Lázaro Ross

Lázaro Ross. He is a singer of Cuban origin. Endowed with exclusive vocal registers and a deep artistic and pedagogical calling, he was one of the founders of the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional.

He was born in La Habana. He was a founder, in 1962, as an informant and akpwón, of the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba. He was one of the most important akpwón (Yoruba music singer) in Cuba; his saint name is Osha Niwe (Saint of the Manigua).

He learned his first songs with Otilia Mantecón. He began his artistic career in the shows of the Folklore Department of the Teatro Nacional. He performed as a singer and dancer in the works Yorubá, Rumbas y comparsas, Yorubá-iyesá, Música popular, María Antonia, Alafin de Oyó, Palenque, Arará and Tríptico oriental.

He is known as Ocha Niwe in the field of Regla de Ocha. He performed in the films Historia de un ballet, 1961, and Osain, 1964.

Among others, he recorded albums with the groups Síntesis, directed by Carlos Alfonso, and Mezcla, directed by Pablo Menéndez. He has obtained three Cubadisco awards; in 2001 he was nominated for the Latin Grammy, and in 2002 he was awarded the International Fernando Ortiz Prize, awarded by the Fundación Fernando Ortiz de Cuba. He was nominated for the Grammy Award, for Yemayá, best folkloric music album, 2001, and Orisha Ayé, the best folkloric music album 2002, and in the Cubadisco, with the same album that same year he won the folkloric music award.

Works
Alafin de Oyó, (1971)
Libreto, (1971)
Arará, (1979)

Lázaro was a famous interpreter of Afro-Cuban Yoruba music. He appeared as a special guest on the album Cantata a Babalú, by Chucho Valdés and Irakere, nominated for the Grammy Awards in 1999 in the Traditional Music category. In 2001 he received the Cubadisco Award for his discography work Yemayá y Ochún, in the Folkloric Music category. That same year he was awarded the nomination for the Latin Grammys for his composition Yemayá, and in 2002 he competed again in that important call with his album Changó, from Sello Unicornio.

Lázaro Ros is known as the most celebrated Cuban akpwón in matters of folkloric songs corresponding to Regla de Ocha. In this sense, he made a great contribution to the rescue and revitalization of Afro-Cuban folklore. His work contributed not only to the preservation, but also to the enrichment and broader dissemination through multiple media (theater, television, cinema) of the folkloric heritage (songs and dances) that identifies us as Cubans. Thanks to his effort, will and perseverance, today we have multiple recordings of the rich wealth of traditional culture, fundamentally that dedicated to the world of the Orishas.

In 1962 the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba was created. Among the founders of this cultural institution we have Dr. Rogelio Martínez Furé, Mexican choreographer Rodolfo Reyes Cortés, and other intellectuals, but also many men and women of the people who, through their knowledge of traditional dances, songs and rhythms, contributed to this noble enterprise, which arose to meet a need in our country, since there was no institution capable of gathering the dance and musical manifestations of a national character and definitively integrating them into the new socialist culture. Lázaro Ross was also a founder of this institution, and it was there that he carried out his first continuous professional work for 40 years of artistic career. Lázaro Ross is consulted for his knowledge and artistic abilities, in a distinguished and unbiased manner; professionally he continuously takes the stage with a wide range of artistic performances, sometimes as a singer and sometimes as a dancer.

The source from which Lázaro Ross's art draws is African culture as a whole, where African-rooted religious cults stand out. Well then, these African elements converged with other cultures, forming what some researchers call "religious syncretism".

Lázaro Ross was connected with Afro-Cuban cults, but he was also baptized in Catholicism. When asked: "Have you had any direct relationship with Catholicism?", he answered: "Of course I have! Since I sang my first songs in the Choir of the Salesian Fathers in la Víbora. There I sang the Ave María. Those were great schools, they had about two classrooms for poor Black people. Those who had good voices were taken to sing in the choir. Aaaah! My grandmother and my aunts were all Catholics. I was initiated in the Catholic church of Diez de Octubre and Carmen, in la Víbora. I was baptized there, as were my brother and my grandchildren".

