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La Última
Juan Formell
1942-2014
photo by Tom, Erhlich • 2010 • Yoshi's, San Francisco
Last night we lost the most important Cuban musician since Arsenio Rodríguez.
A few hours before getting this horrible news Orlando Fiol and I were working out the chord changes to a string of Juan Formell songs and marveling at his endless creativity. The track below, from 1996, is typical of Formell's best work - running the full range of emotions, starting with melancholy and building slowly and relentlessly through a series of higher and higher climaxes.
A handful of the greatest musicians are able to spend a few years in that magical zone where one brilliant idea flows out of the last and each connects directly with the hearts of their public. Juan Formell stepped into that zone with Aquí se enciende la candela in 1970 and stayed there for as long as he stayed on this earth.
Among countless awards, Formell won the Grammy in 1999 for Llegó Van Van and the Grammy Latino a la Excelencia in 2013. He also composed the top two songs in our "greatest timba song of all-time" poll - Soy todo and Te pone la cabeza mala. I clearly recall counting the votes and it was not remotely close. But for every towering hit that you know by heart there's another - just as great - that you may not have discovered: Barriste con el, No somos de la gran escena, Quién no ha dicho una mentira, Ponte para las cosas, Pero a mi manera, Si tú te vas, Mis dudas, Me basta con pensar, Tú tranquilo ... we've lost the man, but his music will last forever.
Formell's death caps one of the most tragic two-week periods in memory, with the losses of Armando Peraza, Cheo Feliciano, Chuck Silverman, and Gabriel García Márquez.
QDEP, Juan...
I'm still coming to grips with this news. I think that many of us who grew up with his music as it was happening just assumed that somehow he would always be here. As Kevin pointed out, his music still remains and still sounds younger than so much of the world about us. His work with Reve's band in the Changüi 68 format and then the early Los Van Van of the 1970s helped shape who I was as a young man - it was my Beatles or Stones if you like - and regardless of where the lyrics might be going, the music itself carried an optimism that made you feel as if you could get through absolutely anything.
It was a music far more powerful than any political tensions between the US and Cuba - some of the very same people in the US who practically made a profession of condemning modern Cuban bands were secret Los Van Van fans. The hypocrisy was sometimes palpable. Music that was powerful enough to lead a young man to tape record the songs from shortwave radio and listen repeatedly - interference and all - and hope for the day (which did finally come) when he could get the actual vinyl.
I'm glad that Juan lived long enough to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin GRAMMY folks. I often wonder how different the trajectory of Latin music in the US might have been had Juan's music been able to circulate more freely here in the 1970s and 1980s. My gut tells me that the correct answer is "very".
If anyone who is reading all of this does not really understand what made Juan Formell's music so very, very different, go seek out Los Van Van's third album from the 70s and fire up Llegue Llegue. This was a full decade before anyone was even uttering the word Timba in a musical context - it was Songo then. And it still sounds hipper than almost everything that followed it. Listening to it now is peeling decades away from the age of my soul, if only for a little while.
Juan, Thank You for everything that you left us, You WILL be remembered, and in the end, that's the best that a man can do.