La Sonora Cubana, Cuban band is set to revitalize the soul of the Cuban music by featuring great figures such as Mazacote and Maria Ochoa. La Sonora Cubana performs the Cuban Son in a "forward" (pa'lante) style. It's the elegance and the energy of the afro-cuban rhythms : guajira, habanera, bolero, guajira, son montuno, mambo. that explode in rivers of notes and improvisations. A gozar!
MAZACOTE
La Habana
This voice is a pillar in Cuban music! Born in 1927 in Guanabacoa. Ignacio Carrillo “Mazacote” has been entertaining son-lovers since 1946 and has formed part of the most important groups during the Golden Era of the casinos and nightclubs in Havana such as the Conjunto Supremo de Berto Ramos, Conjunto Bolero de Felix Chappottín and La Charanga de Neno González.
Mazacote retired from performing in 1988, resurfacing again in 2001 with the CD “De Profesión. Sonero”, for the Envidia label, earning a well deserved prize in the “Cubadisco” awards ceremony celebrated in Havana that same year. “El Figurón”is his latest recording and it includes a repertoire of some of his original compositions, in addition to several Cuban standards.
In the last few years, Mazacote shared the scene with Ibrahim Ferrer and the Afro-Cuban All-Stars directed by Juan De Marcos. Next summer, he is going to be on Tour across Europe with La Sonora Cubana. An occasion to hear the mystical flavor of the inimitable voice of the Maestro Sonero Ignacio “Mazacote” Carrillo.
MARIA OCHOA .
Santiago de Cuba.
Maria Ochoa was born on Sept 23, 1944 in Gran Piedra (Alto Songo, Santiago de Cuba), the daugther of the artistic marriage of Aristonico and Jacobina, both singers and treseros of these intricate mountains who transmitted a profound love of Cuban music to their six children.
Maria's childhood memories are characterized with improvisation, singing and demonstration and inclination for art along with her brothers.
In 1968 she became part of the radio program « Trinchera Agraria » which was directed toward the peasants (farmers) since the program's inception in 1963. She has enjoyed participation in the different festivales del Son, Festivales de la Trova « Pepe sanchez », festivales dela Musica Campesina, festivales de la Cultura Caribena. these appearances has allowed her to become a recognized artist to the general public, especialy in the Easternn part of the island (Santiago and guantanamo).
In 1993 she began o work in the famed performance hall, Casa de la Trova, in Santiago as a faithful exponent of the peasant genre while promoting a representative repertoire of the people who work the land.
On the 9th of September of that year, she formed her own 6 member ensemble in order to demonstrate the possibilities of this particular type of art form.
Their incursion into the traditional music, although themselves identified with the genre of guajira developed this hotness domain freely and with the cheerfulness of the a party whose cuartetas (quartets) and decimas (metric combinaison of 10 octosyllabic verses) reflected the lives of the Cuban peasant.
In 1993 maria ochoa was invited by her brother, Eliades Ochoa and the Cuarteto Patria to participate in a musical tour to Venezuela and again in 1998 to Barranquilla, Colombia where they added the outstanding artitsts of the renowned Buena Vista, Omara Portuondo.
She gives a dedication to this musical craft by offering the personal tone of her voice to represent the most indigenous repertoire of campesina music.