Apolinar González, through the mediation of Ochún Yemí, advises Lázaro to become initiated into Santería as quickly as possible. He is surprised because he was in that world only for his passion for singing, and it never crossed his mind that one day he would have to be initiated into Santería. He is initiated on November 21, 1950, at the age of 25 years. Neither his grandmother nor his mother, both Catholics, agreed, and they could only resign themselves to the decision made by Lázaro. They crown him with the deity Oggún: King of the mountain, god of war, owner of metals; he symbolizes the driving force of the world, carries with him the secret of the alloy of minerals, and also represents agriculture. His name in the saint was Ocha Niwe, which means saint of the manigua; his titular orisha was Oggún Algbedé. Lennys, Lázaro's sister in the saint, recounts that when they were singing the Itá to him, when he was told that he would travel the entire world, he bursts out laughing and says: "Only if they hold a chicken plucker festival and I'm the winner". Given his social ascendancy, logically, Lázaro could not have thought that at that time he could have opportunities to achieve significant achievements in the field of art.

In April 1949 Lázaro meets his friend Venero, who was religious and worked at the RHC Cadena Azul radio station. He proposes to Lázaro to sing on a radio broadcast and he, without thinking twice, accepts the proposal; he was not paid any salary and the program was broadcast starting at 11 o'clock at night on Sundays. This was the first step taken by Lázaro to enter the professional world.

In 1959 he was called by Argeliers León to join as a singer and dancer the group that performed the first folkloric shows in the Sala Covarrubias of the Teatro Nacional de Cuba, already positioning himself from a scenic point of view with the premiere of the work Cantos y leyendas. Shortly after, he collaborated as an informant for the Instituto de Etnología y Folklore of the Academia de Ciencias de Cuba; researchers such as Isaac Barreal, Rogelio Martínez Furé, Alberto Pedro and Miguel Barnet invited him as a singer to illustrate their lectures. He also collaborated with the Movimiento de Artistas Aficionados teaching folkloric classes.

In 1961 Lázaro participated in the filming of the documentary Historia de un Ballet, which has transcended to our days as a classic in the history of Cuban Folklore and which includes the choreography "Suite Yoruba". This story teaches us how our religious ancestors sang and danced, it includes a deep study done by the essayist, teacher and choreographer Ramiro Guerra; and shows a whole range of religious messages where all the Orishas of the Yoruba pantheon were characterized, combining folkloric roots with modern dance technique movements.

In 1962 the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional is created. It was an ordinary day, Lázaro was singing in a house in La Palma dancing humorously as he liked to, when Rogelio Martínez Furé arrives and tells him that he should go to Manrique and Neptuno and present himself as a singer. Lázaro quickly heads there and is accepted, begins his work as an informant and in a short time takes the stage as a singer and dancer. This group becomes Lázaro Ros's second home.

Dock workers, hairdressers, students, actors, simple or sophisticated people, knowledgeable of belief, movement and sonorities full of existential vigor, made up the original nucleus of 56 selected members. To ensure folkloric authenticity, without falling into a stylized version or ethnographic reproduction, the advisory team collected the materials to be used in research with the following informants: Trinidad Torregrosa, Nieves Fresneda, Jesús Pérez, Emilio O'Farril, José Oriol Bustamante, Manuela Alonso and Lázaro Ros. They selected the elements of greatest richness and expressive strength, the show was conceived from an artistic point of view and, through scripts and subsequent table work, all that accumulation of information was transmitted to the choreographer for his subsequent theatrical staging, and to the designers, who had to capture it in sketches and models. This task was later supervised by the advisor and the informants. Teamwork, fraternal discussions and positive criticism made it so that the dance and singing projections, the scenography and costumes of the Conjunto, reached a high artistic level.

