Manuel González Hernández

Cuban singer and composer. A controversial and polemical figure, he had his first impact as a guest singer with the orchestra NG La Banda. Despite possessing an untrained voice, his stage presence and his ability as a composer quickly earned him a place among Cuba's most important musicians and orchestras.

Nicknamed by José Luis Cortés "The Doctor of Salsa," he is a phenomenon in Cuban popular music. A graduate of the School of Medicine, but alongside his medical textbooks were salsa records, and thus he learned the art and the healing capacity that music can have to transform everyday life into collective joy and euphoria.

He debuted in 1993 with the album "Una Aventura Loca" which made him known throughout Cuba, after his time with the orchestra NG La Banda, where he reinforced that special talent for the stage despite not having a strong musical background. They say that in early 1993 he was walking around Havana in the same shirt, the same pants, and the same pair of boots trying to get someone to listen to his songs. Four years later, he was the salsa artist on the Island who sold the most records, who packed stadiums and dance halls on tours through neighborhoods, and who filled the nightclubs where he performed despite the ticket prices. His songs were broadcast at all hours on the radio and were heard with such intensity in public places that a Spanish journalist wondered if it had been established by decree to play the Doctor of Salsa in every bar in Havana.

It happened that Manolín was the protagonist of a trend? fashion? syndrome? style? That seemed not to let up after more than a dozen "hit" songs. After singing "A que me mantengo" and "Somos lo máximo, lo que se vende como pan caliente," Manolín confessed musically by saying "yo tengo mi mecánica …" A mechanics that his followers defend energetically, his detractors minimize, and some of his colleagues pretend to ignore. This phenomenon influenced Cuban music of that decade to such an extent that Juan Formell noted that "no one imagined that Manolín was going to create a new musical style, because everything, or almost everything, that sounds in Cuba today, in one way or another, has to do with this musical phenomenon."

His story began in mid-1993. By that time all the orchestras that Manolín later equaled - and in not a few cases surpassed - in indexes that are internationally used to evaluate musical product, sales records, and performance fees were already established.

"The first thing I did was listen to all Cuban music. Alongside my medical books were salsa records. Then I looked for my own space in music. What came closest to what I wanted was NG la Banda: As composers, Juan Formell and Giraldo Piloto interested me; in performance, people like Rubén Blades and Juan Luis Guerra. I thought it was necessary to make a break in the way music was made. Life was changing and even the way people danced was no longer the same."

Manolín emerged at the moment of the Cuban salsa boom when, to the music's own values (the Island's raw material that has nurtured generations of musicians here and abroad), factors were forcefully added that henceforth no orchestra director could avoid: promotion strategy, market research, public requirements, stage image, the establishment of different record labels in the country, forms of economic compensation, and the emergence of new dance halls that were creating a nascent tradition. To popular venues like the legendary Salón Rosado de La Tropical were added others with different profiles such as El Palacio de la Salsa, La Cecilia, and the café Mi Habana. These places stimulated a mythology of spectacle, unprecedented during the previous decades. In all of them, Manolín walked about like a monarch who always found an audience willing to applaud him.

And now I am the King and if you like it fine
and if not also fine
Because you have to be on top of the game

In analyzing his meteoric trajectory, one must go beyond the musicological. But, on the other hand, it would be careless to analyze his popularity through the overvaluation of Manolín's "angel" and "charisma." While charisma is largely responsible for his success, this attribute is not sufficient to explain what the young salsa singer achieved in little time and what Elio Revé synthesized with his direct language: "The Doctor has produced a 'hit' and that has to be recognized."

Other musicians with similar appeal, better looks, and superior vocal qualities could not achieve in such a short time what Manolín did; to position himself at the center of the salsa boom, to influence its evolution, and, what is more curious, to star in a controversy that, on many occasions, reached extra-musical aspects.

"I don't even have a poster and the album covers are not as good as I would like. Unlike other performers in the world, who have extensive promotional support through videos, interviews, posters, etc., in my case it was the music, most of the time, that did its own promotion."

His detractors quickly raise as a flag Manolín's small voice (the artist himself defends his low tone, his pleasant tessitura). His defenders downplay that reality. The opposing side argues that the Doctor repeats himself, that the formula is simple, that everything depends on the choruses. So those in Manolín's ranks point out that if it were so simple, why don't others copying the Doctor's recipe manage to make their music stick with equal ease?

"I think it's very important to tell a story well from beginning to end so that the number sticks. A good chorus is not enough. There are many pieces out there with good choruses, but they don't stick. The chorus is effective as long as it is inserted coherently with the story, with the piece in general. I play with words more than with music. I have only put words in function of the music. Music is one, and I incorporate everything that works, whether it's elements of rap, rock, pop, ballads, boleros, … everything that people like they call salsa without prejudice. I sing about love, heartbreak, and all things respecting the dancer above all else."

