Tatá Güines

Tatá Güines, like many musical veterans who started playing professionally in the 1940s and 50s, a golden age for Cuban music, he found international fame in the 1990s at the end of the cold war, when some Cubans were allowed to travel. Most recent of his long career trajectory, Güines had played on “Lágrimas Negras” the 2003 flamenco-Cuban disc that saw émigré Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés and Spanish vocalist El Cigala win two Latin and five Spanish Grammies. Güines and Valdés' musical friendship dated back to the 1950s, when in a group with bassist Israel "Cachao" López they recorded what became Cachao's “Descargas” and Valdés' “Sabor de Cuba” albums. Although Güines was known as "el rey de los tambores" (king of the drums) a title that referenced his following of the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion, which speaks to its Orisha deities through drums, he began by playing the bongos. He loved to tell how he made his first pair out of empty chorizo sausage and condensed milk tins. Born Federico Aristides Soto Alejo into a musical family in Güines, east Havana, he began playing bongos and acoustic bass with the Ases del Ritmo in 1943, then with his uncle Dionisio Martinez's dance band and the family Orquesta Estrellas Nacientes. Like most Cuban musicians of his generation, he was self-taught, learning the congas by watching older players. With Chano Pozo as his inspiration, he was determined to create his own style of conga playing, teaching himself by night while working as a shoemaker by day. Güines forged a distinctive style by using his nails as well as every part of his hands. Moving to Havana in 1948, to the Las Yaguas neighbourhood (where he had a six-foot- square room and shared a toilet with 30 others) he did not find full-time employment until 1952, with Fajardo y Su Estrellas, playing in the meantime with bands led by Bebo Valdés, Arsenio Rodriguez and Guillermo Portabales. After touring Venezuela with Fajardo in 1956, he went to New York to try his luck a year later. At Birdland, he met Dizzy Gillespie, Maynard Ferguson and Miles Davis, and mesmerized audiences at the Waldorf Astoria in virtuoso solo performances, playing five congas and singing. He also played percussion on recordings by Josephine Baker and Frank Sinatra. But Güines supported the rebels back home in their struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista. Following the 1959 revolution, when a tide of people left the island, he moved the other way, back to Cuba, later citing US racism as a factor.

Joining Frank Emilio Flynn's Grupo Cubano de Música Moderna, Güines established himself as the percussionist of choice for different kinds of music. Over time, he worked with the National Symphony Orchestra, Cuba's leading singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez, and pianist José Maria Vitier among others. Güines was known for his own compositions, including Perico, No Llores Mas, No Metas La Mano en la Candela, Mami Dame el Mantecada. Venerated by Cuban musicians, he won many awards including the Alejo Carpentier medal (2001), the Order of Felix Varela (2004) and the coveted National Prize for Music (2006). A mentor for the next generation, he taught the young Miguel "Angá" Diaz, who became percussionist for the Buena Vista Social Club recordings. He was part of the 1979 Estrellas de Areyto recordings when the Cuban state company Egrem brought 30 top performers together in landmark sessions. Güines might well have become part of the celebrated Buena Vista collective, had he not been away from Cuba at the time. Instead, in the 1990s, he joined Jesús Alemañy's Cubanismo and, in 2001, he was delighted to play solo on the Cuban music industry's own "musical firebomb" project, “La Rumba Soy Yo” led by Cuban producer Cary Diez, which broke the US blockade to win a Latin Grammy for best folk album. To shake Güines's "golden hands" was to touch hands sculpted by a life-time of play. In an April 2007 interview with Cuban magazine Bohemia, he enthused about teaching children, wanting to provide them with the teacher he had never had himself. Such work left him with "the desire, enthusiasm and strength to keep going forward myself". Lamenting the way new music was pushing older forms off the airwaves, he remarked: "You must always take your own music into account, your own flag, as well as whatever else comes along. You must have principles and respect everything that smells of Cuba." Tatá Güines, the last of Cuba's old-time conguero percussionists, a legend on and off the island, died on February 4, 2008, aged 77.