Ibrahim Ferrer

1927 – 2005

“I’m living the dream of my youth in the body of an old man,” said Ibrahim Ferrer as he toured the world in his last years. Buena Vista was the beginning of heart-warming second career for Ibrahim, aged nearly 70 at the time of recording. 

Ibrahim Ferrer was born in 1927, in San Luis, near Santiago in eastern Cuba, the heartland of son – Cuba’s danceable blend of African and Spanish music. Appropriately, his mother went into labour at a social club dance, and Ibrahim liked to say that he heard the rhythm of son in the womb.  He grew up in Los Hoyos (a barrio of Santiago de Cuba), which was a focal point for the rumba and the conga, and where music was an integral part of daily life. 

He started his first group Los Jóvenes del Son to play neighbourhood parties in 1941. At their first performance he earned one peso fifty – “and I felt like a millionaire!” he said.  Ibrahim also worked as a carpenter and a docker, but with Santiago bursting with music he was soon singing regularly with bands in the region.

In 1957 he moved to Havana, where he worked with the legendary Orquesta Ritmo Oriental and the great Beny Moré before joining Los Bocucos, named after a drum used in Santiago carnivals. Ibrahim felt that his ability as a thrilling rhythmic improviser in up-tempo styles thwarted his ambitions to sing boleros, the slower, more romantic and intimate ballads he loved. Ferrer remained with Los Bocucos, out of the limelight, until his retirement in 1991. On leaving the music business he supplemented his meagre pension by selling lottery tickets and shining shoes.

Then one afternoon in 1996 at the Buena Vista sessions, Ry Cooder asked if there was a softer voice that could be found for a bolero. Juan de Marcos González immediately thought of Ibrahim and came to his house. “At first, I wasn’t interested,” said Ferrer. “I felt disappointed by my life in music. But he went on until I agreed to record a number with him. I told him I could not go anywhere without getting ready. He said, ‘No, no, they are doing the recording now!’ So, I left the shoes I was shining, and went with him to the EGREM Studios. I still can’t believe that I went there to record one number, and I ended up singing almost all of them. And I had been chosen as a bolero singer!’

Ferrer sings on 11 out of the 14 tracks on Buena Vista, as well as appearing  on Juan de Marcos González’s Afro-Cuban All Stars album. He returned to the EGREM studios to record his debut album, Buena Vista Social Club Presents Ibrahim Ferrer, also produced by Ry Cooder and featuring most of the Buena Vista musicians, plus an orchestra. The sessions are a highlight of Wim Wender’s Buena Vista film.

This truly put Ferrer onto the international stage and for the next seven years he toured worldwide. He recorded a duet with Damon Albarn for the ‘Gorillaz’ album, and joined Orchestra Baobab in their reworking of ‘Utras Horas’, newly titled ‘Hommage a Tonton Ferrer’. His newfound fame lead Ibrahim to meet film-stars, rock stars and even Cuban leader Fidel Castro – “The day he shook my hand was one of the most important of my life.”

Ibrahim Ferrer’s second solo album Buenos Hermanos (2003), was again produced by Ry Cooder and won a Grammy. It featured international guests including Tex-Mex accordionist Flaco Jiménez and the Blind Boys of Alabama and was remixed and reissued with four extra tracks in 2020.

Ferrer’s final album Mi Sueño (My Dream) was largely recorded in 2004, again at EGREM. The album fulfilled a long-held dream of Ibrahim’s  to do a whole album of boleros and he followed the release with  a Mi Sueño tour in Europe in the summer of 2005. He went into hospital soon after returning home and died peacefully aged 78.

The album was released postumously in 2007. With a small group led by Roberto Fonseca on piano, with Manuel Galbán on guitar and Cachaíto López on bass, the intimate sessions are an introspective final testament. His sudden rise to fame gave him a youthful vigour and a zest for life that saw him touring, recording and winning hearts worldwide.