A La Cuata Co y Co, Echale Candela, 1926

One of the very first groups to record son in Habana in the 1920s, Sexteto Boloña didn’t have the long career of sextetos Nacional and Habanero (who by the 1930s added trumpets and became septetos), but bandleader and tresero Alfredo Boloña (the tiny guy on the far right) managed to round up some of the heavy hitters of the local scene to fly up to New York and cut a record for the short-lived Brunswick label.

The newly formed sextet, featuring hotshot tenor “El Gran Caruso” Abelardo Barroso (he’s got that funky, high-pitched nasal voice on the recording) and the mysterious and talented bongocero known only as “El Chino,” recorded a total of 16 tracks over two days in the fall of 1926. Although the Havana sound of this period had already been considerably “citified” in many ways when compared to the more “black” sounds of Oriente (read: syncopated, African-influenced, favoring rhythmic rather than harmonic complexity), Sexteto Bolo&ña retains much of the old funkiness. The repertoire is still too “savage” for European audiences to really get into - remember that in 1926 we’re still a few years out from Nacional’s big hit “Suavecito,” whose smooth groove won over audiences in Spain and soon after the rest of Europe.

This track, “A La Cuata Co y Co,” shows clearly the Yoruba roots of some of the musicians involved. Not only are the lyrics in bozal - a mix of Spanish and Yoruba - but the lyrics refer directly to regla de ocha (otherwise known as santería, an Afro-Cuban religion of Yoruba origin that is still practiced in Cuba and elsewhere):

“Yo tengo que hacé un ebbo…con coco, maíz y jutía, y un gallo pa’ Yemaya”

[”I’ve got to perform an ‘ebbo’ (a ritual sacrifice performed to appease the orishas, or deities) with coconut, corn, and jutía (a kind of rodent), and a rooster for Yemaya (one of the primary orishas)”]

My favorite part, though, is the coda, which changes abruptly to 6/8, a direct musical reference to Afro-Cuban religious ceremonies. It’s clear that for Bolo&ña and his band mates, Havana son, for all it’s smoothed out European-style harmonies and matching outfits and recording sessions in Nueva York, is not so far removed from the toques de santo held in secret at the homes of ocha devotées…