A CUBAN LADY BRINGS DANIEL SANTOS TOFILBO

In principle, Colombia was always a dream with colors and rhythms. That is why, from the way events happened, it would look like a magic force of attraction. Because to have chosen the character of Daniel Santos and Havana,as main characters for this first foray into fiction, would seemingly have to do nothing with Colombian soil.

But, yes, love affairs are commonplace. The guest turned out to be Daniel Santos´s goddaughter. Little did I know about her until he told me about his father: a child whom«el Jefe», as he was nicknamed in Medellín, found on the street after running away from his home. He practically adopted him and made an artist out of him. Four years later, Daniel Santos put him before his mother, who was given up for dead, to continue to beat the rhythm of his life through music.

His brother is still in Barrio Obrero, and has turned his home in a temple of the Latinamericanand Caribbeanmemory; with particular stress in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and his native Colombia, by way of Museo de la Salsa in Cali.

The book may have had a good reception in Cali but it was all the more in Bogotá. It should have attracted an audience of almost 300 readers in a fair where 30,000 people come for very attractive and simultaneous events in the infinite world of commercial literature. And the premises were packed.

What I have narrated so far about my book is the result of an arduous research about the printing means of Cuba, the times Havana was fun: from 1946 to 1961. Those were times of an intense ludic, dissolute, partying life, times of corruption, fight, and change. And Daniel Santos was present in everything.

Almost 2,000 recorded songs and about 400 of his own authorship return that Daniel Santos of our grandmothers to us in the jukeboxes of the slot machines workshop of my little town, the soundtrack of my childhood, along with Benny Moré, about whom Daniel Santos always said that he was«the hell of a singer and a friend».