María Teresa Vera

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At a very early age she began to make herself known in bohemian and trova circles. She began singing in 1911 and singer Manuel Corona advised her to learn to play guitar. The girl singer, whom everyone sought out at parties among friends, became a young woman and, at sixteen years old, made her appearance, unknown as she was, at a benefit (a kind of tribute from her colleagues to an artist) dedicated to Arquímedes Pous.

She learned to play guitar with Manuel Corona and Patricio Ballegas, her first public presentation was on March 18, 1911, the acclaimed debut came laden with the premiere of one of the most beautiful Cuban songs of all time: the criolla Mercedes, recently composed by Manuel Corona and took place at the Teatro Politeama Grande, located in the Manzana de Gómez, on a date that, very soon, will bring this event to its centennial: May 18, 1911.

María Teresa formed a legendary duo with Rafael Zequeira and between 1914 and 1924 they recorded almost 200 songs, many of which were immediate popular successes such as A llorar a Papá Montero. She meets Ignacio Piñeiro and teaches him to play the bass.

Starting in 1918, her travels begin accompanied by those who made up the two-voice combinations with her as well as those who provided instrumental accompaniment. Her unique and diverse art was recorded for the Victor, Columbia and other labels such as Brunswick. She also performed live in that country; years later, she traveled to Yucatán. From the nineteen thirties onwards, now as a duo with Lorenzo Hierrezuelo in that alliance that lasted twenty-seven years, she achieved a presence on the radio through a regular program on CMQ as well as on the never sufficiently valued Radio Cadena Suaritos in whose archives a good part of that chapter of Cuban musical history spanning three decades of valuable work was buried.

In 1926 she founded the Sexteto Occidente, within the Cuban tradition of son sextets. She also sang in the Grupo Típico de Carlos Godínez.

María Teresa went out on all the roads seeking out people, amazed by the powers of those songs that she got to hear, firsthand, in the voices of those who had just brought them into the world. She sang in parks, hospitals, tobacco factories, lodges, societies and guilds, on theater stages and in neighborhood cinemas—especially in the Esmeralda, an emblematic trova venue, a small and charming place (unfortunately unrecognizable for some years now), located in the vicinity of the Mercado de Cuatro Caminos. An arrested and dazzling woman surrounded by guitar-wielding gentlemen who escorted her like angels, challenging the roughest audiences—those who, for their part, never subjected her to the rigor of jeers. That is how she was (as Oscar Hernández would have said).

This ensemble was founded by María Teresa Vera at the behest of her music producers. This was fundamentally due to the great demand that son sextets had in the mid-twenties. The group had as members, besides María Teresa, Ignacio Piñeiro on bass, Julio Torres on tres, Manuel Reinoso on bongó and Paco Sánchez on maracas. Its career lasted a few years and its recordings were sparse. This group developed its career largely in opposition to the Sexteto Habanero, its competition.

These two groups developed the way of playing son in the habanera style and were the first to define its characteristics. Notable in both groups, within the purest tradition of Afro-Cuban percussion, is the free criterion of the bongo player in execution. In contrast stands the dictatorship of the clave in 3 and 2. The tres in the melody, the guitar and bass in the harmony, and the salt of the maracas complete the sound picture of one of the most mystical musics of America.

A devotee of Afro-Cuban religion, she decides to become a santera and leaves music until 1936, when she reappears in a Radio Salas program with a quartet made up of Justa García, Dominica Verges and Lorenzo Hierrezuelo. But the Quartet separates after the radio broadcast. Then Hierrezuelo accompanies her in a duo that will last more than twenty-five years during which María Teresa Vera reaffirms herself as one of the first voices of Trova. With Hierrezuelo she went to Mexico, in 1954 and performed in Aztec nightclubs.

In the mid-nineteen fifties of the twentieth century, she produces on television El Casino de la Alegría. Tributes to María Teresa Vera arrive in the sixties, in 1962 she becomes ill and decides to retire from the scene. She dies in 1965. Her most well-known theme, Veinte años, will be performed by the greatest Cuban singers.

For more than 50 years, she developed a fruitful career in the artistic world, marking the song in a singular way with her compositions and interpretations, for which she was catalogued as the highest feminine expression of traditional trova in our country.

María Teresa Vera's last performances took place in 1961, precisely in that year a collection of her songs was recorded, which was re-released in 1999 by the record label EGREM, under the title Las canciones de Maria Teresa Vera, as a tribute to her dedication to Cuban song.

Among her works is that classic page of Cuban popular music titled Veinte Años, which over time has maintained the freshness and charm with which it was composed, being performed by multiple national artists and groups. This song was composed in 1935 following the habanera style, a genre that appeared in the nineteenth century and performed on two levels, the popular and the lyrical. For her and for Miguel Matamoros, the habanera was a love song to be sung as a duet of voices and guitars.

Some scholars are inclined to attribute the content of this song to a sad love experience suffered by Guillermina Aramburu, a friend of María Teresa. The fact is that Veinte años made María Teresa famous.

In 1995 the tribute album titled A María Teresa Vera (Nubenegra, 1995) is released, in which interpreters of the caliber of Omara Portuondo, Martirio, Pablo Guerrero, Gema and Pável, Jacqueline Castellanos, Uxía and Argelia Fragoso perform her songs.

Discography
TUMBAO TCD 090 Maria Teresa y Zequeira - El Legendario Dúo de la Trova Cubana
TUMBAO TCD 087 SEXTETO OCCIDENTE Yo no tumbo caña