Septeto Habanero, 100 years of son

January 4, 2021

Cuban culture registered a milestone when in the early days of 1920 a group of musicians conceived in a locale on Lealtad street, between Zanja and Dragones, today Centro Habana, the idea of forming a sextet to perform the danceable musical genre known as son.

Thus was born the Sexteto Habanero, in whose first photograph appear Guillermo Castillo (guitar and director), Carlos Godínez (tres), Gerardo Martínez (lead vocals and claves), Antonio Bacallao (botija), Oscar Sotolongo (bongó) and Felipe Nery Cabrera (maracas).

These six musical innovators of popular roots quickly conquered admiration, first from dancers in the capital, and after the irruption of radio in Cuba, in August 1922, their fame and acceptance extended throughout the country.

Such was the success of the group, that despite the racial and class prejudices of the time, the most important capital halls demanded their presence, for which in 1924 a change in image was necessary with the substitution of the botija for the double bass and the establishment of an elegant uniform attire for the entire collective, with which the Sexteto Habanero became the first son group to become professionalized and imposed this wardrobe tradition in Cuba.

Similarly, in 1925, the members of the Habanero won on May 23, 1925 with the work Tres lindas cubanas, by Guillermo Castillo, the National Son Competition, and that same year they were the first musicians in the world to record a work of this genre for RCA Víctor (La maldita timidez, by Carlos Valdés Brito).

They also appeared in one of the first sound films on the planet, El Puerto del Infierno, for which they traveled to Tampa, United States, in 1929, and were also pioneers in making a recording with a cornet, after becoming Septeto Habanero in 1927, upon incorporating trumpet player Enrique Hernández Urrutia, later replaced by Félix Chappottín.

Commercialized by RCA Víctor throughout the American continent and the rest of the world, phonographic recordings of the Habanero marked from the 1920s decade the beginning of the reign of son, to such an extent that the great composer Ernesto Lecuona wrote for this group works such as Se fue, Andar, andar and Por un beso de tu boca.

A la Loma de Belén, Cabo de la Guardia, Mujeres no se Duerman, Las Cuatro Palomas, Papá Montero and other songs that were the basis of the Sexteto's repertoire became popular in a day.

In such a way, the Habanero became a school of son musicians, and in different stages relevant musicians such as José Interián, Manolo Furé (directors), Abelardo Barroso, Panchito Riset, Arsenio Rodríguez, Agustín Gutiérrez, Cheo Marquetti, Laíto Sureda, Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros, Vicentico Valdés and José Artemio Castañeda (Maracaibo), among others,' explained to Cuba Internacional exclusively Jaime Gracián Hernández, current artistic director of the group.

Gracián highlighted that in these 100 years Germán Pedro Ibáñez deserves a separate reference, composer, singer, guitarist and arranger, who was its musical director for more than four decades (1964-2007).

We dedicated the album produced by the Colibrí label on the occasion of our centennial to him, which we have not been able to present due to COVID-19, he explained.

He also mentioned among Ibáñez's contributions the rescue in 1983 of the group's original format, which from the 1940s decade had become the Conjunto Típico Habanero.

The arrival of Pedrito Ibáñez marked a before and after, likewise, because he was the artist who maintained and revitalized the original repertoire, many of the songs that were initially made known in the early 1920s were not conceived with the trumpet, an instrument that in its beginnings the sextet did not have until 1927, he emphasized.

According to the interviewee, as arranger and director of the ensemble, Ibáñez rescued the repertoire from the original times, gave them mambos or interventions of the brass instrument between one chorus and another and increased it with works of his own authorship.

Thanks to this work, 100 years after its founding, the Septeto Habanero delights dancers with the contemporaneity and fidelity to the tradition of hits such as El orgullo de los soneros, Revive la ilusión, Eres mimosa, Desde el día en que te vi, La Casa de Chavaleta and Alerta a los bailadores among others, Gracián concluded.