Audio By Carbonatix
“Listen,” says Mari Lauret, holding her hand up to halt the conversation at a tiny table in the downtown lounge I/O. It’s not often she has the chance to hear her song “Te Soñé, Lluvia de Abril” (“I Dreamed of You, April Rain”) in public, even though the tune, recorded by popular neo-troubadour Francisco Cespedes for his latest album Ay, Corazón, is a big hit in Spain. Pancho’s smoky, heartbroken voice is almost irresistible and his previous album, Donde Está la Vida (Where’s the Life?), got a lot of love on local radio, but this time around he made the mistake of including “Como Hacer Para Empezar” (“What to Do to Begin?”), a track written for him by his friend Pablo Milanes, one of the legends of the poetic — and often political — Cuban song movement nueva trova. Even though Cespedes left Cuba in exile and is quick to condemn the bearded one in interviews, he still believes the beauty of Milanes’s songs transcends his political differences with the songwriter. Not so with Miami radio programmers: Not only is the Milanes track off-limits, but Cespedes’s whole damn album is off the air. Lauret’s beautiful ballad is guilty by association.
“It’s nice that it’s a hit in other places,” says Lauret with a resigned smile, “but I wish they would play it in Miami, because I live here.”
Lauret is herself a Cuban exile, having sacrificed her career as a classical cellist on the island for political freedom in the United States. As in so many cases, Castro’s loss is Latin pop’s gain: The soft-spoken Cubana has written more than 200 songs since arriving on the Mariel boatlift 22 years ago. Tonight she is the first up in a new songwriters showcase, Esencia, organized by El Nuevo Herald music critic Erwin Perez and publicist/promoter Luis Sanabria. The Argentine-born Perez is so pumped up that he follows the Cespedes disc with Versos en el Cielo (Verses in Heaven), an astonishing collection of nueva trova recorded by island resident Issac Delgado. “Nobody can call me a coward,” says Perez giddily as he rushes by Lauret’s table. For all the posturing, though, Perez is less interested in making a political statement than in celebrating great music.
“I really like the songwriters’ world,” he says of the motivation behind Esencia. “They’re the people who give music meaning. Usually they’re great singers and musicians as well, but they don’t have a venue to show off.”
Perez hopes to build on the tradition established by Songwriters in the Round, the sorely missed showcase organized by Ellen Moraskie of Warner-Chappell Publishing and songwriters such as Desmond Child from 1996 through 2002. Perez is also quick to point out that he appreciates the events hosted by ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). Unlike those industry showcases, though, Perez and Sanabria say they have organized Esencia as fans for fans. “We’re like groupies,” admits Perez unabashedly. “We spend hours talking about music and the music business. You always see the artists smiling and talking about their latest release; we want to show people what goes on behind the scenes.”
Sometimes what goes on behind the scenes doesn’t sound so good, at least not at the beginning. Esencia’s first night gets off to a rough start, then ends with a bang. The series opens with Mari Lauret because, says Perez, “she’s always been a symbol of the songwriter. She’s never been a solo artist, but she’s very well respected.” She’s also a trouper: She never stops smiling or singing while accompanied by her husband, guitarist Arturo Fuerte, even though the I/O sound system cuts in and out throughout her set.
Taking no chances, the next songwriter, vocal powerhouse Ley Alejandro, resorts to lip-synching — not that he needs a microphone. A singer with timba-funksters NG La Banda until he defected from Cuba, Alejandro now seems determined to outdo crooner Cristian Castro in vocal gymnastics. Canned Mexican music competes with painfully choreographed emoting until, mercifully, he decides to showboat a cappella.
Next, a full band sets up to back MDO (a.k.a. Menudo, in its final stages) grad Didier Hernandez, who delivers a hit he wrote for Christian diva Jaci Velazquez before borrowing a guitar to take a stab at the serious altrock numbers he’s written for his forthcoming solo album. “I like him,” says Lauret, sufficiently recovered from her own ordeal to nod approvingly. Turns out, Hernandez can’t stay too serious too long. At the end of the set, he leaps out of his seat and unleashes his hips, begging the question: You can take a boy out of Menudo, but can you take Menudo out of the boy?
In between sets a host of singers, songwriters, musicians, and producers commiserates with Lauret and congratulates Alejandro and Hernandez. There are two out of the three brothers from the trio Los Hidalgo; nueva trova fave Donato Poveda, dressed in white; and merengue innovator Ray Tavaré, winner of the night’s prize for best hair with a freeform Afro that peaks like a mountain on one side. Based on the number of pats on the back and pecks on the cheek, though, the man of the hour is Juan Vicente Zambrano, producer of megahits for Ricky Martin, J.Lo, Gloria Estefan, and Carlos Vives and on and on. As the final act of the night, he proudly presents Marcela Cardenas, one of the four songwriters from the publishing company he founded, Calima Music.
At 12:45 a.m. (too late for some of us on a Wednesday, muchachos!) Marcela changes the mind of anyone thinking of sneaking out early as soon as she opens her voice. Lauret, who has already said her goodbyes, stands in the doorway, transfixed by the Colombian’s deep, dusky voice as she gives a jazzy turn to her song “Ay, Corazón” — the opening track on Alexandre Pires’s album Estrella Guia (Guiding Star) that garnered the singer and his production team a nomination for a Latin Grammy. There are only about 50 people left in the club, but they are all out of their seats and flooding the dance floor as Marcela turns her talent to pop-folk fusion with fresh takes on cumbia and bambuco. “You are all Colombians tonight,” Marcela Cardenas announces. By the end of the set, she’s not even singing her own compositions, but no one cares.
