Tribute to the Cuarteto Patria

Tribute to the Cuarteto Patria

Unlike most of the other stars of <I>Buena Vista Social Club</I>, Eliades Ochoa wasn't whiling away his time in retirement when Ry Cooder sought him out. Throughout the 1990s, Ochoa was busy releasing albums of <I>campesino</I> music, the rural cowboy style of eastern Cuba whose potency owes little to the current nostalgic revival. The <i>campesino</i> <I>son</I> never really went out of date, though it's been eclipsed the past half-century by urban big band genres. Ochoa's combination of an incredibly affable voice and stinging <I>tres</I> solos makes for the most exciting guitar ensemble sound around, and the variety and bright arrangements of <I>Tribute to the Cuarteto Patria</I> leave his first post-Social Club release, <I>Sublime Ilusion</I>, in the dust. Highlights include "No Quiero Celos," which develops into a <I>descarga</I> jam session that fades out in the midst of wonderful trumpet work. "Yiri Yiri Bon" marries a memorable short chorus to a slow buildup of intensity in the manner of the Social Club's "El Cuatro de Tula," a song first heard on Ochoa's 1993 CD with Cuarteto Patria, <I>A una Coqueta</I>. "Casa de la Trova," a tribute to a legendary music club in Santiago de Cuba, begins on a pastoral note until Ochoa's fiery solos and an ecstatic chorus blow the lid right off the cloud cover. Take that, city dwellers! <I>--Bob Tarte</I>