Ethiel Failde and his orchestra prepare a new album in which they continue betting on the danzón

April 22, 2021

An album titled Unpublished Gems where musical scores without phonographic registration appear, is being prepared today by the Cuban orchestra Miguel Failde, nominated for the Latin Grammys 2020 in Best Traditional Tropical Album for 'Failde con Tumbao' from the Egrem label.

The group bears the name of who is recognized as the creator of the danzón, the national dance of Cuba, born in 1852 in this western city where he died in 1921, and founded nine years ago on April 14 by his great-great-grandson Ethiel Fernández Failde.

Musicologist from Matanzas María Victoria Oliver asserted here that La Failde, as it is popularly known, 'marks a milestone in the development of the danzón and the recontextualization of this genre of Cuban dance music in these moments of the country's history'.

'The danzón has had moments of greater relevance, others in which it has been seen in need of merging with rhythms such as the danzonete and the mambo, but Ethiel assumes professionally by taking works, even unpublished ones, to bring them to national and world stages,' she pointed out.

Oliver considered Unpublished Gems as a relevant fact in respecting the structure and previous instrumentation in the sound of a musical collective of the twenty-first century, 'which demonstrates serious and rigorous work'.

'Ethiel and his orchestra generate compositions with the presence of important figures from the island to update the genre, with musicological and historiographic criteria,' she expressed.

The specialist cited pieces where various rhythms are fused with Omara Portuondo, the diva of the Buena Vista Social Club, or with pianist Alejandro Falcón and jazz, which constitute renovations of the emblematic national beat.

The transcendence of the young Orchestra, in the opinion of communicator María Elena Bayón, makes it worthwhile to celebrate the ninth anniversary of its first presentation before the Matanzas public, by exceeding the country's borders to extend to Mexico, France and the United States, among other nations.

'To our pride it constitutes one of the main exponents of that genuine Cuban music that breaks borders and enters the hearts of peoples,' she emphasized.