The Sound of Cuban Guajiros

A Conversation with Barbarito Torres

This past October, Barbarito Torres and Pío Leyva accompanied Los Van Van in a performance at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. Clave found them backstage, accompanied by Barbarito’s group, for this multiple interview. Wise-cracking Barbarito and his sister Sonia, clearly having a good time, were warm and enthusiastic, answering our questions in rapid-fire Cuban Spanish. Pío, their “favorite child,” spoke only slightly slower.


Barbarito: I’ll start with the story of my playing the lute. Sonia can tell you the story of the group, as she’s the one who put it together.

I started playing lute when I was 10, playing country music. There was a country atmosphere at our home in Matanzas. My father was a guajiro de ceiba mocha, a poet and lute player. He was really bad, I’m sorry to say, but he played the lute. A week after I started playing I played better than him. He never took it up again. He dedicated himself to changing the strings for me, and to making my picks. So I started playing with my sister, who is a little older. From the age of 7 she did authentic traditional music, décimas [verses in ten-line stanzas], in Matanzas, on Radio 26. I grew up with that: punto, controversias, tonadas, guajiras. But there was also a hidden sonero in me. The lute is for country music. I kind of took it out of that cubbyhole. I started to play some son with the lute, in trios and quartets, and to play more contemporary music. I had the chance to meet musicians who were at a higher level, who showed me modern harmonies; for example, José Luis Cortéz, called El Tosco in Cuba, who is the director of a famous band in Cuba, NG La Banda. I was with him a long time in the Army band, and he taught me music that was more modern. I do the traditional son, updated, with a more modern harmony, younger—like all of us here, like Pío.
As to the lute, it’s an Arabic instrument, which undergoes a metamorphosis when it is taken to Spain by the Moors; and again when it is taken to Cuba from the Canary Islands. We blame the Canary Islanders. That’s what I play, the lute with a short neck, similar to the Puerto Rican cuatro, not in its tuning but in the similarity of the sound. The tuning is by fourths: D, A, E, B, F#, C#. Nothing like the cuatro, but the timbre is quite similar.

Sonia: The format of the group is basically country, which is strings: the lute—the lead, the 12-string lute, which is played only in Cuba—the tres, the guitar, the percussion, and bass. And to play sones that are more up-tempo, closer to an urban sound, we add a trumpet, like in a septet. Barbarito always wanted to do it with the lute as lead, and to play all of Cuban music with that kind of ensemble. It’s the only group like it.
Barbarito: Let me make this clear: un grupo guajiro, con guajiros.

Sonia: Our players are all stars at what they do. Barbarito is more well-known professionally, on the lute, but the others are also stars with their instruments and their voices: Villa, an excellent bass player and singer, from Pinar del Río…

Barbarito: The land of tobacco.

Sonia: Niso, a montunero with a great voice from Oriente, with a slight Mexican sound , from the very Eastern point. Tati, as young as he is, a great tres player—I tell everyone, watch out for him.

Barbarito: At the age of 27, he’s second to none in Cuba on the tres.

Sonia: Pancho Amat, our greatest tres player, speaks very highly of his playing. And, they do choruses, duets, trios. Pedrito, from Pinar del Río, has a unique style, playing bongos at the same time as the tumba and the cowbell. He fills in as if there were several people playing.
Barbarito: He’s an atypical bongo player. All bongo players are braggarts and liars, but he’s a quiet kind of guy. He should have been a doctor. Nothing to do with percussion.

Clave: How was the group formed?

Sonia: Barbarito had been traveling a lot, working a long time with Celina González, the queen of country music, and directing the group. Later he decided to go on his own. Because he is among the all-stars in Cuba, he was called upon a lot for recordings and to play, but he always wanted to have his own group for his own music. I knew that.
Once he was traveling with his sister Conchita, in Spain. They were playing medieval music in a medieval fair, with the medieval lute, and also playing Cuban music with some young people from from the Higher Institute of Art of Cuba, and from Spain, doing experimental music. I had told him, when you come back, I’ll have the group put together. I started looking around, which was easy for me, given my line of work, and found them playing at the Plaza de la Catedral, at El Patio restaurant, where there is a lot of live music. First I heard the two brothers, the two chinos, and I said, these two. And later I met Pedrito and Villa. I told them what I had in mind. Barbarito was well known, and they said, sure. And Buena Vista Social Club had just received the Grammy, which was very good for him.
Barbarito: Later on I stole a son from his father!
Sonia: The group didn’t have a trumpet before, except occasionally on the record Havana Café, where we had a number of guests. One of them was Guajiro Mirabal, The Trumpet of Cuba. But he has a lot of commitments, a lot of international work. We wanted a trumpet player with a Cuban sound, with bomba, with heart, who could improvise. But we knew Robin from when he was a child, the son of a friend of Barbarito’s, who had played with him in Celina’s group.

Barbarito: And who is living in Los Angeles now.

Sonia: And, well, Robin was working with his father, and he decided suddenly to come with us.

Barbarito: Just like his father.

Sonia: He’s an excellent musician and an excellent young man too. Also, Conchita over here is an specialist in country music. Her voice has the right timbre for it. She knows the songs to the letter, she is guarachera, sonera, she has clave and rhythm. Sometimes you find in country music someone who is great at punto and tonadas, but who can’t do son because she lacks clave. But Conchita brings together all the qualities. She is known in Cuba as one of the great voices in campesino music.

Barbarito: The best thing that has happened to me, after the Grammy, is to have met these folks, who are excellent musicians, and as people are like my brothers and sisters, like my children—well, not my children, because I’m not that old—my brothers and sisters; and to have worked with the personalities who were on that record, like Guajiro Mirabal, Omara Portuondo, Frank Emilio [Flynn], Richard Egües, Ibrahim Ferrer, and one whom I’ve left for last so that he will say something, my idol from my youth, our favorite child, Don Pío Leyva. He can be a brat, but he’s a good guy.