Compay Segundo

Compay Segundo was among the twentieth century's foremost interpreters of Cuban son and the trova song tradition beside it — the rolling, guitar-and-percussion music that has long set Cuban dancers in motion.^[1] Born Máximo Francisco Repilado Muñoz Telles, he was a guitarist, tresero, singer, and composer whose late-career emergence on the Buena Vista Social Club recordings carried the unhurried, romantic son of eastern Cuba to listeners and dancers worldwide; reference sources place his life between 1907 and 2003.^[2] His signature composition, "Chan Chan", is a four-chord son cubano whose repeating chord cycle and unhurried groove open the Buena Vista Social Club album and have become shorthand for traditional Cuban music the world over.^[1] His professional name itself encodes his musical role: "compay," a contraction of compadre, joined to "segundo," the name he earned by habitually supplying the lower, second vocal line in his partnerships.^[1]

From Santiago de Cuba to Havana

Compay Segundo was born in Siboney and moved as a boy of about nine to Santiago de Cuba, the eastern city whose trova and son culture shaped his early ear.^[1] His first salaried engagement came in the Municipal Band of Santiago, directed by his teacher Enrique Bueno; in 1934, after a spell with a quintet, he settled in Havana, where he also played clarinet in that city's municipal band. There he took up the guitar and the tres — the small, three-course Cuban guitar at the heart of son — which became his usual instruments.^[1]

The armónico

Searching for a timbre that could bridge the Spanish guitar and the Cuban tres, Compay Segundo devised the armónico — also called the trilina — a guitar-like hybrid built to span the harmonic gap between the two.^[1] The instrument carries seven strings: five single strings plus a paired course tuned in unison. Its lowest three (E, A, and D) sound an octave above the equivalent guitar strings, and the fourth (G) is both doubled and raised an octave, while the top two (B and E) hold standard guitar pitch; the result is a bright, close-voiced range in which the bottom E lies only one octave below the top E instead of the guitar's two. He prized the instrument precisely because it let him draw on the possibilities of guitar and tres at once.

Los Compadres and the second voice

In 1947 Compay Segundo formed the vocal duo Los Compadres with Lorenzo Hierrezuelo, and through the 1950s he became widely known there as the segundo — the second voice — and as the group's tres player.^[1] Los Compadres grew into one of the most successful Cuban duos of their era, a partnership later surveys of the island's music still single out.^[3] Compay traced his approach to the son corto, the short son form he had played as a young man, and his songbook leaned toward the son rather than the bolero many trova singers preferred; alongside "Chan Chan" it included "Sarandonga," "Macusa," and "Saludo Compay."^[1]

Chan Chan and the Buena Vista Social Club

Compay Segundo composed "Chan Chan" in 1984, spinning a small tale of two characters, Juanica and Chan Chan, over a circling four-chord pattern that gives the son its hypnotic sway.^[1] The song reached the world through the Buena Vista Social Club project: in March 1996 Compay, Eliades Ochoa, and a roster of veteran Cuban players gathered at Havana's EGREM studios to record the eponymous album, released internationally in September 1997 to Grammy recognition — a late, unexpected fame for a musician whose career had quietly been revived in Spain a few years earlier with the help of the Spanish musician Santiago Auserón.^[1] Assembled by American guitarist Ry Cooder with producer Nick Gold and bandleader Juan de Marcos González, the ensemble gathered son, bolero, and danzón veterans, several of them long retired; Wim Wenders's 1999 documentary of the same name followed them from Havana to concert stages in Amsterdam and New York, drew an Academy Award nomination, and placed Compay Segundo among its central figures.^[4] Sung with Eliades Ochoa and Ibrahim Ferrer, "Chan Chan" became the album's opening track and the group's signature song, carrying Compay's voice to dance floors far beyond Cuba.^[1]

Late recognition and legacy

In his final years Compay Segundo carried his son to prominent stages, performing "Chan Chan" for Pope John Paul II at the Vatican and singing before Fidel Castro at a state celebration.^[1] Critics cast him as a living link to an older, more romantic age of Cuban song — the chronicler Howard Reich observing that "Compay Segundo upholds the traditions of a more romantic era."^[5] Book-length biographies have since documented his catalogue and recordings.^[6] He died in Havana in 2003; four years later, the centenary of his birth was marked with a Havana concert of his compositions performed by his own musicians and sons.^[1]