The first Cuban composer died 200 years ago.

It's been said he was the first, although it will always be hard to assure. Who can deny the possibility of someone with vihuela or simply using the hands, creating music on the stony and slow days in what never was Las Indias?


Diverse discographic editions from Salas's work have updated him before the contemporary auditorium.

Not even he, himself, was conscious about how advanced he was. Many years after, when Pablo Fernando Balaguer discovered his scores and Alejo Carpentier fixed his coordinates and even more recently, when Miriam Escudero had the lucky strike of reviving his pages of chants honoring María Virgin, is when we know, at least, Don Esteban Salas, if it's not for the first time, at least saw, and this is his great merit, the seeds of concert music in the island, holding a signature way of conceiving the creative gesture.

This July 14 celebrated a pair of centuries of his death. Born in Havana, Esteban Salas Castro had the best moment of life in Santiago de Cuba, where he served as Chapel Master from the cathedral of this city since February 8, 1764.

The master proved his talent to insert himself in a conservative religious community, not ready for innovation, hardly aware of the Old Continent's novelties, wrapped in the art of fugue and contrapunto, in the science of canon and continue bass, until it gets essential.

Fortunately, we can currently listen his works in phonographic registers thanks to Exaudi, Schola Cantorum and Ars Longa. Luminary professors for the likes of Electo Silva and Carmen Collado, through excellent concerts close us to this extraordinary Salas's gene. National Museum of Music, headed by Jesús Gómez Cairo shows a huge exhibits about our major musician.

But, time after time, we have to come up with Carpentier, who discovered, using sharp observations, the brightness and quality of Salas' inheritance in its essential essay ''La Música en Cuba'' (The Music in Cuba), recently reedited by Círculo de Lectores de Madrid.

Alejo informed us about the features of Salas' music: ''All scores are written with surprising security. In Villancicos, he uses two parts of violins and sustain bass, joining exceptionally, two flutes and a trompa. (...) Despite his love for Neapolitan School's Masters, Salas doesn't avoid an Iberian root, which used to appear unexpectedly in his most demure works, bringing up to mind the most renewed movements by the Spanish modern school. (...) Refinement, good taste, fresh ideas, never abandon our artist. His language is also consise and direct, (...) Salas was, in a few words, a Cuban Music's Classic''.

Give new fresh airs, have a glimpse of his starting, analize him at his real pace, help us to better understand ourselves. It's the best way to grab his heritage.

Taken from Granma Newspaper