Pedro Pablo Aranzola

Aranzola was born in Nueva Paz in 1917. At that time the town had a few dusty streets and on Sundays, in front of the church, the bands would set up for retretas. Among the young people who never missed a single one of those performances was Pedro Aranzola.

He had many nicknames, among them a very singular one, 24, a figure that summarized the number of his fingers, something he interpreted as a sign of good luck; however, in the family circle they called him Carucho.

As a young man Aranzola went to the capital to seek his fortune and married Graciela, the mother of his son Pedrito, and it was then that he began his career as a composer.

In La Habana he survived in various ways, he was a shoeshine boy in Santos Suárez and set up a barbershop for people of the black race on Marqués González and Salud. From each daily experience he extracted stories for the sones and guarachas that El Cojunto Chapotín, the Orquesta América and La Aragón took on in their repertoires.

Richard Egües met Aranzola in Santa Clara. There a fraternal friendship was born between them that made Egües the arranger of Aranzola's numbers performed by La Aragón. All of them were recorded and became very popular. "Pedro was very witty," says Egües, "he was a likeable man, he put humor into everything. He would sit in the living room of the house and hum the melody or sing the son he had in mind, he was a natural talent…"

Interviewed by journalist Andrés Machado Conte, who was close to Aranzola in his final years of life, the author of Sin clave y bongó no hay son discovered the arguments of many of his best-known songs, among them El paso de Encarnación and Las charlas del momento, which immortalized in Cuban popular music the character of Atilana, both musical chronicles of which Pedro was a witness or protagonist.

Machado Conte himself highlights the value of friendship for Aranzola, who made "a celebration of a friend's arrival," he stresses, and adds another trait inherent to his work "he always looked for the laughable side of life, even in those tragic moments," which is reflected in the sones-guarachas he composed.

In Nueva Paz, the oldest residents and admirers of La Aragón speak of Aranzola with pride. The composer gave his native town a theme, El pueblo de donde soy.

Aranzola was a great pianist who played with Chepín Chovén and later at the Casino de la Playa and at the Riverside and finally at the Sinfónica del Beny.

Among his creations stand out "El paso de Encarnación", "Charlas del momento", "Los problemas de Atilana", "Sin clave y bongó no hay son", popularized by the Aragón orchestra, and the sones "Sacando palo", "Puntéame bien el tres".