MUSIC-VENEZUELA: Two Teenage Sensations Cause Musical Storm

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Mar 18 1997 (IPS) - Teenage singers Florentino and Servando Primera, the sons of famous protest singer Ali Primera, have re- emerged on the Venezualan musical scene as a sensational new duet after their earlier career in the child-band Salserin.

Adolescents going crazy as they pass, adults dancing the salsa with them, “managers” who pushed them into three concerts per day, films and a TV mini-series have all been part of their life in recent months.

Florentino, 15, and Servando, 16, now sing a new tune, thanks to their mother, who rescued them from the child-band to help them boom as a duet, where they have more control over their lives and their music.

Salserin was created four years ago, but came to fame in 1996, largely when the Primera brothers, the singers, grew into attractive adolescents appearing in the TV mini-series “De sol a sol” (From Sunrise to Sunset).

The group also included a four year-old boy and one 13 year-old girl and the musical director was aged 18. But their contract with the Venevision private TV channel and the explosive demand for live performances overwhelmed the Primera brothers and led them to flee the group.

“They fed us badly, we didn’t get enough sleep, and even less time to study and they forced us to do up to three concerts a day,” said Florentino.

Servando said he had been working since he was four years old, taking roles on television and in movies, but that this had not affected his schooling or childhood until 1996. “It was all very tough last year, even the madness of the fans scared us,” he said.

Now the Primera’s are administered by Hecho a Mano, the company owned by Argentine-Venezuelan singer Ricardo Montaner, with a contract which considers their education, recreation and work, giving them the freedom to compose and perform their own music.

Their new record, which is already in the planning stages will have a style of “a mixture of salsa with tropical dance music, but very young,” said Sergio George, who has also backed artists like Jerry Rivera, Mark Anthony, La India and DLG.

Salserin and the Primera brothers achieved what many more important groups tried unsuccessfully in Venezuela: putting the salsa above merengue as the most popular genre with the bulk of the Venezuelan public, after more than 20 years.

“A child-band made the change,” critics wondered while noting that occasional visits of local figures like Oscar de Leon or the Cuban Celia Cruz had previously been the only ones to break the dominion of a rhythm with less Venezuelan roots than the salsa.

Apart from the excesses of the phenomenon, the critics recognised Salserin showed a certain quality uncommon in a group of this sort, so much so that for some time it was thought they used recordings of other musicians.

The attention adults gave to Salserin was partly due to the fact the group was fronted by the sons of Ali Primera, who died in an accident in the 1980’s after shooting to fame a decade earlier as a protest singer.

Ali Primera wrote songs which became urban anthems like “Casas de Carton” (Cardboard houses) about the shanty towns of Caracas, or “Cancion Mansa para un Pueblo Brava” (A Tame Song for a Wild People) and “Tin Marin.”

The singer-songwriter also rediscovered traditional music and but social content into songs like “Cunaviche Adentro,” (Inland from Cunaviche) without ever abandoning his unyielding left-wing views, while even drawing admiration from the right.

Always singing his own songs, Primera promoted the rescue of Creole music and was the forerunner of a new urban music, which de- ideologised produced a run of new singer-songwriters in the country, including Montaner.

“I am very proud of being my father’s son, although I don’t think my desire to sing and compose is only to do with him, but my father is with me all the time,” said Florentino.

“The message we want to give is God, love, peace, salsa and above all no to drugs,” he said, adding “I am like my dad was when he was little, but they accepted me much faster than they did him.”

In Peru the adolescents already melt at the sight of the Primera brothers thanks to their TV series. Then, from May, with their new record in hand and a new youth backing band, they will go out to conquer Mexico and Puerto Rico, before moving on to the rest of Latin America.