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Genius fulfills one hundred years, Oh, life!
19February
Articles

Genius fulfills one hundred years, Oh, life!

                                      ... this voice thin as the wind, hungry and hurricane like the wind, is the voice of nobody.

                                                                                                        Roberto Fernández Retamar

His music allows us to bury the past. Recordings with more than fifty years keep the original timbre of Bartolomé Maximiliano Moré (a name too long to remember) -simply Benny-, an artist of the present, a true popular idol alien to campaigns and pamphlets; imitated until the end, preserved in the memory of the street, in the bars that no longer have victrola, in the Afro-Cuban religion, in a cane, high-hat, style ...

To talk about his track again and "spend" his songs, this 2019 when the first hundred years of the Genius are celebrated, the Music and Entertainment Company that takes his name, summons musicians, painters, filmmakers, photographers, fashion designers, creators of radio and television, workers of culture and the people in general, to participate in the day of homage to the Great of Rhythm, from this February 19 and until August 24, 2019.

The Organizing Committee encourages the call to highlight the figure of this unrepeatable genius to stimulate the interest of the younger generations and to appropriate the current work that the Sonero Mayor bequeathed to us, reservoir of obligatory reference and patrimonial identification.

According to the journalist Joaquín G. Santana "Benny Moré was the anecdote, the passion of the rhythm, the popular poetry. (...) His influence was such that, beyond his boleros or his sones, he imposed a lifestyle on Cubans. He had the virtue of mirrors-we saw ourselves in him- and also the virility of the pole of mount, that strength that we Latinos prefer and admire secretly at times. (...)

"He was an innovator and a creationist. He intuitively printed to the popular music, a typical air in which all Cubans saw, we felt, we were beating with a single voice. He also became a great re-creator of the Creole dance. The Cuban choreography is in debt to him. He discovered a language, a dance expression, that many dance professionals (...) He was a great performer in all senses, of popular sensibility. "

Let's take advantage of 2019 to talk, write and discuss his work. The boleros, sones and guarachas that sounded in his voice will have to occupy the first positions in the musical lists of our media ...

All tribute to the memory of the Genius.

On the two hundredth birthday  us from today will not be present, although by then he will continue to sing bonito y sabroso.

See: Un son montuno for Benny Moré by Joaquín G. Santana in Revista Bohemia, 1970.