The emergence of the Conjunto Folklórico was a blessing; from here begins a new life for him. When recalling the first years lived, he always exalted that date, when the Conjunto performed for the first time at the Teatro Mella for three months from Wednesday to Sunday, with enormous lines in the street.

A year after the founding of the Conjunto, Ross appears among the most famous informants, participating in multiple lectures on Cuban folklore. Thus, in 1964, following a visit to Cuba by Claude Plasón, director of the Sarah Bernhardt Teatro de las Naciones, the CFNC was invited to participate in the event that would be held in Paris, representing Cuba, "Fidel's Cuba", as the newspapers said. This trip was for 15 days and became six months. The Conjunto made the greatest number of performances and gave many lectures before prominent French ethnologists and artists, there were presentations for television and broadcasts through the most important radio networks, an album was recorded for the Chant Du Monde collection in Paris and for the BBC in London. All this greatly favored the dissemination of Cuban folkloric songs and dances.

From his beginnings in the Folklórico, in addition to being a singer, he was a dancer and informant, and even developed as a teacher, a position he held for more than 30 years. Lázaro, as a teacher, was very dedicated, and taught with the same rigor with which he learned; he was a specialist in Yoruba songs, he placed great emphasis on their writings, wrote song by song on the blackboard, explained with great patience how the proper tone should be maintained without losing the rhythm and perfected his students in the different singing genres he knew. When he worked with singers he was even more demanding, he liked to begin with conversations about the arrival of different ethnic groups to Cuba and the different existing languages, and only then would he begin to talk about the songs and their meanings, explaining why it was important to learn each word correctly, and saying that the greatest essence of a singer was to know fully everything they sang, rigorously perfecting the melodic lines of the singers.

His great friend and sister Natalia Bolívar opines: "Lázaro's voice comes from the depths of the Nigerian jungle. That voice was unique, so powerful and at the same time rhythmic, powerful par excellence".

After research conducted by Juan García and the Maestro Lázaro, the "Ciclo Arara" was created in 1966. From here on, for the first time, Arara songs began to be sung in Cuba within the batá drums. I should note that the Yorubas and the Araras were always enemies, in Africa as in Cuba, because the Yoruba sold the Araras to enslavers. The fact that Arara songs were introduced within the batá drum helped the reconciliation between the two ethnic groups.

Lázaro Ros is known as the most important akpwón in Cuba. When you listen carefully to his songs, you realize that he had a maintained rhythmic tone, something that has been lost today. He felt great pleasure in creating joint work with the dancer and the musician. When he began his song, he did it with a sonorous softness, never losing the true accent that Yoruba songs carry, forcing the drummer to play an organic rhythm that combined with his musical style. His brothers in religion said: "He had a special gift; at saint's feasts he made people constantly bustle about, managing to make the saint quickly possess his horse".

In 1981 Lázaro records his first LP with the group Síntesis: Ancestros, with the song "Titi Laye". The album was awarded by the EGREM, thanks to the fusion between rock and folklore. Years later, the Maestro undertakes a new discographic commitment with his great friend Pablo Menéndez, director of Mezcla. Lázaro recounts: "One day I ran into Pablo Menéndez, and he told me: 'You don't know what I would give to make an album with you'. And I answered him: 'We're already doing it'. Pablo told me: 'You sing all eight songs, we'll just help you with the chorus'".

In 1992 he founded the renowned group Olorun with 12 young enthusiasts, who had little knowledge of Yoruba songs, but great desire to perform and learn from the experience of Lázaro Ros. He also stood out as a writer. In 1971 he creates "El Alafin de Oyó", a dramatic work linked to dance, movement, rhythm and theater. With this work he marks a milestone in the artistic work of the Conjunto Folklórico, because Lázaro was able to integrate everything, creating a standard without differentiating between actor and dancer.