Search - Polo Montanez :: Guajiro Natural

Lucero Eterno

Hector Reyes-erazo | 09/08/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I first came across the name Polo Montañéz (nèe Fernándo Borrego) while driving in San Francisco on a typically cloudless day with my fiancé and her sister who was visiting from Cuba. Yes, by way of visa and Party consent Cubans are allowed to visit relatives in the US. No doubt it requires a clean dossier. Anyways, as we cruised down the busy boulevard Geary Street, she persisted on us listening to the music of this fallen but charismatic guajiro, whose meteoric rise in the music charts was cut short by his tragic death in 2002 while returning by car from La Habana with his family to his hometown near Pinar del Rio. Yes, yes, all this in a single breath. This modest country peasant had just begun to fan out of his rural hamlet to display his remarkable gifts as a prolific décimista when tragedy struck.



He first took up guitarra, tumbadora and maraca as a young boy alongside his father, going from one casa de campo to another like itinerant troubadours, making merriment with punto guajiro in the Cuban countryside.



After many years of back breaking toil on the family farm, Polo began to whet his craft as artist and performer. He played for friends and family at improvised parties or guateques in neighboring bateys and later at more formal venues including local hotels, plazas and stadiums where he would display his musical energy and talent to enthusiastic audiences. With over 70 songs to his name, this amiable poet left us with an unforgettable musical legacy. Perhaps his greatest gift to the Cuban songbook was his "Guajiro Natural", an affirmation of the Cuban guajiro and his unassailable wit. Here was the simple and rustic trovador who in a brief moment of Cuban history captured in the amber of the Cuban spirit the distinct character of its guajiro. I believe he single handedly lifted the chins of his fellow guajiros and made them the unassuming proud heroes of the Cuban countryside. No longer need a guajiro feel inept or socially inferior to city compatriots.



Polo Montañéz conveys in his rich lyric the ethos and pathos of a nation characterized by years of indubitable economic, social and political paradoxes. Despite an arguably strained and nearly insuperable existence under a pointless economic embargo, a modest compesino can scale high above what can be viewed as subjective ruination and pour out his heart and soul into some of the most beautiful music ever to come from Cuba's countryside ("el campo" y "las montañas"). A man of profound humanity and acute awareness he searched both deep in his soul as well as drew from the rich lexicon of the natural guajiro including rural idioms, provincialisms, and naturalisms to express love, longing, hope and the trials and tribulations of life. His songs are pregnant with splendid symbolism and metaphor and joyously celebrate peasant life.



The curious appeal of Polo's music is that it is devoid of rhetoric; the language is natural, and without affectation. His music has a way of evoking a forlorn nostalgia in many who can relate to his symbolism and metaphors and easily connect to the rich expressions and experiences he so beautifully sings. Just close your eyes and quietly listen to "Un Montón de Estrellas" or Si Fuera Mia" and you'll see and hear what I mean.



While Polo Montañéz was steeped in punto guajiro and the rural traditions of improvised décimas, he also turned to various styles of Cuban music, but most notably, Cuban son. By way of dialectic of musical rhythms and instrumentation, Polo essentially created his own sound on which to set his remarkable lyricism. You will just as well dance as would listen to this wonderful music.



Polo Montañéz was a man of profound sentiments as well as deeply grounded in his rural roots. He was gifted and patient enough to give voice to his songs when the time was right. He never had any formal musical training. His muse was innate and incorruptible. In a brief life and even less as a celebrated artist, he was able to leave his mark in the ceaseless wake of Cuban and Latin American music. In the pantheon of Cuba's greatest poets he is an original and a rightful heir."

Has to be Cuban music!

Dan | USA, Florida | 07/04/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Simple, but not simplistic. Just folk/traditional Cuban recordings with the natural, basic sounds.

A gentle, relaxing album which speaks more by the words and music as much as from the heart.

This album isn't for the average fan, but a true fan of Latin American music.



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