When Juan Formell died, Cuba no doubt lost the greatest musical narrator of everyday life on this island in the last 45 years, a chronicler through-and-through with a unique sensibility. In fact, one of the great merits of his band, Los Van Van, was to make people dance by singing stories that the news media touched on timidly, if at all.
\nMoreover, the vast discography of the so-called \u201cCuban Music Train\u201d included notably graphic chronicles marked by local customs, characters, and phrases that are part of this country\u2019s cultural legacy. With their lyrics, the band addressed everything from the migration phenomenon (\u201cLa Habana no aguanta m\u00e1s\u201d) to the loss of values (\u201cSe muere de sed la t\u00eda\u201d) and the craze for building \u201cbarbacoas,\u201d or lofts within apartments.
\nBehind it all was the vision and desire to do something different of Formell, the illustrious son of Havana\u2019s folkloric Cayo Hueso neighborhood, and the creator of rhythms like the chang\u00fc\u00ed-shake and the songo. From their first album, Los Van Van amazed people with their conceptual irreverence: it was an unclassifiable groove that clearly had airs of charanga, but also of funk, filin, pop rock and ballad. All of it a blessed heresy\u2026.
\nIn that first album, it was notable that the band had an ability for describing environments, using popular slang in its lyrics, and making its own contributions to urban poetics. We have, for example, the diverse stories of Maril\u00fa, Laura Chancleta and Yuya Mart\u00ednez, and scathing comments like \u201cqu\u00e9 fea esa vieja, por Dios\u201d (\u201cwhat an ugly old woman, for god\u2019s sake\u201d), or \u201ces una bola de humo, que saca de quicio a cualquiera\u201d (\u201che\u2019s a real handful, he\u2019ll drive anybody crazy\u201d).
\nThe albums that followed solidified the testimonial zeal of this band, with songs like \u201cLa Habana joven,\u201d \u201cChirr\u00edn chirr\u00e1n,\u201d and \u201cEl martes\u201d, and, more recently, \u201cTV a color,\u201d \u201cCon el bate de aluminio,\u201d and \u201cCu\u00e9ntame\u201d.
\nIn the 1980s, Formell talked about continuing education (\u201cDe 5 a 7\u201d), the \u201cmicro-brigades\u201d (\u201cConstructores por derecho\u201d), viruses (\u201cEso que anda\u201d), bread (\u201cArtesanos de la harina\u201d), stress (\u201cT\u00fa, tranquilo\u201d), old men who like young women (\u201cLa titiman\u00eda\u201d), and rumors (\u201cEl negro no tiene n\u00e1\u201d). He also gave us classics of the picaresque genre in the voice of singer Pedrito Calvo, such as \u201cQue le den candela,\u201d \u201cEl negro est\u00e1 cocinando,\u201d and \u201cLa fruta,\u201d a real manifesto on consumer rights.
\nThat fertile decade ended with an album that was called, precisely, Cr\u00f3nicas (\u201cChronicles,\u201d 1989), in which he addressed the squabble between high and popular culture (\u201cNo soy de la gran escena\u201d) and certain vices of the socialist workplace (\u201cSe cambia el turno\u201d).
\nThe 1990s brought the salsa boom, and while Los Van Van did not escape from a certain tendency to “toot their own horn” in their lyrics, the band kept its tradition of singing to the Cuban people and their new challenges and popular speech. We should clarify that many of these works were the fruit of the richly creative team of Formell and C\u00e9sar \u201cPupy\u201d Pedroso, whose personal stamp significantly influenced the band until he left it in 1999.
\nSome of the classics from that time include \u201cLa sorpresa,\u201d \u201cSoy todo\u201d (based on a poem by Eloy \u201cEl Ambia\u201d Machado), \u201cSoy normal,\u201d \u201cUn socio pa mi negocio,\u201d \u201cPura vestimenta,\u201d and \u201cTemba, tumba, timba,\u201d by Pupy. In recent years, Los Van Van have consolidated as Cuba\u2019s emblematic band, the most enduring favorite of dancers, and a worldwide reference for those who defend the universal aspect of the local reality.
\nThat ability for chronicling the essence of being Cuban is what characterized Formell, whose death brought mourning to a country that few others could sing about as well as he could.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Juan Formell died, Cuba no doubt lost the greatest musical narrator of everyday life on this island in the last 45 years, a chronicler through-and-through with a unique sensibility. In fact, one of the great merits of his band, Los Van Van, was to make people dance by singing stories that the news media […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1726,"featured_media":37281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13930],"tags":[903,313],"ppma_author":[33630,6898],"class_list":["post-37280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technologies-of-communication-and-media","tag-juan-formell-en","tag-van-van"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n