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| Roberto Garcia in Los 100 Sonos Cubanos. |
By Ed Rampell
The documentary, Los 100 Sones Cubanos, is one of those rare works of art that simply makes you feel glad to be alive, if for no reason other than to be able to behold experiences like watching it. Los 100 Sones Cubanos is about a “beloved genre” of distinctly, endemically Cuban music, with origins stretching back to the Bantus in Africa, Spaniards in Andalusia, and the Canary Islands -- and can these songbirds warble like canaries. Musicians use instruments ranging from bungas (tree trunks covered with deerskin) to bamboo sticks to organs “tropicalized” by Cuban maestros from the Sierra Maestra Mountains and beyond.
In Los 100 Sones Cubanos writers-directors Edesio Alejandro and Ruben Consuegra are more successful as the Los 100 Sones Cubanos form of musical expression, rather than a musician per se, serves as the protagonist, moving the storyline along, as the filmmakers travel around Cuba filming a variety bands and singers who specialize in this music. Along the way we encounter astute, highly educated Cuban pop culture-ologists who tell us about the music, claiming that mambo, cha-cha and more are derived from Los 100 Sones Cubanos.
Man (and woman!) in the street interviews provide some comic relief, even as they reveal the soul of an animated, attuned, aware people. Among the musicians we meet are Benny Villay, whose duds are a cross between Zoot suit and cowboy couture, and who croons (among other things) songs made famous by Benny More (whom a Cuban biopic, El Benny, was made in 2006). But my favorite crooner is 92-year-old Don Eduardo, who actually puts maracas in the back of his shoes in order to enhance the beat.
Los 100 Sones Cubanos serves to remind us about the major impact on and contribution to world music Cuban sounds have made.
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