"I haven't taken anyone's space. The only thing they can accuse me of is working a lot and having popular approval. Besides, I confess it sincerely, I'm interested in filling stadiums in my country and conquering new audiences in other parts of the world. I have many numbers to deliver and others spinning in my head. I'm not afraid of the future. Let life set limits for me."

Manolín is the son of Fefita Hernández, a distinguished performer of traditional country music. He studied Medicine (graduating in 1992). As a young man, he dreamed of being an artist like Silvio Rodríguez and ended up being a salsa singer, but he never forgot the guitar.

In 1996 with his song "La bola," which in the opinion of many is his most elaborate and danceable song. In this album he depicts the Havana feeling in a lyrical way.

His third album, recorded in 1997, had great acceptance from his followers and dancers, with hit songs like Somos lo que hay, Pegaito pegaito, No lo comentes, etc...

By the end of the 1990s, Manolín occupied the top positions in the rankings, his band filled all spaces, and he was writing songs for bands like Charanga Habanera, NG La Banda, and Bamboleo.

Manolín began singing at the Salón Rojo del Capri. In 1993, driven by José Luis Cortés, he formed his own group, with undoubted influence from NG La Banda, of Cortés, and Irakere, of Chucho Valdés. His creative team included several arrangers, including pianist Luis Bu and Chaka Nápoles. Manolín's rhythm section was one of the most popular in Cuba. Manolín's unprecedented purchasing power had a seismic impact on the timba scene, causing a level of enthusiasm among musicians that had not been seen since the 1950s, if ever.

The first setbacks in Manolín's career arise when he asks in his songs to "extend a hand" to the Cuban community in Miami. His lyrics advocating friendship between Cubans on the island and Cubans in Florida are viewed poorly by the government and quickly banned in Cuba.

"The Doctor of Salsa" had many conflicts with the Cuban government, which finally resulted in his famous chorus "El puente" and his subsequent departure from Cuba. He was a legal resident of Miami, Florida for some time. Starting in 2013, after thirteen years away from Cuba, Manolín moved back to Cuba and toured the island with Pachito Alonso and his Kini-Kini. On that historic tour, at his initial performance at La Tropical were present the greats of salsa and Cuban music, journalists, dancers, tourists, and artistic directors, dancers, artists of all kinds, and businessmen: Los Papines, musicians from Los Van Van, Elito Revé, David Calzado, Los Cuatro, Gente D´Zona, Nelson Peña, Ramón Cañizares, creator of the radio program El Cóctel and De cinco a siete.

His second career in the Cuban capital goes nowhere, of course, and he returns to Miami.

Regarding his musical concerns, Manolín has said: "I was truly not in the plans of salsa, they didn't count on me. But in art no one ever knows what a man carries in his heart and mind. Nor is it easy to know what people expect of you [...]. I devoted myself to studying the danceable cultural panorama of my country. I have always been a conscientious student of Cuban music, which I admire passionately, because I know the value it has.

I analyzed everything that existed and what was missing [...]. I received encouragement, support, guidance, but mine was a very personal matter. That's why I didn't want to join any group: I wanted to embark on my own enterprise [....]." (Lam: "El fenómeno de Manolín...").

In his works, Manolín uses something very old in Cuban music: The chorus, preceded by a verse; by intuition he knows that the chorus, in popular music, is used as a complement to the verse, although it generally does not conform to the verse's rhyme or meaning or even in many cases its content, since the verse contains a thought and the chorus adds a lyrical note.

And there lies the success of his creations, in knowing how to combine these elements in function of what is danceable, of the dancer's euphoria; he takes advantage of everyday fact, of a phrase caught at random, to integrate it into that chorus, with a lyrical note. Manolín "is like an impromptu chorus maker," affirms Rafael Lam.

His music is ironic, consistent, spontaneous, and covers a musical range from the romantic to the most strident and revolutionary sounds of Timba, as in "La vida no es tan tan," where "Chaka" shines on piano, passing through that savory combination of distinctly Havana elements in a lyrical and respectful framework of undoubted good taste for those who prefer to stay seated at the time of the dancing.

The "Doctor" adds a surgical subtlety to the line of contemporary Cuban music and without denying the dancer's right, refreshes somewhat the hot summer of the polyrhythmic of the '90s with his voice that takes us through that romantic and quite human Havana outside of the ballrooms.

With his band, Manolín has performed
At La Tropical and El Palacio de la Salsa, in Cuba
At the University of Brussels, Belgium
Club "El Barrio," Berlin
Sabor Latino, Turin
Paladio, Rome
Sala Apolo and Café Mercado, Barcelona
El Cubanito, Zurich
La Coupoule, Paris

Discography
(1994) Una aventura loca.
(1995) Para mi gente.
(1997) De buena fe.
(1998) Jaque mate.
(2001) El puente. (live in Hialeah, FL).
(2003) Giro total.
(2004) Hall of Fame: Historia musical.
(2004) La mitad ... de Miami. (compilation).
(2006) Grandes éxitos. (compilation).
(2012) Tiene que ser Manolín.

In June 2021 Manolín announces that he is retiring from the stage and public life