Los Fakires
Los Fakires
Genres: cuban, world, son, cuba, Latin folk
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About Los Fakires
Los Fakires are from Santa Clara, a town in central Cuba. In songs by pioneering Cuban composers like Ignacio Piñeiro and Ernesto Lecuona, they gave the old sones and guarachas their own breezy lilt, a poised regional accent that's different from the Havana- based revival of the Buena Vista Social Club. All of Los Fakires's instruments - alto saxophone, guitar, bongos, guiro and cowbell - were acoustic and portable, as if the band could pick up and play tableside at a cafe. The songs were pure transparent counterpoint. José Remie often used his guitar simply to pluck bass lines, not chords. The group's lead singer, Cascarita (the nickname of Martín Chavez), has a sweet, poised tenor, with the kind of delivery that made its way into West African rumba. As Cascarita portrayed the amiable suitor, celebrated tropical indolence or defined the essentials of the son ("guitar, tobacco and rum"), José Bringues played teasing little saxophone lines, sometimes tossing in an odd quote - like "Jingle Bells" - or switching to dissonant whole- tone scales. Rafael Valdés, on maracas, sang close harmony with Cascarita and took over a few lead vocals, with a broader, more extroverted tenor that could turn mock-operatic.
Taken from Last.fm
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