Manuel Avilés Lozano

Composer and Orchestra Director.

A native of Holguín, he studied music with Spanish master Magín Torres from childhood. He successfully practiced the tailoring trade.

In 1882 he founded the Avilés orchestra with several musician relatives, which was initially a típica or wind orchestra, later became a Charanga, and subsequently a jazz band that continues to the present day and is the oldest of Cuban musical groups.

Manuel Avilés Lozano, clarinetist and composer, founded his orchestra on October 16, 1882 with several local musicians such as: Manuel Dositeo Aguilera, Jesús, Segundo, and Walfrido Avilés Urbino, the latter three being his cousins, of whom only Jesús left a long musical legacy.

From the marriage of Manuel Avilés with Enriqueta Cruz Aguilera, 14 children were born, 11 boys and 3 girls, all musicians, who gradually became incorporated into the orchestra as they acquired the necessary knowledge and reached the required age.

When the war ended, Manuel Avilés reorganized his orchestra, incorporating several of his former members, maintaining its original format, that is, as a typical orchestra made up of violins, clarinets, cornet, trombone, figle, double bass, tympani, and güiro. This orchestra, during the years of silent cinema, provided entertainment at the functions of the Holguín theaters Martí and Oriente. They continued until the implementation of sound cinema.

Twelve of Avilés Lozano's 14 children were members of the orchestra, with Mauro and Borges Avilés Cruz standing out. Mauro was the city's first saxophonist and for 60 years was part of the family orchestra. Borges abandoned music for medicine, considered a virtuoso on the piano and organ, which he played since he was 10 years old.

Around 1883, when he was nineteen years old, he was already writing works of popular character that his orchestra performed.

He joined the War of Independence, like other members of his family, including musicians, and managed to obtain the rank of sub-lieutenant in the Liberating Army.

He composed hymns as well as some contradanzas and danzas. He wrote a "Cocoyé" with its own characteristics, based on this type of Afro-Haitian song established in Cuba since the early nineteenth century, which provides evidence to consider that the cocoyé was not exclusive to the southern region of the east. It is a work different from the version of these songs orchestrated by Spanish master Juan Casamitjana in 1836.