Eliseo Grenet Sánchez

===BODY===
Born in La Habana. He composed danzones, songs, sones, tangos congos and sucu-sucu. He composed music for musical revues and films. He is likewise the author of famous pieces of Cuban dance music. Eliseo also had two musician and composer brothers: Emilio known as Neno (1901-1941) and Ernesto (1908-1981). Emilio became a composer when a shark attacked him and wounded his arm and leg in 1930. Ernesto was a drummer and leader of the Tropicana orchestra.

Composer, pianist, orchestra director. Author of the internationally famous song Ay, mamá Inés.

Eliseo Grenet was born in La Habana on June 12, 1893. He carried out his first musical studies with Mercedes Valenzuela and, later, with Leandro Simón Guergué, father of composer Moisés Simons.
At twelve years of age he began accompanying silent film screenings at the La Caricatura cinema, and in 1909 he directed the orchestra of the Havana theater Politeama (where years later he premiered several of his zarzuelas). At such an early age he was already composing music for works presented in that venue.

In 1925 he founded a jazz band-type orchestra, with which he performed at the Montmartre cabaret and the Jockey Club, and recorded discs in Nueva York for the Brunswick company. Earlier he had directed a danzón orchestra, with which he recorded in 1916 for RCA Victor, and in 1923 for Columbia, about thirty acoustic discs with about twenty of his compositions.

He joined as musical director in 1926 the theatrical company of Regino López at the Teatro Cubano (formerly Molino Rojo), a company later headed by actor Arquímedes Pous. During that stage he accompanied numerous recordings by artists of Cuban musical theater. With Pous's company he undertook a tour that included México, the southern United States, República Dominicana and Puerto Rico. Upon his return to Cuba he directed the orchestra of the Casino Nacional.

On September 29, 1927, on the stage of the Regina theater, located on Galiano and Neptuno streets—then in the heart of La Habana—Rita Montaner premiered his tango-congo Ay, mamá Inés. The piece was inserted in the zarzuela Niña Rita o La Habana en 1830, with libretto by Riancho and Castell, and music by Grenet and Ernesto Lecuona. Chroniclers of the time reported that there were nights when the artist had to perform Eliseo Grenet's song four or five times to please the audience, perhaps not knowing that thus was born Cuban Lyric Theater. Ay mamá Inés was one of the great successes achieved by Montaner in her performances at the Palace theater in París in 1928.

Shortly after the premiere of Niña Rita, Grenet founded the variety company Cubanacán, with which he traveled through countries of Central and South America, and returned to Cuba in 1930. He set to music several poems by Nicolás Guillén from the Motivos de son series; among others, Negro bembón and Sóngoro cosongo, which singer Fernando Collazo premiered. His brother, Emilio Grenet, put to music Quirino con su tres, Yambambó, Búcate plata and Tú no sabe inglé, also from Motivos..., which achieved great popularity in interpretations by Rita Montaner.
Eliseo composed between 1931 and 1932 Lamento cubano (with text by Teófilo Radillo) which denounced the sad situation prevailing in the country under the bloody Machado dictatorship: ¡Oh! Cuba hermosa, / primorosa, / ¿por qué sufres hoy / tanto quebranto? / ¡Oh! Patria mía, / ¡quién diría / que tu cielo azul nublara el llanto!

The song was immediately censored by the government of Gerardo Machado, and the composer was forced to leave the country. He arrived in Gijón, España, where he performed as a singer and pianist. Through the mediation of Cuban impresario José Antonio Miranda, he premiered his operetta La virgen morena, with libretto by Aurelio Riancho, at the Teatro Nuevo in Barcelona.

After a successful run of more than a thousand performances, he moved to París to present performances of La virgen morena. The work was successful and Grenet published several of his musical works. He decided to stay in París, where he performed at the La Cueva cabaret as pianist in the orchestra of trumpeter and composer Julio Cueva.

At La Cueva, observing that attendees found it difficult to dance the sones and rumbas that the orchestra played, he refined a modality (based on the music played by carnival comparsas) until creating a "conga" that was danceable and assimilable by non-Cuban audiences. This "salon conga" had enormous success in París. Its effect on the public and press earned Grenet contracts in London and Nueva York, the city to which he moved after a brief stay in La Habana.

He debuted on May 14, 1936 at the Steinway Building, and that same year, at the corner of Broadway and 52nd Street, he founded the Yumurí cabaret, where the quartet of Puerto Rican Pedro Flores performed, with Cuban Panchito Riset as singer. In 1938 he presented the revue La conga—the name he gave to another cabaret he had opened—featuring Mexican Jorge Negrete.

The entry of Estados Unidos into World War II caused the offer from film director Frank Capra to fail, to film in Hollywood a musical movie based on La virgen morena.

