Noel Nicola Reyes

Born into a family of musicians. His first contacts with music were "in the family," with his father Isaac Nicola Romero, guitarist and pedagogue, and his mother, Eva Reyes, violinist of the National Symphonic Orchestra and singer. Between 1954 and 1956 he was a student of Douane Voth, piccolo, and Martín Quiñones, music theory. He learned to accompany himself on guitar in a self-taught manner. He composed his first songs at age 13.

From the beginning of the 1960s emerged his first songs, when he performed in amateur festivals. He formed and directed the combo Los Kendy, later the Seis TK, whose repertoire consisted of songs and instrumentals by Fausto Papetti, Charles Aznavour, The Beatles and Cuban music, as well as collective creations by the group.

He worked from 1967 to 1969 as a research assistant at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba directed by musicologist and composer Argeliers León, of whom he was a student. In February 1968 he performed along with Pablo Milanés and Silvio Rodríguez in a recital organized by the Center for Protest Song at Casa de las Américas.
He is considered one of the pioneers of the Cuban Nueva Trova from 1968.

A year later he joined the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC (GES), expanding his musical training in workshops taught there by masters Leo Brouwer, Juan Elósegui and Federico Smith. He was the first President of the defunct Movement of the Nueva Trova (1972-1977).

He represented Cuba, with Argelia Fragoso, at the Festival of Political Song in Sochi, Soviet Union, 1975, where he was awarded a prize by the Union of Composers of that country.

From 1972 to 1980 he toured the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Spain, Nicaragua and Venezuela, performing solo or sharing presentations with Silvio Rodríguez, Marta Campos, Santiago Feliú and Donato Poveda.

In 1986 he inaugurated, along with Augusto Blanca, the Bodeguita de Río de Janeiro.

In the decade between 1976 and 1986 he set to music twenty poems by César Vallejo, of which he recorded fourteen on an LP with the collaboration of Peruvian musicians: "The songs gathered on this record are the product of a long and intimate dialogue between the musician and the poet that began when Noel, as a teenager, first encountered Vallejo and received the impact of his solidarity and rebellious voice, his internal and convincing music that invited him to sing together. Since then, each reading meant new sources of inspiration and emotion, until in 1973, he himself came to the homeland of the poet and here they sealed a definitive pact. In different rhythms: son, waltz, rock, flamenco, landó, twenty poems found their musical expression [...]."

On the other hand, in his "songs sometimes in the rhythm of conga or rumba, biting satire abounds against bureaucratism, against social conventions and hypocrisy in relations between the sexes, against affectation [...]." This way of approaching the song is present in almost all his work, but there are also his meditations on old age, love, some with the imprint of filin.

His work consists of songs, music for film, theater, television series and the orchestration of much of his creation. Among his best-known themes are "Por la vida juntos," "Para una imaginaria María del Carmen," "Comienzo el día," "Son oscuro" and "Es más, te perdono" (or "Te perdono," as it is known worldwide), the latter recently recorded in a "salsa" version by Isaac Delgado.

He made 7 LPs and 1 CD for the AREITO label of EGREM and performed the musical production of several of his recordings, as well as some by other artists.

He is also the author of more than 20 presentation notes for recordings of Cuban music.

He directed ATRIL - Ediciones Musicales. Its catalog includes, among others, works included in his most recent CD with UNICORNIO: "Dame mi voz" (2000).

His works have been performed by Carlos Díaz, Daniel Viglietti, Elena Burke, Guadalupe Pineda, Issac Delgado, Jesús del Valle, Joan Manuel Serrat, Manuel Argudín, Miriam Ramos, Conjunto Roberto Faz, Raquel Zozaya, Santiago Feliú, Sonia Silvestre and Xiomara Laugart.

Works
Ballad
Of a Sort.

Bolero
Fleeing from Love, Dream or Moment and Everything Has Been Waiting.

Bolero-Song
If You Want to Remember Me, You Are My Music and I Already Sang Tomorrow.

Traditional Bolero
That Woman Is a Pain and What?, text: Olga Marta Pérez and Vivien Acosta.

Fusion-Song
[Extensive list of song titles with various authors and themes, including works based on texts by César Vallejo, Ernesto Guevara (Che), and others]

Charleston-Song
Dora from the Twenties On.

Creole-Key
Print 1.

Conga
They Will See, We're Barely Starting and Clowns Clowning Around.

Guajira-Song
I Begin the Day.

Son
Santiago of Approximation (Santiago from Close Up), With Letters, Light, From Tuxpan to the Wide World, What's Ahead, Behind, Beside?, He Set Off, X-Ray of Certain Years, Dark Son.

Peruvian Waltz
It's Raining in Lima, text: César Vallejo, It Rains This Afternoon Like Never Before, text: César Vallejo, Rita of Junco and Caper, text: César Vallejo.

NOEL: JUST AS I AM
Taken from the Book "Cubans in Music"
Mayra a. Martinez, Letras Cubanas, 1993.

