Ibrahim Ferrar - "Mi Sueño"

Ibrahim Ferrar - Melodía del Río (Nonesuch 2007)

Ibrahim Ferrar - Mi Sueño / Nonesuch

The whole Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon was a pretty intriguing story if you paid attention. I do have a pretty idea good of our audience though, and I kind of doubt that it was quite as significant to the music fans we share most interests with than those of the mainstream. You could say it had more of an appeal to the American crowd that still considers the Grammy’s a meaningful award. But the fact of the matter is that Buena Vista Social Club is a phenomenal album documenting twilight-aged Cuban musicians performing the music they lived to play, classic son and lite Afro-Cuban jazz. It also brought international attention to Cuban music, which is obviously a good thing, but in the same hesitating manner that Paul Simon brought attention to South African music in the 80s: very concentrated and not really giving complete respect to the history of the long-lived music styles involved. Being familiar with the Buena Vista Social Club does not necessarily make you familiar with Cuban music just like being familiar with Ladysmith Black Mambazo does not make you familiar with South African music, but it’s a very accessible starting point and should be treated as such. In fact the majority of the members in the BVSC collective were brought out of retirement, which itself was already twenty years deep and ticking, so it does not even correspond to modern Cuban music. It was an album highlighting the sultry sounds of pre-Castro Havana featuring struggling musicians that were living in bleak poverty until that album spurred thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Americans to support the incredibly talented performers. I am not trying to be pessimistic about the album, in fact I am a very big fan of it and it’s surrounding projects, but it’s always good to be as realistic as possible.

The BVSC member that benefited the most from the wildly and unpredictably successful project (besides Ry Cooder of course) was the face and voice, Ibrahim Ferrar. 69-years-old when the album was recorded, it completely changed his life for the better. He was literally living off a meager state pension that was only augmented by shining shoes for tips, and was relatively obscure talent-wise even in his own country until pianist Rubén González suggested to Cooder that he utilize him in the recordings. With such a personable and kind demeanor lime-lighted by the accompanying documentary, Ferrar became the accidental star, which spurred an additional Cooder-produced solo album (also worth your time by the way) that sold almost two million copies itself. Ferrar spent his entire life performing the music of the BVSC, but only gained recognition in the waning years of his life. It’s both a heart-warming and truly sad story, which only gets more poignant with Mi Sueño.

While Ferrar was an ambidextrous singer when it came to the many sub-styles of Cuban music, apparently his niche of choice was bolero. At its very basic level a Spanish torch song, bolero was a slow dance that emerged in Spain in the late 18th century out of a combination of contradanza and sevillana dance styles. The genre made its way to Cuba in the early 19th century and enjoyed its highest popularity in the 1950s with heartfelt stories of travel and sentimental, unrequited love. So really, there is no surprise bolero had such a significant impact on Ferrar being that it was at the peak of its popularity when the Cuban singer was in his early 20s. The style eventually waned though and it just didn’t make financial sense to make recordings in that mode, so Ferrar never got to make an album of his beloved bolero—that is until he had the support of the entire music industry post-Buena Vista Social Club.

So in 2005, Ferrar finally got to make the album he so desperately wanted to all his life at the age of 78. With financial backing and an able band featuring pianist Roberto Fonseca, guitarist Manuel Galbon and bassist Cachito Lopez, the sessions for Mi Sueño commenced in the summer of 2005 in the wake of a European tour. After just the first vocal demos were laid to tape, Ferrar became ill and was condemned to his bed. With just three weeks to go before the final vocal sessions, the Cuban singer passed away from multiple organ failure in his home in Havana. Though enjoying immense unforeseen success in the twilight of his life, it appeared as if Ferrar would never get to make that bolero album he had always dreamed of, which was only further instilled when the session tapes were lost immediately following his death.

Thankfully though, the vocal demos Ferrar left behind were found a year later and they were of high enough quality that they could be utilized to still complete the album, which now exists as his swan song, Mi Sueño. In the traditional bolero setting, Ferrar’s aged and honey-soaked voice croons romantically over pleasantly sparse and subtle arrangements that vastly excel in their non-intrusiveness. The passionate, intimate and love-worn songs paired with the delicate instrumentation makes for some vastly easy listening, of which sidesteps anything resembling challenging music, but nonetheless hypnotizing and worth your time. “Uno” swings with stiff, subtle guitar chops, tiptoeing acoustic piano and swooning clarinets, while later “Copla Guajira” utilizes the same instrumentation but spins it into an infectious, foot-tapping cumbia song. And one of the great gems is “Melodía del Río,” an outtake from a Cooder session back in 1998 composed by and featuring the great, late pianist Rubén González. With a Southwestern-influence electric guitar solo, González’s patient, Monk-gone-Latin piano style and Ferrar’s romantic purring, no lady could resist such musical charm.

Like last week’s Friday night Audiversity festivity with Kahil El’Zabar’s French orchestra, Ibrahim Ferrar once again transports our work-week-worn minds to a much more pleasant state. Mi Sueño is romantic, refined, intimate, earnest and elegant and an absolute pleasure to listen to no matter the occasion. In this case, it’s not about challenging the world’s ears, but it’s instead about sharing one man’s life-long dream come to life in the form of an album. Sadly with Ferrar’s passing in August of 2005, he never got to see the final product of his efforts, but there is no doubt by listening to Mi Sueño that they were not in vain. And at the very, very least, it’s good to know that such a beautiful personality and talent was not completely lost to obscurity, though it’s certainly a shame we only got to enjoy the waning moments of Ferrar’s life.