Veterans still Havana good time

Love Nat King Cole? Then you will adore roguish Cuban crooner Ibrahim Ferrer. Fond of Duane Eddy? Ibrahim's guitarist Manuel Galban is your man. Shirley Bassey fans will fall for Havana's own flirty chanteuse, Omara Portuondo and, if the idea of Art Tatum meeting Chopin in a Havana brothel wets your whistle, then 79-year-old Cuban piano maestro Ruben Gonzlez will get you rocking.

They're all stars of Buena Vista Social Club the classic 1997 album that reintroduced authentic Cuban music to an eager world, earned a Grammy award and sold more than a million copies worldwide. The big star among this cast of Cuban veterans is 72-year-old Ibrahim Ferrer. Only three years ago he'd retired and was shining shoes at his ramshackle terraced house in Old Havana when American guitar guru and world music champion Ry Cooder coaxed him back into the studio.

Like all the grand old men of Cuban music, Ibrahim is an eccentric, cigar-chewing, rum-swilling ladies' man. But, like Frank Sinatra, Ibrahim's machismo disappears in front of a microphone. "When I sing bolero," he says, "my eyes gaze across the audience to find a beautiful woman. I have to fall in love each night to sing these lyrics." Ibrahim is not short on eccentricities. Everywhere he goes, he carries around an old carved stick because it reminds him of his mother. He claims to have been born at a dancehall ("I loved the music so much I leapt out of the womb right there!"). And he will not sing unless he is wearing one of his many berets. Ibrahim's band features guitarist Manuel Galban, a veteran of the 1960s Cuban doo-wop group Los Zaffiros, who in their heyday were mobbed by thousands of screaming Cuban schoolgirls. They lived fast and died young, succumbing to drink and drugs and burn-out by the late 1960s. Galban survived, though, and still plays in the same slinky, slide-guitar style, heavy with tremolo and laced with distortion. Ruben Gonzlez couldn't be more different to these boozy old men of Cuban song. A bumbling, lovable old genius (more Charlie Watts than Keith Richards), he's too busy playing the piano to notice just how famous he's become. Guesting with both acts in Glasgow will be Omara Portuondo, the flamboyant diva and a star of Havana's legendary Tropicana nightclub in its 1950s heyday. Since then her smoky tones have accompanied all the great Cuban bandleaders and jazz musicians in Havana's sleaziest clubs. "I love this music and I love these musicians," she says. So will you. Orquesta Ibrahim Ferrer & Ruben Gonzlez Y Su Grupo play Glasgow King's Theatre on Wednesday.

Copyright 1999
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