Livid Legends: A Conversation with Richard Egües


by Carlos Gimenez

Richard Egües was for three decades the flute player for the famous Cuban charanga Orquesta Aragón, helping the group acieve world-wide popularity. Still an active and versatile musician, he resides in Havana, where Clave reached him by telephone, thanks to Latin World Productions, in New York.

Clave: Can you give us a short history of your beginnings as a musician and of how you joined the Orquesta Aragón?

I was born in the province of Las Villas, or the province that covered what today are Sancti-Espíritu and Cienfuegos, in a town called Cruces. But when I was 8 months old I was taken to Sancti-Espíritu, where I went to school for a while, alternating between Sancti-Espíritu and Santa Clara--my family was in Santa Clara--until I moved to Manicaragua with my father, who was director of the municipal band there. I started playing the cymbals-how about that?-directed by my father, and also learning clarinet and piano. Once I became the clarinet player in the band, I also played saxophone. Later I went to Manicaragua, where my father founded an orchestra around 1940 or 1941, that we called Monterey.

Well, I married there, and in 1943 I returned to Santa Clara with the idea of coming to Havana. What I wanted was to keep playing with different orchestras and in cabarets. Well, at first I played the piano. There was one cabaret where I played the sax. With the sax you learn to play different styles of Cuban music. I also played with a group that did not have a violin, and I played the violin parts with the sax, until I had the chance later to play in a small-time cabaret, and there I played the piano without a break. But the flute player did get breaks, and so I got it into my head to study flute, because there was an opening in the municipal band of Santa Clara, and I filled it as a flutist. I had just started to play flute, but I studied a lot.

Clave: What year was that?

Around '46, '47, '48. It was then that I met the Orquesta Aragón, and I started filling in for Loyola, who was the founder and flute player of the orchestra. Once when they asked me to stay with the orchestra I turned it down for ethical reasons, and so they got another flute player, Rolando. He played well, but Rolando left in 1954 with the Orquesta América, and, as they say, left the Aragón high and dry. He came and went. So the Aragón didn't have a flute player, and they asked me to play, because I had filled in both for Loyola and for Rolando Lozano, and they knew me. I didn't want to do it, having in mind, as I told you, other plans. I thought that Rolando could be coming back to take his place, but the orchestra wouldn't have it. They wanted me, and I had no
alternative but to stay with the Aragón. I was there for all of 31 years.

Clave: Until what year were you with them?

Well, until 1984, more precisely until November. This November it will be 15 years that I left the orchestra. After I left I had my own orchestra, a very good one, but for health reasons I had to leave it. I had a number of operations on my kidneys. Eventually I lost a kidney, in that it doesn't work. It's been that way until now, and I still work a lot in music. I've written a lot, and the main part of the arrangements of the Aragón were mine, as is well known, aside from a number of my own works that we developed subsequently in my orchestra, and with other orchestras. The latest thing I've done is this record called Richard Egües and Friends. It was a very fruitful era, both for the Orquesta Aragón and for me.

Clave: I wanted to ask you about the development of the flute itself as a solo instrument.

As it developed, I had to abandon--no, not abandon, I never abandoned it--I had to change the system flute for the black flute, the wooden flute, which is the one that people liked back then.

Clave: But did you start with the wooden flute and then change to the Boehm flute?

No, I started with the Boehm system flute, of course, but I had to change to wood because of its sound qualities, and back then I could not get a sound out of the Boehm flute like I could later, getting a sound from it that everyone thinks is from a wooden flute.

Clave: What is the basic difference between them?

The wooden flute has a fuller sound, stronger. I had my own particular sound. I don't know what about my physical makeup could have contributed to the sound of the instrument.

Clave: Richard, we're always asked by musicians, when we talk about Cuban music, about the leading role of the flute in a charanga orchestra, a solo role.

It's like the prima donna.

Clave: Can you tell us how the flute came to be the solo instrument in the orchestra, replacing the singer?

Originally, when the charangas began, the flute had a more moderate role. It didn't have the chance to do solos, except for some written solo in a danzón, based, for example, on some famous symphonic work or opera. But later the improvisation began, and by the time I started to play flute it was already the era of improvisation. It was--or is--very important to be able to improvise in a charanga, and there, modesty aside, I've done well.

Clave: Does the flute play rhythmic or melodic lines?

Well, they're melodic, but also rhythmic because sometimes the flute accompanies the rhythm in its effect.

Clave: In other words, it responds to

It does the same as the rhythm, it plays a passage together with the rhythm, something that in musical jargon we call cierre. They're elements of charanga.

The charanga had a very good period with the coming of the cha cha, which was adapted to the charanga by Enrique Jorrín. Then, what the Orquesta Aragón did with the charanga and the cha cha was to introduce the cha cha in full through our arrangements, which were different from those of other orchestras. There are many recordings left of that time. Fernando Agüero has recorded almost everything that the Aragón played throughout a period of 30 years.