Havana
Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.
– 4 December 1950) was a
Cuban
Cuban may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Cuba, a country in the Caribbean
* Cubans, people from Cuba, or of Cuban descent
** Cuban exile, a person who left Cuba for political reasons, or a descendant thereof
* Cuban citizen, a perso ...
pianist and a leading composer/arranger of the day. He composed music for stage shows and films, and some famous Cuban dance music.Giro, Radamés 2007. ''Diccionario enciclopédico de la música en Cuba''. La Habana. vol 2, p175 Eliseo was one of three musical brothers, all composers, the others being Emilio (Neno','' 1901–1941) and Ernesto (1908–1981). Emilio went on composing even after having a leg bitten off by a
shark
Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimo ...
in 1930;Sublette, Ned 2004. ''Cuba and its music: from the first drums to the mambo''. Chicago. p406 Ernesto was a drummer who became leader of the Tropicana's orchestra.
Life & work
Eliseo studied music under Mercedes Valenzuela and Leandro Simón Guergué, the father of
Moisés Simons
Moisés Simons (born Moisés Simón Rodríguez; 24 August 1889 in Havana, Cuba – 28 June 1945 in Madrid, Spain),zarzuelas. Later he joined the company of Regino López at the ''Teatro Cubano''.
In 1925 Grenet founded a jazz band which played in the cabaret ''Montmatre'' and the ''Jockey Club''. The line-up included Grenet (piano); Manolo Castro (
alto sax
The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in E, smaller than the B ten ...
); José Ramón Betancourt (
tenor sax
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...
); Pedro Mercado (
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
); Jorge Bolet (piano sub); Enrique Santiesteban (percussion and singer). In 1927 came the premiere of the zarzuela ''La Niña Rita, o La Habana de 1830'' at the ''Teatro Regina'', with music by Grenet and
Ernesto Lecuona
Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (; August 7, 1896 – November 29, 1963) was a Cuban composer and pianist, many of whose works have become standards of the Latin, jazz and classical repertoires. His over 600 compositions include songs and zarzuelas as ...
. In this zarzuela, Grenet's number, the tango-congo ''Ay, Mamá Inéz'', became a huge hit, and remains popular today and is often heard at wedding receptions. Its origins lie in a
comparsa
A comparsa is a group of singers, musicians and dancers that take part in carnivals and other festivities in Spain and Latin America. Its precise meaning depends on the specific regional celebration. The most famous comparsas are those that parti ...
number of 1868, and in its new guise became one of the signature numbers for the vedette
Rita Montaner
Rita Aurelia Fulcida Montaner y Facenda (20 August 1900 – 17 April 1958), known as Rita Montaner, was a Cuban singer, pianist and actress. In Cuban parlance, she was a '' vedette'' (a star), and was well known in Mexico City, Paris, Miami and ...
. In 1930 he set a number of Nicolas Guillén's poems ''Motivos del son'' to music.
Grenet left Cuba in 1932 after falling foul of some of
Gerardo Machado
Gerardo Machado y Morales (28 September 1869 – 29 March 1939) was a general of the Cuban War of Independence and President of Cuba from 1925 to 1933.
Machado entered the presidency with widespread popularity and support from the major polit ...
's henchmen, for the lyric of his ''Lamento cubano'', which had the line:
:''Ay Cuba hermosa, primorosa, por qué sufres hoy tantos quebrantos?'' (Beautiful Cuba, why do you suffer such troubles isruptiontoday?)
He returned after Machado was forced out of office. Whilst abroad in Spain he directed the orchestra for the
operetta
Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its s ...
''La virgen morena'', in
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
. Next, in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, he directed the same work. In Paris, too, he played piano at La Cueva, the nightclub he partly owned, in the resident band of
Julio Cueva
Julio Cueva (Trinidad, Cuba, 12 April 1897 – Havana, 25 December 1975) was a Cuban trumpeter, composer and band leader. He was an important figure in the spread of Cuban popular music in the 1930s.
Life and career
Cueva played cornet in the lo ...
. There he joined his brother Ernesto, who played percussion. It was here that playing ''La comparsa de los congos'', that he realized the potential of this carnival rhythm. It has been said that he introduced the
conga
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...
to America, and this may or may not be true. The
Lecuona Cuban Boys The Lecuona Cuban Boys was a popular Cuban orchestra which toured the world for over forty years.
The band was founded by Ernesto Lecuona, whose role was that of a patron-entrepreneur. He did not actually play with the band, but sometimes gave a p ...
, a touring band, were writing and playing congas at the same time.
In 1936 he founded the night-club ''El Yumurí'', on
Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. This which featured a local Puerto Rican group led by Pedro Flores, and a cabaret. In 1938 Grenet presented the review ''La Conga'' in his club, and later put on a spectacular at the ''Teatro Hispano'' in New York, with the leading Cuban singer Panchito Riset (Havana, 21 October 1911–New York, 8 August 1988).Giro, Radamés 2007. ''Diccionario enciclopédico de la música en Cuba''. La Habana. vol 4, p27 for Riset.
Summary of main compositions
Grenet wrote, arranged and sometimes directed music for a number of musical stage shows and films, and recorded for
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
and
Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916.
History
From 1916
Records under the Brunswick label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, a company based in Dubuque, Iowa which had been manufacturing produ ...
. Overall, his style and influence was part of the
afrocubanismo
Afrocubanismo was an artistic and social movement in black-themed Cuban culture with origins in the 1920s, as in works by the cultural anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. The Afrocubanismo movement focused on establishing the legitimacy of black ident ...
movement between the two
world wars
A world war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World WarI (1914 ...
.
Film music
He wrote film music for ''La Princesa Tam-tam'', starring
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald; naturalised French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted Fran ...
(Paris); ''Escándalo de estrellas'', ''Conga bar'' and ''Estampas coloniales'' featuring Miguelito Valdés, (
México City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
); ''Milonga de arrabal'', (
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
); ''Noches cubanas'', (New York); and ''Susana tiene un secreto'', (
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
).
Lyric theatre
Music for the following zarzuelas and other musical theatre: ''La toma de Veracruz'', premiered in 1914 in the Teatro Alhambra (Havana), ''Bohemia'', ''Como las golondrinas'', ''El mendigo'', ''El santo del hacendado'', ''El submarino cubano'', ''El tabaquero'' (libretto: Arquimedes Pous), ''La camagüeyana'' (premiered in Barcelona 1935), ''La virgen morena'', ''Mi peregrina maldita'', ''La Niña Rita, o La Habana en 1830'', music co-authored with Ernesto Lecuona.
Recorded pieces
Grenet wrote, amongst many other numbers, ''Las perlas de tu boca'', ''El sitierito'', ''Lamento esclavo'', ''Tabaco verde'', ''La comparsa de los congos'', ''La mora'', ''México'', ''La princesa tam-tam'', ''Papá Montero'', ''Rica pulpa'', ''Mi vida es cantar'', ''Lamento cubano'', ''Negro bembón'', ''Tu no sabe inglé'', ''Sóngoro cosongo'', ''Ay! Mamá Inés'' (aka "Mama Inez") .
Discography of American Historical Recordings
The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) is a database of master recordings made by American record companies during the 78rpm era. The DAHR provides some of these original recordings, free of charge, via audio streaming, along with ...