MUSIC-CUBA: Lazaro Ross, King of Afro-Cuban Song

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 25 1997 (IPS) - Cuba’s most renowned and respected Afro- Cuban singer is no teen-age sensation – here today, gone tomorrow. Lazaro Ross is 67-years-old and, for three decades, his beguilingly simple music has been the benchmark of a culture that reached Cuba with the first slaves from Africa in the 16th century.

Ross – a ‘Santeria’ or ‘Rule of Eight’, a widely-practiced Afro- Cuban religion, and whose modest apartment is packed with more than 1,000 books declares that “love is the key that moves me.”

But it is his music that moves others. Starting as a drummer when he was a boy, Ross now sings traditional songs passed from generation to generation for centuries, inspires both the fellow believers who participate with him in ceremonies and long-haired followers of ‘Sintesis’, the most popular Afro-Cuban rock band.

Ross collaborated with ‘Sintesis’ in the album ‘Ancentros’, a fusion of the rhythms of religious songs with the modern sounds of today. The recordings go beyond a simple updating of ancestral rhythms and, with an impressive display of technique and traditional knowledge, the musicians merge the beat of the Bata drums with the modern notes of the synthesiser.

At a typical concert, the veteran folksinger – dressed in white – performs on an open-air stage in front of thousands of young people who sing along to lyrics taken from ancient songs, tossing their heads and swaying to the rhythm.

The name conferred on Ross by the ‘Santeria’, is ‘Ochani Ewe’ or King of the Wildlands, a name he carries with pride, and which is known by all of his religious or musical followers.

“Faith and music are one and the same,” Ross tells IPS in his home in Guanabacoa, on the outskirts of Havana, known as a traditional enclave of the Yoruba religion. Born in the Havana neighbourhood of Santos Suarez in 1928, Ross began to practice ‘Santeria’ more than 40 years ago. His elders discovered his musical talent, and for several busy years he travelled with them through Cuba’s villages and towns, while learning the ancient songs.

Ross was invited by Cuban ethnologist Rogelio Martinez Fure in May 1962 to be one of the founders of the National Folkloric Ensemble of Cuba, the only group of its kind in Cuba. The dancer and singer became researcher and teacher.

The ensemble’s frequent tours through Europe and Latin America converted Ross into one of the world’s most celebrated Akpnon, or lead singer in a Yoruba ensemble.

Ross calls books his best friends because “they don’t ask for anything and they give so much.”

His latest project is a book gathering hundreds of original songs in Yoruba, and from Dahomey (today’s Benin), translated to Spanish. As he says, “what is sung by tradition cannot be lost.”