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Musicians
ALFREDO DE LA FÉ
Violin
"Latitudes"
RLCD 1016
Photo: Cristina Piza
 The
violin makes occasional appearances in salsa - in the Cuban charanga style
it is a key player, humming and sawing in choruses which fill the spaces
behind a single trilling flute. Of the handful of solo players feted for
their distinctive playing, Cuban-born ALFREDO DE LA FÉ has
been one of the most respected and certainly the most daring and experimental
on the salsa circuit for three decades. With his trademark snaky braided
hair (dyed bright blue for the photo-session for this CD sleeve) and manically
wielding a customized 6-string fiddle, on stage he is a rivetting ball
of energy. Darting amongst the musicians, he switches from playing a conventional,
sweet charanga-style supporting role with the brass and horns to, to emerge
for intense solos which puncture the air with jagged, luminous, electronic
melodies built in a series of tense, stirring, climaxes.
LATITUDES is a collection of mostly self-penned songs, Alfredo's personal tribute to the Cuban musical tradition which has inspired his life. It was recorded in the last months of the 20th century, as the great Cuban classics were being hummed and sung by millions of people all over the world following the success of the Buena Vista Social Club. It is his tribute to the music of the island he left behind as a ten-year old boy and still cherishes today. But there is little quaint or old-fashioned about these reinterpretations which he describes as a record of his personal musical journey through life. Travelling with him for this recording was his current band, hand-picked en route, from all over the Americas. From 1962, the eight-year old studied at the Havana Conservatoire, and also played in nightclubs the heavily European-influenced, violin-and-flute led danzons. He recalls that era in the poised old-fashioned elegance of Hilda. He crash-landed onto New York's Latin scene whose musicians were obsessed with charangas - and violinists were in great demand. At the age of twelve he was hired by the revered Cuban flautist José Fajardo and – dressed in ruffle-sleeved rumba shirts - he learnt the art of night-club music. His sophisticated solos made Maestro Fajardo sweat in battles which thrilled the crowds. In 1972, still a mere eighteen year old, De La Fé joined Eddie Palmieri's band. The maverick avant garde pianist with equal passion for Cuban charangas and rule-breaking, fired Alfredo's sense of musical adventure and gave him a lifelong taste for the trombone-heavy formula which is a key feature of LATITUDES. In fact, the opening track Latin New York brings together many elements forged with Palmieri - the undercurrent of trombone and baritone saxophone choruses and wafting, fragmented fiddle phrases. Muñeca (The Doll) is his tribute to Palmieri's classic seventies hit. Asomate a la Ventana (Come To The Window) was written by Alfredo’s father and also transforms the steady, jumpy rhythm of Cuba's son to this New York version of a conjunto formula, adding to the flute and violin mix a Cuban tres guitar and creating a thoroughly modern dance floor track. If the result can be tied to any of his past bands, it must surely be salsa's most successful young orquesta of the seventies, Tipica 73, which Alfredo joined as an intense, Afro-hairedtwenty-something. Tipica 73 saw the debut of his electrified violin, which he customized to achieve the authority and funk of a rock guitar, and which introduced a suitably brash and vibrant quality to suit New York's take on the older musicians' Cuban sound. “The track that really reminds me of Tipica 73 is Que Manera which was originally sung by my RykoLatino brother, José Alberto. That track is my tribute to Tipica 73” Alfredo says, fondly. Photo: Cristina Piza
In 1981, Alfredo took a breather from the dance scene with Tito Puente's
most significant small unit, the Latin Jazz Ensemble. With the compulsion
to feed the dancefloor's attention gone, this seminal group dedicated themselves
to improvisation and long, rivetting solos dictated by salsa's essential
clave beat. The tremendous Descarga Melao recalls that time
- it is a racing collusion of a wild succession of solos instrument – double
bass, violin, trombone, percussion, and Elvio Ghigliordini's flute,
darting
 in and out of the main theme. Alfredo also evokes the unmistakeable Afro-Cuban jazz sound of Irakere in his easy-going, voice-led salsa version of Chucho Valdes old favourite, Xiomara. Throughout the eighties, Alfredo started to roam the world. He spent time in Colombia, a country with its own rich tradition but where Cuban music is sacred. Using the Cuban music template, he incorporated Colombia's cumbia rhythms and musical elements from all over the Continent into a series of records. His experiments with technology intensified in the new electronic era - samplers and synthesizers transformed the sonic possibilities of his violin even more. A decade later, this new album's closes with Batusalsa, an original Latino hybrid billed an Afro-Cuban Samba, driven by accordion and violin and a battery of hard crackling drum sticks on Brazilian snare drums played by Eduardo 'Dudu' Penz. He replaces trombones with brash trumpet calls. Bringing the repertoire right up to date, Alfredo introduces an edgy sophisticated take on Cuba's modernist salsa style known as 'timba'. In his fast and funky version of a traditional Cuban song about a gypsy girl, Sandra Mora, vocalists Armando Miranda and Rodrigo Rodriguez veer between a gritty salsa-rap-scat and a sweet, operatic croon. For the aptly titled Somos el Nuevo Milenio (We are the New Millennium), De La Fé marches his pan-Latino salsa band into the 21st century like the Pied Piper, a hundred years of Cuban sheet music slung over his shoulder. Sue Steward, London, April 2000
Biography courtesy of DUENDE |