'Yo vengo aquí' by Compay Segundo Will Be Released on Vinyl

April 19, 2023

'Yo vengo aquí', Compay Segundo's first work with international distribution, will be published for the first time as a vinyl record next June 9th in an edition that will include extra tracks.

According to an announcement by Warner Music, this is the first in a series of releases centered on the figure of the celebrated and revered Cuban musician that will see the light 'in the coming months'.

Published for the first time in 1996, when the artist was already 88 years old, it was his first album under Gasa (Grabaciones Accidentales) and included classics from his repertoire and Cuban son such as 'Chan Chan', 'Sarandonga', 'Macusa' or the song that gives it its title.

Upon its return to the market, 'Yo vengo aquí' will contain a booklet with text by Santiago Auserón in Spanish and English that was already in the original edition and a CD with four new tracks: 'Quién te bautizó (Vicenta)', 'Se secó el arroyito', 'Clarabella' and 'Mi calderito'.

Máximo Francisco Repilado Muñoz (1907-2003), better known as Compay Segundo, was a musician, composer and singer with a tenor voice who began his artistic career very young in the 1930s in his native province Santiago de Cuba.

After going through the Matamoros group, Benny Moré's orchestra and the duo Los Compadres, he remained in obscurity until 1989 when his career began to flourish again with his participation in a Festival at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington and after meeting the aforementioned Santiago Auserón, who orchestrated his visits to Spain in 1994 and 1995.

His definitive leap to international fame came when he was over 80 years old, when in 1997 he participated in the musical project Buena Vista Social Club, driven by American guitarist Ry Cooder, which managed to bring together a group of legends of traditional Cuban music, many of them forgotten, to record an album.

The guitar was the instrument that accompanied him until the end of his long musical career, although the clarinet, bongos and tumbadora were not unfamiliar instruments to him, although he will also be remembered for inventing the 'armónico': a hybrid of seven strings between the Spanish guitar, the Cuban tres and the lute.