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• 01 / 30 / 2010

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He came to accompany his fellow countryman, flutist Maraca, and a group of jazz stars from Cuba, the United States, Canada and even Japan, in a concert they had offered before in Monterrey, in the US state of California, and then in Colombia.

With just a few days and nights in Havana, drummer Horacio El Negro Hernández had enough good reasons to be happy. The most important of all, and completely logical, was to have returned to Cuba after an absence of 20 years. The rest is almost certainly a series of concatenate emotions that put his heart in a better place.

He came to accompany his fellow countryman, flutist Maraca, and a group of jazz stars from Cuba, the United States, Canada and even Japan, in a concert they had offered before in Monterrey, in the US state of California, and then in Colombia.

The evening of the final rehearsal, he ran into a group of percussion students who were waiting for him in front of the theater to greet him, praise his work, and, above all, to listen to him, which is the most important thing for fans when they meet their idols.

Among the music stars that went on the stage in Havana were percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo and saxophonist David Sánchez, the two of them representing the United States; pianist Harold López- Nussa and trumpet player Julio Padrón, representing Cuba; Japanese violinist Sayaka; and Canadian trombonist Hugh Fraser.

Although all of them made up a constellation, Horacio’s name was mentioned with a special flavor. All the time he was the object of unlimited admiration, not only on the part of musicians but also from journalists, critics, and music students.

“The music we performed in that concert was fresh, which is the music I like - that is, the one you play first and record later. It’s as if you were learning the music before entering the studio to record. When you learn the music to record it and then you play it at concerts it loses freshness. It’s not like when you rehearse it to perform on stage and then record it”, he explained to me shortly before returning to the United States, where he lives.

We’re sitting outside the National Hotel, where for the first time the sun came out after a week of very cold and cloudy days.

As soon as he goes out into the terrace and sits down, he looks up and finds unexpected scenery: “Oh, my God, look at that!

How beautiful! See that sunshine!” Were you shivering with cold? I asked him jokingly, knowing he has plenty of cold where he comes from. “No, the problem is that you don’t come here thinking about cold but for precisely for this, and it’s only now, when I’m about to leave, that the sun comes out and is so gorgeous.”

With respect to the concert he had offered two nights before together with Maraca, some critics, journalists and even musicians that were part of the public expected a little bit more of concept from it, and although they thought that the recital was marvellous and unforgettable, they found the performance in unison of all musicians excessive. However, El Negro Hernández believes that there was nothing strange about it and that is even something inevitable among Cuban musicians.

“That long, constant performance is the consequence of Cuban musicians’ living for musical violence. We like that violence in music”, he affirmed.

Our conversation lasted scarcely 45 minutes, after a failed attempt one hour before, due to confusion with regard to the time of the interview. Horacio answers calmly, while he contradicts truths that are self-evident in musical environments on the island, like the fact that students from art schools don’t learn about Cuban genres and when they graduate they know very little about them.

“I’ve heard that, but I think is absurd. Cuban musicians will always have Cuba inside them. They grow up listening to those genres. That’s the reason why it’s only logical that, while they study, they feel the need of knowing other rhythms, because they have Cuban rhythms with them since they’re very little. They grow up listening to them; they don’t have to learn them.

In my case, Cuban music was always present; it was there in an unconscious way. When I was young, I listened to rock and, above all, jazz, because my house was always flooded with jazz, thanks to my father.”

Horacio Hernández, Senior, was a passionate defender of jazz from a studio of the CMBF radio station, the bastion of instrumental music in Cuba. He did so for many years in his program La esquina del jazz (Jazz Corner), and people say he had an enormous jazz collection at home.

In the 1980’s, after working as a drummer with the famous group of Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Horacio Junior said good-bye to Cuba and went to try his luck among the great. According to friends of his first youth, he had promised himself to play with some of the world’s celebrities when some of them like Billy Joel and Rita Coolledge sang and played in Havana.

They say he affirmed something like this, among friends: “One day, I’ll play with stars like them.” And that’s the way it was: he has even played with Carlos Santana for his album Supernatural. That confrontation with musicians from the four cardinal points of the world has helped him be a better professional. In his opinion, this has been important in his career.

“It’s indispensable that musicians confront their work internationally, that they travel to other countries, meet and create, because we’re talking about “evolution, of a historical moment, and every contact is important”, he added.

One of the legends nurturing Horacio’s existence is his so-called capacity to play in several top level jazz bands at the same time, and do so in a brilliant way. He founded his own three years ago, Italuba, “a godsend” he said, pointing out to
heaven.

He was visiting Italy, giving several seminars on percussion –another facet of his professional life- when he ran into his friend, Cuban guitarist Daniel Noel, who was a bass player in a nightclub at the time. They sat to chat and dreamt about a band of their own; then, they looked for another two good Cuban musicians who also lived in Italy and began to play together.

Horacio stayed in Italy to live and they recorded their first album. That marked the birth of the group Italuba, a name that combines love toward Italy and Cuba.

Since then, Italuba has been doing extremely well. Now, it’s recording its third CD, a double album. The second CD, with pieces by Chico O´Farril and arrangements by the group, is a tribute Horacio pays to his father.

Among the colleagues he called for this disk we find Giovanni Hidalgo –who also performed in the All Stars concert in Havana- and Luis Conte.

Virtuosity is another term accompanying the musical life of El Negro Hernández, always associated to the perfect command of the instrument and to the stunning capacity of performing. However, for him, “a virtuoso is a person that gives music what music demands at a given moment. During improvisation, for example, you have to be ready to respond to anything in the right moment. To me, that’s to be a virtuoso.”

-And to have a perfect command of the instrument.

-Of course, it’s essential.

With regard to his double capacity as a lecturer and a musician, Horacio remains pensive when asked which of the two facets he enjoys the most, and then he explains: “I should say that, undoubtedly, I enjoy music better. But we percussionists have always been a kind of race ready to share our knowledge and to meet with that purpose, and I enjoy that too. I like to meet with my colleagues and talk about percussion.”

Actually, Horacio El Negro Hernández deeply enjoys anything that has to do with the art of playing an instrument, especially the drums, because the love and respect he feels toward percussion and music knows no bounds.

Source: www.cubanow.net