My interviewee has made music and the guitar that place where human behaviors relentlessly fight: our fears, religions, emigration and the deepest roots of a nation; Each of his works hides the ambition to be the mirror in which the viewer discovers himself.
We are talking about Flores Chaviano, a pure Cuban who was born in Caibarién, Villa Clara on December 10, 1946.
As Machado said: “my childhood is memories of a patio in Seville”… hahahaha. My childhood was nothing special in particular, it was a childhood like any child in a large family: we were seven brothers, we were poor and perhaps what I remember with greatest joy is that we were together and we shared everything and that is one of the things that I have greater affection.
I did my studies in a public school, my father was a national police officer in the city of Caibarién; In high school came this misfortune that we have had in Cuba for 65 years now. That changed everything.
Regarding the arrival of that misfortune in your life, what is the greatest disappointment you have felt in the times in which you have lived? Has there been more pain than happiness in Flores Chaviano?
It's a little difficult for me to admit it, but we Cubans feel very hard hit because the very fact of having to leave your country, your family, your friends, your environment, your climate; That in itself is enough to suffer strong disappointments.
In my case, I have transformed those disappointments into strength to move forward, I have managed to work based on my efforts and fortunately by arriving in a country like Spain that has offered me everything to continue my professional and spiritual development. I have been very fortunate and of course, I am very grateful for Spain to which I have also given my modest knowledge.
Pain and happiness are two immense concepts and in life one suffers sometimes and enjoys others; No one escapes pain, illness, family deaths, sadness due to the memory of everything you have left behind.
But also a lot of happiness that comes from having started a family, seeing how your grandchildren grow and seeing how they develop, supporting and helping them. That is the family life that has given me happiness and makes up for everything else.
Regarding leaving a life behind, what did it mean to not be able to say goodbye to your father?
This hit me a lot, it was terrible, my father was very sick with diabetes, blind in a wheelchair and had suffered a kind of stroke. So, I try to go see him because he was very sick and when I go to the Cuban embassy in Madrid they tell me that first they had to investigate the case to see if it was true and the most terrible thing is that they went to my parents' house to check if It was true and even seeing it that way they told me that it was not authorized because it was not an emergency case.
Didn't they give you a visa?
No, they didn't give me a visa. Of course, my dad died and I didn't get to see him. Leaving the family, the country is a tough thing but consider that I couldn't say goodbye to either my father or my mother and, at the time of the pandemic, three of my brothers died who couldn't fight it due to lack of medicine, so that feeling will always be there.
Instrumentalist, composer, orchestra director or simply Flores Chaviano, how would you like to be remembered?
It is a given that my music is prohibited from being played in Cuba, just like that of all the composers and musicians who have left, starting with Celia Cruz, who is the Queen.
We composers of the classical world are still excommunicated, our music was never heard again on the island where we were born, but I would feel satisfied with being remembered simply as Flores Chaviano.
Everything else as they say: all glory to Almighty God! If God deposited wisdom in me, it was so that I would not keep it for my personal ego but rather to transmit it and bring a little happiness to others; I firmly believe in that, we are bearers of something that does not belong to us.
Among his many recognitions, Flores Chaviano has received the “Cintas Fundación” award in Miami and the Ignacio Cervantes medal from the Cuban Cultural Center in New York, an honor he shares with musicians of the caliber of Paquito D'Rivera, Tania León, Aurelio de la Vega and Zenaida Manfugás.
Present of Cuba, do you see a future for our people?
For Cuba I feel a mixed mixture of feelings. There I still have the few brothers that I have left, but I experience a lot of disappointment because the truth is, the things I see and read hurt me tremendously, the people who are trampled and mistreated and denied the most basic things of human needs hurt me.
That a child or an elderly person cannot have a glass of milk! And what can we say about the brutal repression they suffer, the abandonment, so many people who go wherever, they don't care where; They just run away like someone fleeing from hell... these things hit me a lot, it's terrible!
In Spain I have found the place where I have been able to carry out my projects. I have been here for more years than in Cuba and I have done work in music and teaching, I am still active as a musician and that makes me happy because for those of us who work in the field of art, developing that part of our life is fundamental.
Why did you leave Cuba and how did you manage to leave the country?
There is never a single reason to make a decision of this type, but in 1980-81 the country was burning; It was the emigration through Mariel and we witnessed many abuses and abuses in the streets by the state.
There were people who had broken into the Peruvian embassy and I was tired of enduring the needs that already existed at that time in addition to the lack of freedom.
I wanted to have an answer for myself about my values as a musician, a little bit about what happens to this wave of athletes who have left because it is logical that one wants to measure their strength, to really know where they are located.
On the other hand, we had my Spanish wife's family, so Spain gave us the visa, ah! But another obstacle would arise and that is that when we presented our documents to the Ministry of the Interior, they approved everyone except me and the saddest thing was, they did not tell you when they would release you.
I knew people who had been waiting for years without hope and something happened to me, it was not a coincidence. It turns out that I was teaching at the ENA and they quickly fired me from work and took away my guitar… my guitar! My means of survival that was mine.
It turns out that I had a private student who was out of the ordinary because he was the son of the Mexican ambassador in Havana and when Erniac Martínez, my Mexican disciple, arrived at the house and I informed him that we would not give any more classes because the government had took away my guitar, imagine his reaction.
