Eliades Ochoa, a “guajiro” who triumphs in Madrid

Havana Cuba. – Not only young musicians of great talent have left Cuba in recent years. Eliades Ochoa (Santiago de Cuba, 1946), one of the stars of the Buena Vista Social Club, has continued her career in Madrid, Spain, where she continues to develop her work, preparing various projects and coordinating her tours around the world .

Founder of the Buena Vista Social Club, Ochoa is one of the living legends of Cuban music. In 1978 he joined the Patria quartet and years later he joined the Buena Vista Social Club, in which he shared with other emblematic artists such as Compay Segundo, Omara Portuondo, Ibrahim Ferrer and Rubén González.

With the famous group, promoted by producer Ray Cooder and film director Wim Wenders after the recording of the documentary about its members, he went around the world and contributed to the rebirth of traditional Cuban music, largely forgotten by the media. Island officials.

The 77-year-old musician has had an apartment in the Madrid neighborhood of Quintana for more than 15 years. The musician, who went back and forth from Madrid to Havana on a round trip, has for some time almost definitely opted for Spain.

In Madrid he greets everyone who recognizes him and chats affectionately with the Cubans who approach him, he told CubaNet a young artist from the Island who is studying a master’s degree in the Spanish capital. The Cuban maintains his typical hat and his “guajiro-troubadour” image from head to toe.

Ochoa has experienced several milestones in his career. In 2015 he performed at the White House with the Buena Vista Social Club at a concert attended by then-President Barack Obama along with other senior Democratic Party officials. About that experience he jokingly told the Spanish newspaper ABC: “Obama is the one who had to feel proud that we Cuban artists went to visit him. The truth is that I felt good. I was very grateful to the president for receiving us with so much affection. He told me that, 15 years ago, he had bought the album Buena Vista Social Club”.

Interpreter of famous songs such as Tula’s room y Paint your lips, MariaOchoa has been presenting her new album since last year Guajiro. In the material he has a group of high-profile guests among them the Panamanian Rubén Blades and the Americans Joan Wasser and Charlie Musselwhite. “For me, Guajiro If it’s not my best album, it’s one of the best. You will hear it live,” he said. Chicago Sun Times.

The artist has toured the United States and Europe to present his new album. But he has not included Cuba, at least so far, to show the album. In the US he has performed in cities such as Chicago, St. Louis and Miami.

Ochoa’s music is barely heard in Cuba, like that of his Buena Vista colleagues or other musicians who cultivate traditional Cuban rhythms. In that sense, his statements to the Spanish newspaper can be understood. The reason: “I see the Cuban Government in its politics, but it seems that it ignores culture. And that’s how things go bad and people forget.”