Vocal
About Sampling
Interviewed and Reviewed by
Rushing
upstairs to meet the new and renewed Vocal Sampling
(VS), at a Miami Beach hotel suite, my thoughts were
beholden to jazz and other musical matters. Once in the
company of these engaging guys, Vocal matters became
Sampling. Facing the fellows, the wear and tear of the
hurried publicizing efforts showed on the semblances
and body language of the six young veterans that currently
form the internationally famed VS, as most of them seemed
to meld into their respective couches. All members of
the group are trained musicians with extensive formal
educations, although their experiences playing with normal
musical ensembles is limited to some work with local
Cuban groups.
After
a recording hiatus, albeit keeping somewhat busy on the
gigging front throughout Japan, Israel, the U.S. and
Europe, VS is back with a new effort entitled “Cambio
de tiempo.” The recording is the byproduct of
the producing efforts of Ana Lourdes Martínez,
an experienced EGREM worker who has also done work in
Spain, and René Baños Pascual. Hugo Cancio
is the U.S. representative of VS and the contact for
the interview. We had the opportunity to talk with all
the members of VS for a few minutes early on the afternoon
of June 24th, 2002. They were going to have their record
release party at Club Crystal on the following night
when they were going to perform one set for the audience.
René
Baños Pascual, is the group’s baritone, Director,
and does strings. His intelligent and incisive look was
edged on a young man with a peaceful countenance and
demeanor, who aside from his vocal instrumental range,
is a keyboardist with a spacious musical education. With
passionate calm, Baños Pascual indicated, when
asked about the development of the group’s repertoire,
that there “would not be any abrupt changes in the
genre’s represented in their performances.”
He, however, went on to mention that there will be experiments
with the group’s sonority and that they would include
Venezuelan joropos, Mexican rancheras and interpretations
with the explicit use of European Classical music in
their current performance schedule. The group’s
leader enthusiastically endorsed the case of their use
of Strauss’s Symphonic Poem, concentrating their
interpretation on the sound on the horns as and indication
of “the growing musical repertoire and sound of
our group.” Therefore, there is nothing new in the
musical and marketable VS formula of infusing akin musical
textures and expressions with their unique take on musical
performances swigged with their cubanía.
There
are three new members in VS. One of them, Jorge Núñez
Chaviano, is an Amadeo Roldán trained musicologist.
He’s a tenor, strings, metals and lead vocalist
in VS. The residual VS rookies graduated from the Cuban
Instituto Superior de Arte. They are percussionist Renato
Mora Espinoza, who in VS does tenor and strings, and
trombonist Oscar Porro Jiménez, who is the current
bassist of the group. While talking about their favorite
countries to visit and perform, the three remaining VS
members from the original crew, almost in unison, mentioned
that the three new members were extremely eager to visit
Puerto Rico. The faces of the new members lit up when
the fraternal island was mentioned. They have been well
received there and sell rather well for their niche in
the market. Both Abel Sanabria Padrón, who does
the percussion at VS and feisty Reynaldo Santer Maseda,
who is tenor and strings, concurred on their preference
for Puerto Rico as a venue, adding that other places
throughout Central and South America, Panama in particular,
were “like being home.”
It was enlivening to compare the lot of musicians on
opposite sides of the geopolitical stretch. It is the
opinion of VS, for example, that, for the most part,
the conditions of musicians they have met throughout
their worldwide journeys resemble those of Cubans. They
obviously enjoy the privilege of keeping a tight and
stable musical collective under the sponsorship of the
Cuban government, whereas they were very conscious of
the fact that even in Cuba there were many musicians
with day jobs. Baños Pascual knows that the elusive
stability of a musical group is essential, although an
unreachable goal for most musicians. As a group, however,
VS is evolving within what they perceive as favorable
musical conditions, at least in terms of tightness and
stability. One should add, nonetheless, that such privileges
come easy to those who are as successful as VS is. On
the business side of musical matters, although Baños
Pascual asserted “payola is only a rumor in musical
promotions inside Cuba,” apparently even there the
business of music is the music business. In such businesses,
VS is doing well enough to travel and meet appreciative
audiences throughout the world who can now listen to
their new production.
This page last updated on
10-Jan-2008
