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• Arts and Culture
• Music
• 02 / 28 / 2007

Musicians of several generations joined the eve for the show "Two Gardenias for you, Ibrahim", before an audience mainly composed by foreigners that filled the largest hall of the Havana Grand Theatre.

Amidst film images and immortal songs of Cuba's popular music the evening began with Ferrer's own voice mixed with pictures of his childhood and adolescence, since he began singing in his native Santiago de Cuba.

From the audience, octogenarian reciter Luis Carbonell, presented the audience with his Remembering Ibrahim, text of lyric prose evoking the ancestors of the artist, based on the gods of the Yoruba pantheon.

Winner of tour Grammy awards, Ibrahim Ferrer started his artistic life with the group Jóvenes del Son, when he was barely 13 years of age.

His presence in several groups of that period, among them the Wilson group, the Maravillas de Beltran and Los Modernistas of Pacho Alonso (renamed afterward as the Bocucos), took him to become a member of legendary orchestra Chepin-Choven.

With it he recorded in the 50s his first hit: El Platanal de Bartolo. From 1960 until 1980, he stayed as lead singer of the Bocucos, orchestra with which he developed a successful career.

After he retired in 1995, he played other star roles in international music with the Buena Vista Social Club, the same that launched him as emblematic figure of Cuban musical culture.

In the concert that payed homage to Ibrahim Ferrer participated Omara Portuondo, Elíades Ochoa, Miguel Angel Céspedes, pianist Roberto Fonseca, the feminine quartet Sexto sentido, Carlos Calunga, Idania Valdés and the Conjunto Folclórico Nacional.