Music

Eliades Ochoa, Cuban guitar legend: member of the Buena Vista Social Club

in ,

11-12-2011
Eliades Ochoa, Cuban guitar legend
One of the last members of the Buena Vista Social Club

After seing and listening to Eliades with my father in 2010, again I could enjoy his great clasic songs with his strong voice. Afterwards we met and my siters husband, who is from Cuba, started exided conversations and remembered het band members that he, years ago in Cuba, transported the band on their tour as he was a bus driver. We shared stories and ended with the expectation to meet each other again. This because we will be visiting Cuba this month. Actualy I'm leaving tomorow. And Eliades will be back in Santiago from their tour, so we will probably meet again. It will be great to finally visit Cuba with al the beauty of the people, music and nature. Ofcourse my cameras will also join and I will post some images as soon as possible when I'm their. For now I would like to share some shot and some more details about Eliades.

Eliades Ochoa (born 22 June 1946) is a Cuban guitarist and singer from Loma de la Avispa, Songo La Maya in the east of the country nearSantiago de Cuba.

He began playing the guitar when he was six and in 1978 he was invited to join Cuarteto Patria, a group founded in 1939, as its leader. Although he looks like a guajiro, and he still wears his trademark cowboy hat, his roots are in the son, and he only agreed to take on the role of leader if he was allowed to introduce new elements to the repertoire. He plays the tres, and also a variant called cuatro (with two additional strings). His involvement with the Buena Vista Social Club and the Wim Wenders film of the same name (1999), has led him to worldwide fame.

In 2010 he recorded an album with a number of Cuban and Malian musicians, including Toumani Diabaté, titled AfroCubism.