Grenet traveled with his variety company through México and Argentina. In Ciudad México he provided music for the films Escándalo de estrellas, Conga Bar and Estampas coloniales, with Miguelito Valdés. In Buenos Aires he wrote the music for Melodía de arrabal, in which Libertad Lamarque sang his lament Facundo.

His musical work for film had begun a decade earlier with Susana tiene un secreto (España, 1933) and La princesa Tam Tam (Francia, 1935), in which Josephine Baker danced and sang congas. He wrote music for a Cuban film: La canción del regreso (1940), by Max Tosquella and Sergio Miró.

In 1947 he returned to La Habana, and the following year he won First Prize in the Cuban Songs Competition with his composition El Sitierito.

According to journalist Ciro Bianchi Ross, Grenet spent his last years in Cuba engaged in a struggle as fierce as it was futile against the mambo, which he considered a distortion of Cuban music.

On Isla de Pinos, months before his death, he discovered the sucu-sucu, which captured his attention powerfully. It was a dance—a variant of the son, according to some experts—that the people of Pinar danced since remote times, which owed its name to the characteristic sound that the dancers produced on the floor by rhythmically dragging their feet: sucu, sucu, sucu.

Grenet became fond of the rhythm, and soon his Domingo Pantoja became a hit, while Felipe Blanco played all day long on household radios and in the automatic devices of commercial establishments. More than one humorist took its lyrics as a starting point for elaborating a political joke or one with scabrous themes.

"Now I can die in peace," the composer said, because sucu-sucu was Cuban music, free from foreign contamination.

He did not die in peace, but rather harassed by the threat of the Radio Ethics Commission against his Felipe Blanco. Although it cannot be assured that the displeasure was what caused his death, the public interpreted it that way. Thousands of people filed past his body and accompanied his remains to the cemetery in silent and solidarity procession.

Upon the musician's death, Nicolás Guillén wrote that with him had gone a piece of Cuba's musical folklore, a fresh composer whose "bacharero" sense of rhythm expressed a way that, being mulata (as in Anckermann and Moisés Simons), was profoundly creole and national.

Among the numerous works by Eliseo Grenet that have endured in cultural memory, in addition to those already mentioned, are his bolero Las perlas de tu boca (with lyrics by Armando Bronca), the song Tabaco verde, which he wrote in his last days in Cuba at a café table; the afro Tata Cuñengue, the tango congo Espabílate, and the street cries El tamalero, Rica pulpa and Papá Montero. For the danzón repertoire, La mora, Si muero en la carretera and Si me pides el pescao, and among his congas, which had such success in Europe and Estados Unidos, Camina palante, La llave de oro and Comparsa de los congos.

Film Music
La Princesa Tam-tam, starring Joséphine Baker (París).
Escándalo de estrellas
Conga bar
Estampas coloniales, with Miguelito Valdés, México.
Milonga de arrabal, Buenos Aires.
Noches cubanas, New York.
Susana tiene un secreto, Barcelona.

Zarzuelas
Grenet wrote music for zarzuelas and other works for musical theater.
La toma de Veracruz, premiere in 1914 at the Teatro Alhambra in La Habana.
Bohemia
Como las golondrinas
El mendigo
El santo del hacendado
El submarino cubano
El tabaquero (libretto: Arquímedes Pous).
La camagüeyana (premiere in Barcelona 1935).
La virgen morena (libretto: Aurelio Riancho).3
Mi peregrina maldita
La Niña Rita, o La Habana en 1830, co-authorship with Ernesto Lecuona.

Songs
Grenet wrote numerous popular songs among which we mention Drume Negrita, Las perlas de tu boca, El sitierito, Lamento esclavo, Tabaco verde, La comparsa de los congos, La mora, México, La princesa tam-tam, Papá Montero, Rica pulpa, Mi vida es cantar, Lamento cubano, Negro bembón, Tu no sabe inglé, Sóngoro cosongo and the classic Ay! Mamá Inés.

He was musical director of the company of Arquímedes Pous, with whom he collaborated, composing the music for many of his titles: La canción del mendigo (1912), El submarino cubano (1918) and Los funerales de Papá Montero (1924), among others. He also premiered some works at the Alhambra theater, among which La toma de Veracruz (1914) stands out. His popularity is due especially to the zarzuelas Niña Rita, written in collaboration with Ernesto Lecuona (1927)—in whose score the famous tango congo Mamá Inés stands out—and La virgen morena (1928), performed hundreds of times in España (1932) with enormous success. He also contributed to spreading Cuban music in Francia, Estados Unidos and Latin America.

He died in La Habana on December 4, 1950. At his funeral, the Municipal Band of La Habana, conducted by maestro Gonzalo Roig, performed his famous Lamento cubano, a composition that earned him exile during the years of the Machado dictatorship.