When I asked Noel Nicola, one of the founders of the Cuban Nueva Trova Movement, why he was better known abroad than here, he answered with his intrinsic acerbity: "Perhaps I'm ugly to the eyes of program directors." He later acknowledged that if, like the French press, we were to award the Golden Lemon to personalities who are sharp with the media, he would have won it.

I think there is some exaggeration in this last part. I have seen thousands of spectators in Mexico or Ecuador filling a sports stadium and chanting in unison with Noel Nicola his anthological "Para una imaginaria María del Carmen" or "Es Más, te perdono." I have read the chronicles and the laudatory reviews of his work setting the poems of César Vallejo to music, in the poet's homeland. I have heard him in café-concerts, theaters, festivals, performing countless pieces of his, some lost in our memories; others, unknown.

I have conjectured that perhaps many know more about the trajectory of this troubadour than about the real dimension of his prolific work as an author, with more than four hundred compositions, encompassing multiple genres and sounds.

Most know how on February 18, 1968, at Casa de las Américas, with the encouragement of Haydée Santamaría, Silvio, Pablo and Noel gave their first public recital, initiating the Nueva Trova Movement. Noel, with his perpetual adolescent appearance, had grown up among musicians, without paying too much attention to formal guitar study, which he only took when he wanted, to sing calypsos, boleros, rock or feeling music; with melodies that recalled those of Portillo de la Luz; he would later delve into son and traditional trova, until discovering Brazilian music, and that of Daniel Viglietti and deepening his reading of the poetry of Martí, Vallejo, Drummond de Andrade and Paul Eluard.

Later he would join the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC, and receive lessons from Federico Smith and Leo Brouwer. Subsequently, besides writing a lot of music for film and theater, apart from his songs, he presided for six years - 1972-1977 - over the movement of young troubadours, and currently writes a musicological and informative essay on Sindo Garay and compiles his multiple discographic notes.

All these facts are familiar to fans of nueva canción. Not so his work, in its necessary dimension. In recent years Noel has recorded several LPs, two sold first in Mexico and Peru - Distances and Noel Nicola Sings César Vallejo -; in addition to I Begin the Day and Just As I Am (this, an austere record in its instrumentation, supported by the use of guitar as the central axis and which brings together titles from 1967 to 1971). In that selection are present essential themes in his creation: love, with its infinite social connotations, time and its passage between past and future, the introspective attitude from the immediate to that which concerns others, watching life in its most hidden corners.

There we find that kind of declaration of principles: Behind a Guitar, a text with which a troubadour of any time could identify - that of the serenades of the nineteenth century, that of this morning or that of the next century - that keeps with longing a guitar of wood as a precious and fragile object. From Noel's voice we feel them say:

Behind this guitar
there is a guy full of complexes
a guy who doesn't escape the laws
of our universe
stuck to the earth
urgent for kisses.
There is solitude
the faithful companion
the death of paper
stuffed toys
a wound or two
dripping with woman.
Behind this guitar
there is a guy neither good nor bad
who when it rains
observes calmly
his wet patio
pending war
thirsting for years...

Noel confesses his eclecticism regarding sound conceptions. He does not disdain instrumental possibilities, but is capable of writing now a song with the same structure as fifteen years ago, if he feels the desire.

He tries to assimilate for his recordings any timbral or rhythmic innovation, but prefers to sound on the record as in a live concert; he avoids becoming unrecognizable to the audience, so sometimes he accompanies himself with his guitar, without a group supporting him. He enjoys working with small instrumental formats, which imaginatively take advantage of electronic resources.

He seeks sobriety in orchestrations, without falling into orthodox poses of a hermit troubadour. In truth, his experience within the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC allowed him to understand that trova was not limited to the use of guitar, though this was the ideal companion for performing on any stage, be it a theater or an open plaza of medium size - which satisfies him most - or a festival, with thousands of spectators.

Although Noel is responsible for the arrangements and artistic direction of some of his LPs, on others he has entrusted this task to musicians such as Juan Pablo Torres, Frank Domínguez - I Begin the Day; or Distances, where Pablo Menéndez collaborated, who along with his original group Mezcla has made notable arrangements of Noel's compositions -, Manuel González, Orlando Sánchez or Carlos Luis.

In the presentation of I Begin the Day it is explained that Noel delivers there "songs sometimes in the rhythm of conga or rumba, biting satire abounds against bureaucratism, against social conventions and hypocrisy in relations between the two sexes, against affectation..." Of course, the above is a common tone throughout the troubadour's complete work, although it appears well exemplified in that dozen compositions.

In 1986, Noel, along with Augusto Blanca, inaugurated the famous Bodeguita de Río de Janeiro and later toured Peru, with performances in peñas and two concerts at the Segura theater in Lima. With the support of that city's municipality, to whose Casa de los Petisos, a kind of rehabilitated center for abandoned children, he donated the proceeds from the edition; Noel recorded this record with his own arrangements and the participation of seven local musicians who accompanied him with their guitars, keyboards, percussion and voices.

Noel died at age 58 from lung cancer.

Source: EcuRed