Walfrido Guevara Navarro

He was born in Santiago de Cuba.

During the 1930s he appeared as an author and performer of troubadour songs and guarachas.

He formed a duo with Raúl Barbarú in Santiago de Cuba, from where they moved to La Habana in 1940, and from then on they performed on the radio station Mil Diez. He later joined in successive stages with José Antonio Valentino and Santiago Fulleda, until forming a duo with Juvenal Quesada in 1947.

Author of the songs and boleros: "Un juramento de amor", "Derrotado corazón", "Canción del borracho", "No quiero matarte"; of the son montuno: "Qué cinturita"; of the cha-cha-cha: "Bésala y cásate", and of guarachas that were very popular for dancing: "Qué buena es la nochebuena"; "Dengue con dengue".

More recently he performed in troubadour activities alongside Ida Laguardia and Antonio Rodríguez, as an accompanying guitarist, under the name of Los Idaidos.

An heir to the traditional troubadour tradition from Santiago, where singers or trovadores were born, he played the lyre for 80 years.

When he was born, the jam sessions and serenades were already famous in the Alameda, the Plaza de Marte, the Trocha, the Tivolí. He socialized with many of the classic troubadours and as a result was preparing a book – which as almost always happens, he never published – speaking about the life and deeds of Cuban music.

His home was full of drawers, records, photos and memories of musicians. He lived in the outskirts of the capital, in the Lawton neighborhood, where at the beginning of the twentieth century, the cows that brought milk to the city used to graze.

Walfrido was reluctant to offer all the information he kept jealously guarded, but as time went by, he released some treasures of Cuban music that I offer here.

When he died, very few people found out.

- Walfrido, since when have you been singing?

- Since I was a child, because my father was a tobacco worker, and back then tobacco factories were breeding grounds for singers. Instead of readers, workers used to sing to entertain themselves.

- And you, what did you learn?

- I didn't learn anything, I know a little bit of everything, an empirical troubadour.

- What was that troubadour world like?

- There was no radio - whoever sang the loudest whistled. People used to say, the singers have arrived, after 11 at night, they turned off the lights. Back then those little towns had their own electric plant. Santiago de Cuba was a city of joy and you know, from that climate the singers came out.

- And you, what did you live on?

- From my father's apprenticeships in the tobacco factory.

- But, did you always live in Santiago de Cuba?

- I lived for a time in Matanzas, from 1912 to 1922 and in Manzanillo around 1916.

- When did you compose for the first time?

- In Manzanillo in 1926 with a little septet of son for children, I wrote: Vitalio el manisero: "People, wake up / even if you don't have money / the old peanut vendor / is singing to you at the door / with the basket in his hand / and he doesn't know what to sing/".

- Where did you get your inspiration to compose?

- From bufo theater and they thought they were mine: "Hot roasted peanuts / for the old ladies who have no teeth".

- The first singer who sang a song of yours?

- Joseíto Fernández (Guajira Guantanamera), performed a little bolero of mine: Ten calma mujer, I was already in La Habana.

- When did you arrive in La Habana?

- In 1939, the danzón-mambo was at its peak and the Tropicana cabaret was just beginning.

- How did you survive in the capital?

- Remember that I had the trade of tobacco worker and whoever has a trade doesn't starve. In Oriente they scared me a lot about the city, saying there were many pickpockets and we went around frightened with our hands in our pockets.

- How did you manage to sneak into music in La Habana?

- On the radio they welcomed singers, I was present at the inauguration of Mil Diez. Ibrahím Urbino from RHC Cadena Azul heard me and sent for me. He found value in the boleros I sang with a strength different from what María Teresa Vera did. I also sang songs dedicated to World War II, with the orchestra of Julio Cuevas. Those songs made people cry who had family members in the war.

- What other performers sang your songs?

- Dominica Verges (Mexican-Cuban), Benny Moré recorded two songs of mine for me: Qué cinturita, a son montuno. He recorded it in Mexico, I don't know how that song got to his hands. I knew him before he left for Mexico in 1945, later I ran into him when he returned in 1951, he greets me effusively on the corner of San Joaquín and Monte and says to me: "People from the old guard". He was very natural, simple, nothing boastful, people of the people. Later with his huge band he recorded for me: No quiero matarte, lyrics by my brother Ofelio. Tito Gómez also sang several songs of mine, the list is long.

- The setting to music of poems by Nicolás Guillén is well known.

- Guillén used to say: "Caturla and many people have put music to my poems; but Walfrido Guevara, watch out!".

- How many duos have you done?

- Many: Guevara-Fulleda, with whom I sang the first song by Leopoldo Ulloa. The most well-known one I worked with was Barbarú in Santiago de Cuba, where we performed on the radio and it put me on the map of popularity. In La Habana the duo with Ida, my wife for more than 30 years. We met at the Peña de Sirique, on Infanta and Santa Rosa and we sang throughout the country.

- Let's talk about the personalities you knew.

- I was very close to Cheo Marquetti, for whom I prepared a band. He was the best improviser in Cuba, a great son singer, for the power of his performances, his style way ahead, his timbre. All of Cuba sang what he said: "Guajira, el son te llama/", which was later popularized by Puntillita, Manuel Licea in the Buena Vista Social Club.

- You knew Panchito Riset.

- Panchito sang for me: Nuestra realidad, as a matter of taste. In the swinging bolero he was the king.

- You knew Pablo Quevedo, the divo with the crystal voice.

- When he sang you couldn't hear a mosquito, total silence, soft voice, velvety, like a Lucho Gatica.

- What can you tell me about your youth?

- "My youth left without warning me / leaving me in silence with 80".-