Santiago Feliú Sierra

Cuban singer-songwriter who belongs to the movement known as Nueva Trova and has transcended, also reaching Novísima Trova which has been taking root and reflecting in faces as celebrated as those of Carlos Varela, Gerardo Alfonso, Frank Delgado, Kelvis Ochoa and other groups of his compatriots such as Pedro Luis Ferrer, Xiomara Laugart or Noel Nicola.

His life, always surrounded by musical art, bore fruit in his early years, in which great trovadores such as Silvio and Nicola knocked on his door. At an early age he takes up the guitar in a straight alignment for his new left-handed modality, which combined with the theory and tuning of musician Tomatito would give life to the peculiar sounds of Santiago's authentic and innovative melodies.

Santiago Feliú recounts his passion for the seventh art, at an early age he went to the Pionero cinema, where he spent hours watching film after film; often this was due to problems within his home and he took it as a form of escape, which ended in total fanaticism. He could never explain the reason for his left-handedness, this occurred at age 6 with no apparent cause. He was an apprentice of his brother's musician friends, although formally he was a student of Silvio Rodríguez.

At age 13 he meets artists of his generation who would later accompany him on stage, some like Ferrer, Ismael Serrano, Gerardo Alfonso, Fito Páez, among others. Along with them he discovers the classical works of Beethoven, Vivaldi, Formell ("The Mozart of Cuba") and even rock which he rejected, such as Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, and an innumerable list of performers. Added to this he discovers certain literary authors like Hermann Hesse, Michael Ende, Kafka and more, which form part of his reading, although he admits he lost that habit when he turned 30.

At age 16 he begins to join the current group of trovadores, also being an unequivocal candidate in Nueva Canción spaces. He marries at age 18 and maintains a marriage of 8 months with Bárbara (same as the song "Para Bárbara"). He has a son named Adriano Feliú who joins the novísima song movement.

Nicknamed by some as "El Eléctrico," Feliú gives a revolutionary turn to the trova genre through songs in which a more detailed guitar is developed than what is normally used as mere accompaniment; a more homogeneous mix, so to speak, between melody and text scheme since this predominates even more in trova given that the "urgent songs" of old required precisely to be published in the eyes and at the expense of the world; they were precisely demandingly necessary.

He has performed alongside great exponents of both generations of trova such as Noel Nicola, Frank Delgado, Luis Eduardo Aute, Luis Pastor, León Gieco, Silvio Rodríguez, Vicente Feliú, among others.

Feliú speaks of the nostalgia created by leaving Cuba, from his personal point of view, abandoning the country for professional reasons has given him numerous opportunities to experience diverse cultures, something he considers essential; this thinking and his carefree conduct grant him another nickname or phrase that refers to him, even reflected in a book that describes Feliú as a "hippie" in communism. He himself says "When I went to the Canary Islands I learned of people who didn't know Spain; it seems absurd to me and at the same time poetic."

Feliú evaded military service in Cuba, although he proved his passion for armed struggle by visiting and learning about guerrillas in Latin America such as M-19 or EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation), to which he dedicates a tribute on one of his albums, recorded with Vicente Feliú. Feliú says that he will continue betting on utopia because he says that the EZLN "Is the only dignified guerrilla that exists."

Santiago Feliú admits to being addicted to "below zero" (depression), to all that thing made of melancholy or heartbreak, putting the gray in his melodies. He also admits to being "a hardened addict to the magic of cutting and editing," obvious when seeing a song as intense as Mickey y Mallory.

However, his lyrics are not absent of ever-present themes such as life or love, however, he tends more to show his left-wing ideology in political themes such as La ilusión, Rocanrolito de Fulanito and Menganito or En este barrio. His other below-zero tendency he encloses, as he says, in his most recent recording: Sin Julieta. In his songs, aside from what has been said, we can find endless approaches directed both at the sense of life, at human existence, at history and its questions such as revolution, evolution, war or time itself.

Discography
1986: Vida
1987: Trovadores
1988: Para mañana
1991: Nausea of the End of the Century (studio)
1994: Nausea of the End of the Century (live)
1997: Yearnings of Dawn (Santiago Feliú and Vicente Feliú)
1999: Immediate Future
2000: Santiago Feliú Live
2002: Among Others (Noel Nicola with Santiago Feliú)
2002: Without Juliet
2010: Ay, la vida
[edit]Collective Works
1989: 19. Festival of Political Song

Santiago died at age 51 from a heart attack on February 12, 2014.

Source: Wikipedia.org