It is said Esther Borja and song is broadcast

December 5, 2019

She had the exact prudence to know how to move in step with the times. She never succumbed to easy praise, did not cultivate envy and much less believed herself immaculate. But so formidable and fragrant is her charm that one says Esther Borja and song radiates, Cuba, enchanting damsel or "the mistress of the afternoon," as my admired Fina García-Marruz would emphasize.

Lecuona, dazzled by the possibilities of a voice that, if properly directed, could conquer the lyrical firmament of those years, prolific in valuable feminine timbres, composed for her in 1935 "Enchanting Damsel." Although she would traverse the most disparate themes of the national songbook, accumulating more than half a century of career, Esther could not rid herself of what remains her most renowned interpretation.

In the middle of the 1980s, when she understood that her voice was no longer the same, she abandoned the stage, while offering a lesson in intelligence. Perhaps for this reason her melody returns to the ear without lacerations or bombast: impeccable.

Many tend to praise her artistic dignity. I, who only managed to see television recordings of her recitals and the occasional broadcast of her program "Album of Cuba," prefer to remember the elderly woman with a kind smile and incisive eyes who was introduced to me one Saturday of the Book in July 1999 at the Palacio del Segundo Cabo. Shortly after, still in secondary school, I won a literature contest and at the awards ceremony I was surprised when she handed me the diploma.

She kissed my cheek and placed her hand on my head, while her eyes hypnotized me. Then I knew that we lived very close and that, like a sort of neighborhood trophy, at the Education Office of Playa they had asked her to do something that had nothing to do with her, and that due to her spiritual greatness she was incapable of refusing.

Time passed and from time to time we conversed at her house. She had the magic of making me a participant in her performances in remote times as if I had lived them. Unfortunately, I don't have even one photo from those unforgettable moments. Then came a very long and all too unjust agony that kept her captive in a bed until three weeks after turning 100 years old.

But still, if I close my eyes, I can see myself sitting on the porch of 98th Street while she hums a song and tenderly prunes the rose bushes in the small garden, until forming a bouquet of flowers that she will place in the blue-green vase in the living room. And I see myself kneeling next to a bench in the patio in front of the Villena room at Uneac, year 2005 or 2006.

There is space for only three, but she is in the center and at her side two eternal friends: Cuca Rivero and Luis Carbonell. I speak with both of them, I don't remember about what; Luis autographs a photo of his that he brings me as a gift, as it appears with someone demonized in Cuba but still beloved by me. And in that instant a photographer crouched in a corner, whom I later realize from seeing his vest is my friend Liborio Noval, presses the shutter of his camera repeatedly.

For years I promised that affable monarch of the lens that I would go to his studio to get the photos, which according to him were moving, due to the spontaneity of the scene and the expression of the young man flanked by three legends of this country. I never did and I regret it infinitely. None of the protagonists are alive anymore, but I am captive to their resonances. And your smiling image and the enchantment of your gaze still accompany me, enchanting damsel that on this December 5th you would be celebrating your birthday!