Eliades Ochoa goes far beyond ‘Buena Vista’ at Afro Roots Fest
Singer, guitarist and songwriter Eliades Ochoa may be a traditionalist in music but does not trade in nostalgia.
He achieved international fame as a charter member and key figure of “Buena Vista Social Club,” a Grammy-winning 1997 album featuring fresh interpretations of traditional Cuban songs and styles by artists such as singers Omara Portuondo, Pio Leyva and Ibrahim Ferrer, singer and guitarist Compay Segundo and pianist Ruben Gonzalez, among others.
It became a global phenomenon.
Ochoa, who had been playing from a very young age and was 50 years old at the time of “Buena Vista,” rode the wave but kept moving. He still is. And as the headliner of the Afro Roots Fest opening concert at the Miami Beach Bandshell on Saturday, Ochoa will present his most recent album, “Guajiro” (“Peasant”). The recording marks yet another turn in his long career as it showcases his work as a composer and expands the sound of his customary quartet.
“I wanted to make this new album a little more contemporary,” says Ochoa, speaking in Spanish, freshly arrived from Madrid, where he resides. “There are boleros, a habanera, guaracha, changüí, sones, but I wanted to have different melodies, different harmonies, and you’ll also hear a saxophone and a trumpet, something very different from what I have been doing for a long time.”
At the Bandshell event, Ochoa will be backed by a quintet including saxophone and trumpet.
The album “Guajiro” also features collaborations with Panamanian singer Ruben Blades, singer and songwriter Joan As Police Woman (Joan Wasser), and an old friend, harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite.
Ochoa has a history of collaborating not only across musical styles, but also cultural traditions. He believes that music opens the doors to both cultures and emphasizes that there aren’t borders around music.
In its 26th year, Afro Roots Fest celebrates root African culture and its synergies with Western cultural traditions.
Ochoa has long embraced those encounters. Perhaps most notably, he has recorded albums such as “CubAfrica” (1996), a collaboration with the late Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango, and the Grammy-nominated “AfroCubism” (2010), which documents a meeting of Cuban and Malian musicians, including master kora player Toumani Diabate.
Oumu Sangaré, a transcendent vocalist and feminist icon from Mali, headlines the Afro Roots Fest concert at the Miami Beach Bandshell on March 30. Sangaré, who burst onto the world music scene with “Moussoulou” (1989), has long been a global superstar. She will present her new album, “Timbuktu,” in which she blends traditional rhythms and singing from her native Wassoulou region in southern Mali with elements of blues and contemporary world music.
Meanwhile, even a cursory look at Ochoa’s extensive recording career would confirm his choice of being an interpreter for some of Cuba’s great songwriters. But in “Guajiro,” Ochoa claims his place as a composer.
“I had in mind that if Pepe Sanchez [regarded as the father of bolero] had made such a beautiful bolero, why would I make another one that was not as good?” says Ochoa, modestly.
“But then, my partner [author] Grisel Sande and my daughter, Evora Vicent, insisted that I could not think that way, that I had many boleros that were good, beautiful songs. Until then, when I made a record, I would include one of my songs, maybe two, but not always. I thought there was already a lot of beautiful music and no need to include my songs. But they took that idea out of my head, and I started to play them.”
More than half of the tracks in “Guajiro” are his.
The subjects and the styles cover a lot of ground, from the optimistic opening track “Vamos a Alegrar el Mundo” (“Let’s Make the World a Happier Place”), the poetic “Abrazo de Luz” (“Embrace of Light”) and “Creo en la Naturaleza,” (“I Believe in Nature”) sung with Wasser, alternating Spanish and English lyrics, to “West,” his collaboration with bluesman Musselwhite.
He wrote “Abrazo de Luz” while looking out a window while enduring the COVID-19 confinement.
“I was locked inside the house, and I saw that first light of the sun announcing a new day, and I just wrote down what I was thinking,” says Ochoa.
Meanwhile, “West” is partly a tribute to his childhood in Santiago de
Cuba, when he saw “three Western movies for 10 cents. All those shootouts,” he says. “At first, the song was like a Western instrumental music. Cowboys on horseback would come to my mind — and later, I came up with the lyrics. Well, that’s where this thing of cowboy hats and boots comes from. I have always liked to walk with boots, and now it’s my image.”
Ochoa is one of only a handful of survivors of the “Buena Vista Social” recordings, and more than 25 years later, even after answering a question he was likely asked a few hundred times, he still sounds surprised by the enduring impact of those sessions.
“If one of us, one of the
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