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Artist: Orlando 'Cachaito' López
Category: Americas/ Innovator (Winner)
Bass players don't usually get to make solo albums. But if you're the anchor man for the world's most famous group of elderly Cuban musicians, that's a different story.
Over the last five years The Buena Vista Social Club have created a whole new vogue for Cuban music with their elegantly nostalgic sepia tinted versions of classic tunes. In the process, the careers of a largely forgotten generation of musicians have been spectacularly revitalised.
As one of the three original members, Cachaito has provided the supplest of rhythmic backbones for every solo and group project the Buena Vista phenomenon has spawned. Albums by Ibrahim Ferrer, Omara Portuondo, Rubén González and the Afro Cuban All Stars have all featured his playing. But Cachaito's story started long before all this.
He was born into a highly musical family which has produced some 35 bass players, including his famous uncle 'Cachao'. Cachaito ('little Cachao') began playing as a nine-year-old in his aunt's orchestra, who specialised in the sedate danzón style. By the age of 17, in 1950, he had joined Arcano y sus Maravillas. From then on he absorbed both classical and jazz influences,
depending on who he worked with.
The list of his colleagues during this period up to the 1990s reads like a roll call of Cuba's musical élite. PerruchÃn, Riverside Jazz Band, Los Zafiros and Irakere are just a few. Perhaps most significant was a long intuitive musical partnership with pianist Rubén González, which sowed the
seeds for their late flowering career comeback.
When the time finally came for Cachaito to step into the limelight with his own solo album earlier this year, he confounded expectations. Instead of revamping old boleros, cha cha chas and danzónes, he opted for a modernist set of descargas (improvised jams). It featured DJ scratching, dub effects and a wide variety of instrumental soloists, including Aswad's keyboardist 'Bigga' Morrison. And rather than unaccompanied displays of his own virtuosity, Cachaito discreetly worked his playing into the texture of each tumbao (groove).
'I'm not going to play solos all the time,' he says modestly of his role in
the recording.
Biography by Jon Lusk, November 2001
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