Gerardo Alfonso

This charming performer continues to be well known like a Cuban troubadour because the early ’80s, writing his own songs and performing them with the only real accompaniment of his guitar. His profession developed based on a grand system, the venues raising in proportions from night clubs and cafes to theaters and ethnic centers using the brands of metropolitan areas scribbled within the datebook dealing with decidedly non-Latin features. The 2002 discharge of the Compact disc entitled Ilustrado Caballero de Paris supposed too much to listeners lengthy enchanted with Gerardo Alfonso’s poetic music such as for example “Sabanas Blancas,” a family portrait of his homeland’s beautiful white savannahs. “Yo Te Queria Maria” was an Alfonso ditty shipped unto the Cuban strike parade by Issac Delgado, expressing the familiar desire in Latin music to in some way bond with someone called Maria. Alfonso’s biggest supporters no doubt choose his very own interpretations of his materials, themes which range from the ultra-serious spiritual dogma of “La Balada de John (Sentado con No Crucificado)” to some novelty song like the hip-shaking, shutter-clicking “Polaroide Habana Rock and roll.” For “Un Ilustrado Cabellero de Paris,” the so-called “gentleman of Paris” was a well-known road person in Havana between your ’50s and ’70s, signifying this song is normally some sort of Cuban edition of “Mr. Bojangles.”