Siglo orchestra, replacing the famous singer Fernando Collazo.

In the 1940s he performed in various shows at the Sans-Souci cabaret, singing in choruses in "typical sets," and in 1948 he began working as a singer and performer of claves and maracas with the National Police Band, though for a short time.

At that time, son sextets and septets barely managed to get contracts, and charanga-type orchestras seemed to be about to be defeated by jazz bands like Orquesta Casino de la Playa, Riverside, and Hermanos Castro, which were very popular. Only with the cha-cha-cha in the following decade did the charangas regain public favor.

Barroso went through a period of deep economic depression, which forced him to work as a house painter and as a longshoreman in the docks of Havana's port. On very few occasions was he asked to sing his old sons at some private celebration.

In 1954, while playing tumbadora in Rafael Ortega's orchestra at the Sans-Souci cabaret, the owner of the Puchito record company, Jesús Gorís, recognized him and invited him to record, unsure whether the veteran singer was in condition to do so, at the recommendation of Benny Moré, with a new orchestra he had recently hired: the Sensación, led by Rolando Valdés.

At Gorís's suggestion, Barroso recorded for the Puchito record label two of his old successes, Milonga española (La hija de Juan Simón) and En Guantánamo, by Juana González de Cabrera, a son from the Sexteto Habanero days that he recreated.

The first recordings of Abelardo Barroso with the Sensación orchestra had extraordinary success with the Cuban public and were distributed to other countries in the Caribbean area. In 1957, the group received a Gold Record for sales made. That same year the orchestra was hired, with its star singer, to perform in Miami. It had two efficient vocalists: Luis Donald and Ta Benito and, on flute, Juan Pablo Miranda, a notable instrumentalist and arranger, author of popular boleros, who had been a member of the López-Barroso charanga.

The Sensación orchestra was also made up of Ovidio Pérez Pinto and Lauri on violins; timbalero Jesús Esquijarrosa and Miguel "El Piche" Santa Cruz on tumbadora. In recordings also participated Alejandro "El Negro" Vivar on trumpet; saxophonist Enemelio Jiménez and trombonist Generoso Jiménez. Around 1960, singer Eddy Álvarez joined them.

Among the most successful pieces of that stage in Barroso's career are Un brujo en Guanabacoa and Hagan juego, by Bienvenido Julián Gutiérrez; El huerfanito, by Hermenegildo Cárdenas; El guajiro de Cunagua, by Juana González; Naufragio, by Agustín Lara; La cleptómana, by Agustín Acosta and Manuel Luna; Longina, by Manuel Corona; Bruca maniguá, by Arsenio Rodríguez, and especially his street vendor call El panquelero.

In the final years of the 1950s, Barroso appeared very often in radio and television programs, and was requested for carnivals in the main Cuban cities and to promote highly demanded commercial products.

He traveled with the Sensación orchestra to New York in 1959 and 1960, and participated in the national tribute paid to the celebrated Sexteto Habanero, performing alongside some of his former companions.

After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Barroso continued working with the Sensación orchestra, despite already being afflicted with some ailments.

In 1961 he recorded a long-playing record with the Gloria Matancera ensemble, with arrangements by Severino Ramos, in which he included, among other "classics" of Cuban popular repertoire, El amor de mi bohío, by Julio Brito, and Lágrimas negras, by Miguel Matamoros.

In the 1960s he made his final phonographic recordings with the Sensación orchestra; among them, No te agites, a piece in the rhythm that was fashionable in Cuba at that time: the mozambique.

Abelardo Barroso retired from music definitively in 1969. He died in Havana on September 27, 1972. His recordings with the Sensación orchestra have been reissued in Cuba on multiple occasions.

The Tumbao label (Camarillo Music Ltd.) published in 1998 a four-disc compact disc set titled "Sexteto y Septeto Habanero–Grabaciones completas de 1925-1931," which contains all of Barroso's performances with that group.

The same record company has also released a considerable number of his recordings with the Sexteto Nacional, and the sixteen he made in 1926 with the Sexteto Boloña.