Guantanamera: The Essential Album

‘Ten years without Compay Segundo,’ says the sticker on the album cover, which is a slightly odd marketing slogan for this rather fine commemorative collection. But it has indeed been a decade since the death of the veteran Cuban singer and guitarist, born Francisco Repilado, better known as Compay Segundo, who would have been 107 this year if he was still alive. All 20 of these tracks were recorded between 1995 and 2000 when the Buena Vista Social Club star was in his late 80s-early 90s, still in vigorous voice and enjoying a once unimaginable sunset to his long career. ‘Y Tu Que Has Hecho?’ is included from 1997’s Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club album, although Segundo’s most famous contribution to that album, the anthemic ‘Chan Chan’, is presented in a later and markedly different version recorded for his 1999 album Calle Salud, embellished by a lovely and unusual clarinet arrangement (an instrument for which he had a great fondness and learned before he took up the guitar in the 1930s).

The remainder of the tracks are drawn from the five albums Segundo recorded for Warner Music’s Spanish division, an elegant, gently swaying set of son, danzon and bolero rhythms; his deep, grainy voice accompanied by his distinctive seven-string armó nico guitar, and supported by some typically subtle and empathetic Cuban ensemble playing.