Ibrahim Ferrer: The Buena Vista Troubadour

Among the most unlikely careers in modern music is that of Ibrahim Ferrer — a retired Cuban singer reduced to shining shoes for a living, who found international stardom only in his seventies. His warm, unhurried voice — the instrument of a born son singer who had always yearned to croon boleros — made him the troubadour of the Buena Vista Social Club.^[1]

An orphan's apprenticeship

He entered the world, fittingly, amid music: born at a social dance in San Luis, near Santiago de Cuba, on 20 February 1927.^[1] His mother's death left him an orphan at twelve; he took to singing in the streets to get by, and before long set up his first ensemble, a duo formed with a cousin under the name Jóvenes del Son.^[1]

A place in Pacho Alonso's band followed in 1953, in Santiago; when the group relocated to Havana in 1959 it renamed itself Los Bocucos, after a Santiago drum.^[1] Through the decades that followed, Ferrer was the voice that drove the fiery sones and guarachas onto the dance floor — even as the tender bolero remained his quieter ambition.^[1] By 1991 he had stepped away, to all appearances for good.^[1]

Buena Vista and world fame

The turn came in March 1996, when guitarist Ry Cooder and producer Nick Gold convened a company of veteran Cuban players in Havana for what would become the Buena Vista Social Club sessions.^[1] Recalled from retirement almost by accident, Ferrer supplied one of the record's signature voices, set beside that of Omara Portuondo.^[1]

The record, together with Wim Wenders' documentary, lifted the ageing musicians to worldwide renown. A first solo album arrived in 1999 — Buena Vista Social Club Presents Ibrahim Ferrer, brimming at last with the boleros he had long wished to sing — and the following year, at seventy-two, he took the 2000 Latin Grammy for Best New Artist, an accolade as paradoxical as it was fitting for someone six decades into a singing life.^[1]

Why he matters

Ibrahim Ferrer matters because he held within one voice both the depth of the Cuban son and its late, far-reaching revival. A career sideman, he bore the music's memory in his singing; handed the spotlight at the end, he emerged as an interpreter of rare tenderness and poise. Touring almost to the close of his life, he kept at it until shortly before his death in Havana on 6 August 2005, demonstrating that the son — and a patient, lovely voice — could win a worldwide hearing half a century past its golden age.^[2]