Guillermo Portabales
Biography
1911-1970
If the nostalgic opening title track on World Circuit’s Guillermo Portabales compilation El Carretero (The Cart Driver) is familiar, it’s probably because it was memorably sung by Eliades Ochoa on the original Buena Vista Social Club recording in 1997. While Ochoa was joined by Ry Cooder and several fine backing musicians, guajira singer Portabales had just a tres guitar and bass on this earlier World Circuit excursion into Cuban Music in 1996.
There are several distinct strands in Cuban popular music. Cuban son is a dance music with lyrics that capture the spirit of urban life; the bolero is the great Cuban love song and rumba, with its complex drum patterns, comes out of Afrocuban religious cults. The guajira, however, portrays life in the country. It is more European in sound with its lyrics rooted in the fields, where indeed cart drivers used to connect one village to another, spreading news and gossip and the latest musical tastes.
Portabales was born in 1911, in the country outside Cienfuegos, a town near the coast, between Havana and the island’s musical capital, Santiago de Cuba. His father died when Guillermo was very young and he moved to Cienfuegos with his mother. Guillermo began singing on the radio at 17, in restaurants and clubs in the town, offering a wide repertoire of bolero, son and even tango, but he was singled out for his guajira songs that expressed a nostalgia for life on horseback amongst sugar canes, fruit trees and the forests of palm.
A beautiful melancholy pervades his voice and this fits well with the words of the guajiras that he composed and sung. ‘El Carretero’ is a magnificent portrait of the tough life of the cart driver in which relief comes from the land, from the fruit that falls off the trees, from the beautiful guajira women and, above all, from the friends and family who get together to sing. ‘Lamento cubano’ is a love song to a lost land, and the closing ‘Flor de Amor’, a love song to a country boy which became the title track on Omara Portuondo’s final Buena Vista album Flor de Amor in 2004.
Portables created his own version of the guajira, slowing down the rhythm and accentuating the melody, adding lyrics that reflected the world that guajiro poets described in their punto verses. Portabales’ style, which became known as guajira de salon, appealed to people all over Latin America and even West Africa. But he also belonged to the world of son and bolero as well as guajira improvisation. In 1940, he played with the legendary Trio Matamoros and this collection includes ‘Voy a Santiago a morirme ‘ (I am going to Santiago to die), a moving tribute to Miguel Matamoros.
Portabales travelled and worked in several Latin American countries and settled in Puerto Rico in 1953. He was killed by a car, aged 59, as he was leaving a restaurant where he’d been playing. El Carretero is a fine memorial of his rustic talent which has inspired so many great performers like Eliades Ochoa and Omara Portuondo. A remastered version on vinyl was released in 2019.
BIOGRAPHY
1911-1970
If the nostalgic opening title track on World Circuit’s Guillermo Portabales compilation El Carretero (The Cart Driver) is familiar, it’s probably because it was memorably sung by Eliades Ochoa on the original Buena Vista Social Club recording in 1997. While Ochoa was joined by Ry Cooder and several fine backing musicians, guajira singer Portabales had just a tres guitar and bass on this earlier World Circuit excursion into Cuban Music in 1996.
There are several distinct strands in Cuban popular music. Cuban son is a dance music with lyrics that capture the spirit of urban life; the bolero is the great Cuban love song and rumba, with its complex drum patterns, comes out of Afrocuban religious cults. The guajira, however, portrays life in the country. It is more European in sound with its lyrics rooted in the fields, where indeed cart drivers used to connect one village to another, spreading news and gossip and the latest musical tastes.
Portabales was born in 1911, in the country outside Cienfuegos, a town near the coast, between Havana and the island’s musical capital, Santiago de Cuba. His father died when Guillermo was very young and he moved to Cienfuegos with his mother. Guillermo began singing on the radio at 17, in restaurants and clubs in the town, offering a wide repertoire of bolero, son and even tango, but he was singled out for his guajira songs that expressed a nostalgia for life on horseback amongst sugar canes, fruit trees and the forests of palm.
A beautiful melancholy pervades his voice and this fits well with the words of the guajiras that he composed and sung. ‘El Carretero’ is a magnificent portrait of the tough life of the cart driver in which relief comes from the land, from the fruit that falls off the trees, from the beautiful guajira women and, above all, from the friends and family who get together to sing. ‘Lamento cubano’ is a love song to a lost land, and the closing ‘Flor de Amor’, a love song to a country boy which became the title track on Omara Portuondo’s final Buena Vista album Flor de Amor in 2004.
Portables created his own version of the guajira, slowing down the rhythm and accentuating the melody, adding lyrics that reflected the world that guajiro poets described in their punto verses. Portabales’ style, which became known as guajira de salon, appealed to people all over Latin America and even West Africa. But he also belonged to the world of son and bolero as well as guajira improvisation. In 1940, he played with the legendary Trio Matamoros and this collection includes ‘Voy a Santiago a morirme ‘ (I am going to Santiago to die), a moving tribute to Miguel Matamoros.
Portabales travelled and worked in several Latin American countries and settled in Puerto Rico in 1953. He was killed by a car, aged 59, as he was leaving a restaurant where he’d been playing. El Carretero is a fine memorial of his rustic talent which has inspired so many great performers like Eliades Ochoa and Omara Portuondo. A remastered version on vinyl was released in 2019.
RELEASES