Of course, he couldn't get over his astonishment and asked me: why? I responded that we had decided to leave the country and he was perplexed, as a person who lives in free countries can be, as if to say: And what is this?
After a while my phone rang and it was the ambassador of Mexico, his father, Gonzalo Martínez Corbalán, offering me his help since Erniac was, in no way, going to leave classes, he was giving me a guitar. In fact, he invited me to eat at his house. This man showed tremendous sensitivity in the face of that attack… because that was an attack on human dignity, one more! Mine is insignificant next to so many people who have ended up in prisons and who are still suffering from the barbarity of that system.
The ambassador helped me and not only because I went to his house to teach my son classes but because after six months we were called by emigration to leave.
I want to express what I experienced because after I was fired from my job, most of my friends, those who I thought were my friends, crossed the street when they saw me. This is a repeated story of the atrocities that were experienced at that time in my country.
Ambassador Gonzalo Martínez Corbalán had a high concept of freedom and morality, no matter what side they were on, he helped many people, not only in Cuba.
He also did it when the coup d'état in Chile and he was the ambassador there. This was a bit of my story, which I tell with great pride and feeling that it was something miraculous.
My departure from Cuba was very traumatic because you left everything, your family, your friends, your context, to go to an uncertain place and as my friend, the musician Paquito D' Rivera, would say, I came to dance at the house of the top, because Spain is the mother of the guitar.
And yes, a lot of truth, especially when the beginnings are always hard; However, I got along well and found friends, a job and started walking until today when I haven't stopped and I have been able to focus all my projects on what I like, which is music.
Flores Chaviano, composer and conductor, has performed on many stages; among them, the Chopin Society in Warsaw, the Lincoln Center in New York City, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Círculo de Bellas Artes, the National Music Auditorium also in that city and the Teatro de Fine Arts of Mexico.
Before leaving Cuba, he participated in the “Meeting of Guitarists of Latin America and the Caribbean held in Havana. He has been accompanied by the Cuban orchestras of Santiago de Cuba, Matanzas and the National Symphony.”
How did you get started in music?
I began my music studies with a great person, Pedro Julio del Valle, a guitar teacher, a neighbor on my street, with whom my love for the guitar began... a guitar that I didn't have and that he lent. Later I enrolled at the Santa Clara Conservatory and I cannot erase from my memory those moments lived in the middle of a happy city, with a busy sea port, the bars with their Victrolas animating the ether, my friends, with some of whom I maintain communication.
What has the guitar represented to you, what if you were deprived of your instrument?
I have never asked myself what would become of me without the guitar; She has been my companion since I was very little. In those early years, with my guitar, I walked behind the town troubadours who also brought joy to the bars, there were those who played the mandolin and others sang, the vocal trios, let us remember that one of the greatest of Cuban music is from Caibarién, I am referring to Manuel Corona. In addition, there was Crescencio Rojas, the best voice of the Cuban trios.
At the age of 18 I went to Havana directly to the National School of Art, I took some tests and won the scholarship; interesting stage of my life for which I am grateful for a rigorous musical education especially on the guitar with my teacher Issac Nicola. Add to this what you learned in choral conducting.
I began to give concerts with the guitar, I won first prize in the UNEAC international course and after graduating from the ENA I directed the madrigalist choir of Santiago de Cuba.
Origin of your compositions?
While at the ENA I wrote my first work, a cycle of four pieces for guitar, almost everything I wrote was for guitar and choir; My closest references were Amadeo Roldán, Alejandro García Caturla, Heitor Villa-lobos from Brazil and then when I studied composition, I explored all the most avant-garde, most open paths and continued my activity as a concert performer, premiering many works by fellow composers who also left a mark. in my vision of composition.
When I write music the Cuban feeling always comes out and I don't put a stop to that and I think it is the hallmark that identifies my music.
Although he studied at ISA, he could not graduate because he had to do social service and that made it impossible for him to leave the country. In his youth he met Rolando Moreno, a fellow guitarist and dear friend.
Which teachers have expanded your self?
First, my teacher Issac Nicola, founder of the Cuban school of Guitar; composers like Caturla, Villalobos, Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Schoenberg himself and also electronic music: I have worked like this all my life, I have been enriched by all those contemporaries.
Flores Chaviano is a composer with a vast career for ballet, choir and orchestras where several pieces stand out, among them, Requiem to a sonero for guitar and Four scenes on the Dances of Isaac Albéniz
Do you have something or someone left in Cuba?
When I look at Cuba and talk to my two older brothers who are the only ones I have left there, I really feel crushed with immense pain by the terrible situation that country is experiencing and that gives the impression that no one cares.
I am very happy that my daughter grew up here, that she became a musician here, that my grandchildren were born here, because although it is true that capitalism is not perfection, I think it is what is most similar to it and at least they will enjoy freedom.
What is Flores Chaviano doing today?
30 years ago I founded one of my groups, which I still direct: “Nuevo Ensemble de Segovia” with which I continue to perform all types of music, I have a quartet called “Iberoamérica” where I play the guitar, there is also violin, viola and cello.
I have also been making music for more than 20 years with my daughter who plays the viola and my wife who sings with another girl soprano. This is a group that I called “Trova Lírica Cubana” and our repertoire is based on all genres of Cuban song; those songs that people have forgotten and that have tremendous sentimental and artistic value… and of course I still write music!
What do you think?
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