Word: havana
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DIED. RUBéN GONZÁLEZ, 84, pianist and patriarch of Cuba's music scene who found late-life stardom after his appearance on the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album Buena Vista Social Club and in the subsequent documentary; in Havana. González, who was rediscovered by guitarist Ry Cooder, was initially nervous about playing on the album: he suffered from arthritis and didn't have a piano (his was ruined by termites). But he welcomed the attention and happily began performing again. "If I can't take a piano with me to heaven," he said...
DIED. C.Z. GUEST, 83, avatar of high society and syndicated gardening columnist; in Old Westbury, N.Y. After a rebellious youthful turn as a show girl (and posing nude for Diego Rivera), she married the heir to a steel fortune in 1947 on Ernest Hemingway's Havana plantation and went on to become a mainstay of society columns and best-dressed lists for years...
CELIA CRUZ, who died last week, left her native Cuba in 1960 and spent the rest of her life taking listeners back there through her music. She was born around 1924, but was coy about her exact birth year. After growing up in Havana, she joined the band La Sonora Matancera. When Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1959, she left for the U.S., where her career flourished. Her contralto voice was like the waters that separate Miami and Havana--inviting, sun-kissed, capable of rising up in a storm. Cruz sang with everybody who was anybody in Latin music...
COMPAY SEGUNDO, 95, died in his professional prime. Well known during the 1920s, '30s and '40s, the golden age of Cuban son music, Segundo saw his traditional balladeering trail into obscurity, and he spent nearly two decades as a roller in the H. Upmann cigar factory in Havana. Then, in his late 80s, he formed the Buena Vista Social Club with a gaggle of other aging all-stars. The eponymous album and motion picture reintroduced much of the world to Cuban music and made the charismatic Segundo perhaps the most recognizable beardless Cuban alive. The gregarious nonagenarian reveled...
Died. Compay Segundo, 95, troubadour and godfather of traditional Cuban music who achieved late-life fame for his appearance on the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album Buena Vista Social Club and in a starring role in the subsequent documentary; in Havana. The album reintroduced the world to Segundo and other aging, all-but-forgotten masters of son, a style that layers Spanish melodies over African rhythms. Segundo, with his ever present cigar and Panama hat, played around the world and recorded two more albums. "The flowers of life come to everyone," he said. "Mine arrived after...