On the centenary of Rubén González, indestructible man

May 24, 2019

Rubén González was a wise and delicate man; he did not boast of his great musical virtues; he placed the notes in their place, and the soul in each chord.

He was a wise and delicate man; he did not boast of his great musical virtues; he placed the notes in their place, and the soul in each chord. Thus I remember Rubén González on the centenary of his birth in Encrucijada, north of the current province of Villa Clara, on May 26, 1919.

For the world he became famous after joining the initial roster of Buena Vista Social Club in 1996, signed by Juan de Marcos González and American Ry Cooder. In the breakout album, recorded in just six days at the Areíto Studios of Egrem, on San Miguel Street, the piano played a decisive role, especially in the pair of danzones included, Pueblo Nuevo and Buena Vista Social Club, by Israel Cachao López. After hearing Rubén in that session, Nick Gold, manager of the British World Circuit label, in charge of the project, decided to title the album and orchestra with the name of Cachao's piece, thereby establishing one of the most prominent identifying marks in the contemporary history of Cuban music.

Around those same days, Rubén, who also participated in the singular group Afro Cuban All Stars and their album A toda Cuba le gusta, recorded an album with its own personality, a jewel that would generate much discussion inside and outside the island: Introducing… Rubén González, released on an international scale on September 16, 1997.

In 2000, still with World Circuit, he would go further with the release of the album Chanchullo, musically conducted by Jesús Aguaje Ramos, and where the maestro confirms his reign over a vast spectrum of traditional Cuban popular music, accompanied by an orchestra where the brass and percussion allow the piano to occupy its hierarchy. Curious fact: Senegalese Cheikh Lo joins Ibrahim Ferrer to sing Choco's Guajira, by Alfredo Chocolate Armenteros, amid the highlights of trumpeter Manuel Guajiro Mirabal and tres player Papi Oviedo.

Rubén would live three more years. He enjoyed concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York, the premiere of the film Buena Vista Social Club, by German Win Wenders, performances at festivals and halls in Europe and Mexico, and just as much, if not more, contact with the new generations of musicians from the Island who came to him seeking advice and experience.

He knew what he was dealing with. To the poet and music lover Sigfredo Ariel he confessed: «There is in Cuban music a style of syncopation, of off-beat, and there are phrases that people do not conceive. They are not even. The secret is in the Cuban clave, a style of syncopation; you have to stay on top of the Cuban clave. The Americans who have come to my house go crazy trying to understand, trying to figure out how it is. To play son and danzón you have to spend a while in Cuba. A long while. Like the one I have lived here…».

And indeed he lived it. The Rubén before Buena Vista is just as important and essential as the one who came after. He is the pianist who learned in the modest Cienfuegos academy and cutting his teeth in the Havana dance academies, and rose beside the immense Arsenio Rodríguez in his ensemble until settling, after many adventures throughout the world, with the orchestra of Enrique Jorrín.

In those turns one must pause at his contributions to the six albums of that admirable ensemble that Egrem brought together in 1979 and 1981 under the name Estrellas de Areíto –nothing to envy from Buenavista Social Club, only that it was not the right moment to relaunch the best of Cuban music to the world nor was the domestic cultural industry prepared for it– and, in a very special way, in a 1975 recording made in the same location, which circulated in digital format in 1997, Indestructible, named after the homonymous work by the young Chucho Valdés.

Produced by the tireless author Luis Yáñez and with the complicity of bassist Fabián García Caturla, and percussionists Gustavo Tamayo, Roberto García, and Guillermito García, Rubén played unhurriedly, with sobriety, good taste, apart from showy virtuosity, essential as only he could be. A Rubén who never goes out of style when recreating ineffable boleros like Nuestra canción, by Portillo de la Luz, and Mil congojas, by Juan Pablo Miranda, or when parading his stature as a sonero in the tumbaos of Fabiando.

I imagine him, at the end of the century since he came into the world in Cuba, parading his majesty embraced by Bebo Valdés and Frank Emilio, in the most joyful trinity of a pianistic style for all time.