Since many years ago, Reynier Mariño is considered one of the best defenders of flamenco music in the island, his work, already recorded by national labels, having growing success and gaining more and more acceptance, is also part of this well-packed bunch of sonorities conforming the panorama of Cuban music.

On the concert's note where Mariño featured his debut opus Alma Gitana, Master Harold Gramatges wrote: ''This group is opening an space for the emotion legitimized in its essence for that Lorca-styled goblin showing his face when a group like this one convoke the happy event of the Cuban meeting with Andalucian roots''.

Without a doubt, during XVIII century, qualified by studious as the decisive period in the formation process of Cuban nationality and culture, about 23, 62 % of Iberian immigrants came from Andalucia. These figures didn't changed in XIX, although Galicians, Catalans and Asturians also found place in our country.

With the exodus nothing remained untouched. The so-called transculturation process altered also the Andalucian essence to give space to the Cuban Ajiaco. This ''all mixed'', tackled so many times by Nicolás Guillén, gave more privilege to the ''punto guajiro'' brought by the Isleños than to this sort of peninsular manifestation.

Flamenco music entwined then not only to other instruments, such as batá drums, but also with other sonorities which resulting sound has been registered for history, in the most important luminaries recordings of all times.

Since many years ago, Cubans managed to testify the purest flamenco music revival through dancing companies and older people might remember Obdulia Breijo and Marianita Morejón, both cultivators of this genre just as it came from the Iberian Peninsula.

In this way, Reynier Mariño`s appearance at the current Cuban stage is not a surprise.

Notes from the article Reynier Mariño o la Resurreción del Flamenco. By Marta María Ramírez, Publisher on Granma Newspaper. July/2003.

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