• Submitted by: manso
• Arts and Culture
• 10 / 26 / 2010

---

10/25/2010. By Elizabeth López Corzo. “Paciencia” (Patience), the debut disc by singer-songwriter Ray Fernandez, stands out as a great success in the contemporary panorama of Cuban music because of the authenticity of his proposal that comes from the traditional trova and the Nueva Trova (New Trova) to renew itself with dissimilar local and foreign rhythms.

“Paciencia”, recently released by the EGREM, reaffirms the author as a restless questioner of everything that surrounds him, as much when he sings to love as to what happens in Cuba. One of the luxuries of the album is the participation of the diva of the Buena Vista Club, Omara Portuondo.

According to Cuban music researchers like Joaquin Borges Triana, the work by Ray includes tango, rock, Spanish music… and the author manages to fuse all that and to turn it into a same melody. Precisely, that diverse tone is a reflection of what is happening in music worldwide today. Here is one of the values of the disc.

Ray is part of the legacy of the New Trova (Song) Movement and one of the most interesting exponents of that phenomenon that Joaquin has called “contemporary Cuban song”.

Listening to Ray is to feel tradition very close; his skills to improvise or to make a sonnet in the middle of a show are genuinely Cuban peculiarities. Thus the singer has confessed he inherited that from his grandfather and from the number of nights at the Malecon (seaside drive).

From his new sonority with cracked voice, like an old blues singer, to the funny anecdotes that recreate his lyrics, Ray is suggesting a different way of making Cuban song that is at the same time another way of telling the history of this island.

Though there are some themes that do not appear in the disc such as “Lucha tu yuca” or “Matarife” –which have been popular among his fans– it can be said that they form part of the musical memory, because they are one of the best metaphors of our society, Joaquin commented.

Tony Pinelli, another great Cuban music expert, assured that projects like this one should be supported by record companies, regardless of budgets or limits because the future of our music is there.
 
To those who like honest and well-made songs, the ones that make us smile, dance and think, “Paciencia” is one of those discs that are worth having on hand.

Source: Cubasi Translation Staff