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 Bartolomé
Maximiliano Moré y Benítez, born in Santa Isabel
de las Lajas, on August 24, 1919, is one of the Cuban
music milestones.
A large tradition not only of poverty and slavery but also of AfroCuban
ritual practices having an inherent load of chants and dances, were
experiences contributed by the family, that together with his constant
attendance to country parties, in which guarachas,
décimas
and obviously sones in such ancient streams as nengón
were performed, were decisive influences in his particular way of
feeling and playing music.
In 1936, he moved to Havana for the first time, starting his large
journey along musical groups and radio broadcastings. He recorded
in 1945 his early discographic worth ("Penicilina",
"Me
la llevo", "Qué será esto"; "La
cazuelita", "Mexicanita veracaruzana"...), together
with Matamoros
Conjuct and made the famous Mexican tour, deriving in the further
decision to stay in this country, this will be a decisive step in
his amazing career.
In Cuba, Benny had become an exclusive artist from RCA Víctor,
discograhic agency at that time, he worked, for about a year under
the direction of diverse and notable orchestral directors, each
one having a different conception about the musical fact, each one
giving new elements which will be exploited later by his extraordinary
talent.
In 1948, he met the outstanding musician Dámaso Pérez
Prado and learned a lot about new –almost daring- harmonic,
rhythmic and orchestral concepts of this great musician. This influence,
coming from the Matanzas-born Master, jazz and contemporary music
lover was vital for Benny, who were already composing and contributing
to the elaboration of the tracks.
In the late 1951, he decides to start the musical conquest of the
island, starting by Santiago de Cuba. From the very moment that
Benny decided to jumpstart his Band (August, 1953), well-known as
Giant Band, it began to break rules. First of all, the jazz bands
were generally groups of whites and light mulattos, working basically
for aristocrat clubs, societies for whites and tourist centers.
Benny uses the same format, but in a more popular tone: The Giant
Band was in its early years an orchestra made for massive consumption,
formed by negroes and mulattos never before seen at bourgeois salons
of the epoch.
With the Giant Band, Son acquired great supremacy within the ample
range of Cuban danceable genres it approached. "Manzanillo",
"Santiago de Cuba", "Guantánamo" o "Palma
Soriano" are faithful examples. Many songs have been written
by the Lajas-born artist`s pen, such as "Santa Isabel de Las
Lajas", "Mi saoco". All these sones, which have been
magnified by the magic of a huge Cuban taste when working the jazzband,
have had a strong influence of Mambo, although Son Montuno is prevailing.
Bolero
was also very important for his entire body of work and we can state
for sure that Benny didn’t reject almost any Cuban popular
genre in his music.
This special man, whose peerless style is welcomed today in diverse
places of the world, died on February 19, 1963, living forever as
one of the luminaries of Cuban music.
Excerpted from “Benny Moré: Una Figura de Síntesis”,
Adriana Orejuela, Revista Salsa Cubana. Read
the entire article
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