Known as the queen of the bolero, Cuban singer Olga Guillot died in Miami last month. Cuban poet Sigfredo Ariel, a great music lover, graciously shared with Cuban Art News his reflections on Guillot´s life and work.

1.
Guillot´s records were no longer played publicly in Cuba in early 1961--starting on the day she left, never to return as long as the Revolution was in power. However, the Cuban people kept listening to her.

In the 1960s, she helped popularize Armando Manzanero´s boleros across Latin America. Many of her countrymen, musicians, singers and “the public in general” learned by heart songs like Adoro, Parece que fue ayer, No, Todavía, and others that Cuban radio has never broadcast. She also sang Qué sabes tú by Myrta Silva and other tunes, new at the time, written by Luis Demetrio, Lolita de la Colina, Paco Chanona, Chico Novarro and Roberto Cantoral, author of Soy lo prohibido, which she liked so much.

Some of the lyrics she sang then presented her as mature, defiant, and castigating. She was called a “pioneer of the erotic song” in the days when the world was still somewhat prudish about such things. Susan Sontag identified Guillot as an exponent of camp, and Elena Poniatowska talked about her emotional outbursts.

Nobody knew who it was that brought her albums to Cuba in the 1960s and ‘70s (people talked about some merchants), but the truth is that those discs traveled by hand from one place to the next. It was nothing new, because almost from the very moment she began recording, people learned her songs and continue doing so.

She is probably the Cuban singer with the largest discography, and without doubt, she influenced the style of many other singers who came later. She also had pathetic imitators.

2.
She started her career in the mid 1940s. She joined the now almost inconceivable group assembled by Mil Diez (1010), the People´s Socialist Party radio station, consisting of arrangers and directors such as Félix Guerrero, Adolfo Guzmán, and Enrique González Mantici.

In 1947, through the efforts of singer Miguelito Valdez, Guillot recorded La gloria eres tú by José Antonio Méndez, with an orchestra conducted by René Hernández, featuring Chano Pozo on the tumbadora. Earlier, in Havana, she had recorded several numbers with The Swingmakers, including At Last, Stormy Weather, Night and Day, and Stardust, all sung in Spanish—songbook standards that were more or less like boleros.

In 1948, Guillot began performing in Mexico, where she was treated with a near-adoration that endured for more than five decades. That year, she recorded with the orchestra of the famed composer Gonzalo Curiel, who wrote several boleros for her to introduce. She also made her first film appearance in La Venus de fuego (Venus of Fire), in which Mexican film star Meche Barba took the leading role of the passionate temptress. In her career, Guillot appeared in a dozen film productions.

In the early 1950s, Guillot performed across Latin America. Cristóbal Díaz-Ayala recounted that during her 1951 tour around Chile, Guillot talked Lucho Gatica into singing boleros. In Havana, theaters, cabarets, and radio and TV stations strengthened her popularity. In 1954, the Puchito label released her album, “La mejor voz cancionera de Cuba” (“The Best Cuban Singing Voice). This ten-inch LP disc, with Guillot as a featured vocalist with the Hermanos Castro Orchestra, included some of her most requested hits, such as Palabras calladas by Juan Bruno Tarraza and Vivir de los recuerdos by Bobby Collazo. The album begins with a bolero written by Mexican composer Chamaco Dominguez, which Olga Guillot never stopped singing: Miénteme.

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In the mid-1950s, many composers considered her a “cashier’s check:” almost everything she recorded made them sucessful. Guillot no longer sang as she did before: now she had become a singer focused on feelings, with her dramatic flair supporting a rather dark timbre, which one writer termed—with no offense intended—“raspado,” meaning “rough” or “scraped,” a comprehensive vocal register and a dramatic stage presence.

On stage, she wore luxurious evening gowns and authentic jewels. She began performances with an Orlando de la Rosa bolero, with its lyrics of farewell: “Me voy con mi canción para olvidarte / me voy, porque yo sé que es lo mejor" (I go with my song, to forget you / I go, because I know it’s for the best”). She also recorded other songs by de la Rosa, No vale la pena and Qué emoción.

Guillot became the great interpreter of composer René Touzet (Estuve pensando, Anoche aprendí, La noche de anoche, Me contaron de ti); Juan Bruno Tarraza (La novia de todos, Por eso estoy así, Tú me niegas, Qué poco me conoces); Felo Bergaza (Miedo, Si tú me lo dijeras, Infeliz); Bobby Collazo (Tan lejos y sin embargo te quiero, Raro hechizo, Me estoy enamorando) and of other composers who became well known in the early 1940s, such as Isolina Carrillo, Adolfo Guzmán, Julio Gutiérrez and Candito Ruíz, whose song Vete Guillot popularized.

She was one of first Cuban singers to record songs by composers of the “Feeling” movement, which became famous during her days at Mil Diez. In an interview, she said that she had had to overcome many obstacles to sing “those songs that did not seem Cuban.” She persevered in this, as demonstrated by her catalog of recordings.

She recorded La gloria eres tú, Por qué dudas, Por nuestra cobardía and Tú mi adoración by José Antonio Méndez; Tú mi delirio and Contigo en la distancia by César Portillo de la Luz; Refúgiate en mí, Imágenes and Porque tú me acostumbraste by Frank Domínguez; No, ya no te puedo amar by Rosendo Ruiz Quevedo; No tienes por qué criticar by Ela O’Farrill; Inútil es ya by Piloto y Vera; and En nosotros and Inmensa melodía by Tania Castellanos.

Latin American composers, with their fondness for Mexican audiences, saw Guillot as a particularly effective vehicle for popularizing their songs. Among them were Vicente Garrido (Torpeza, Te me olvidas), Salvador Rangel (Amor y olvido), Miguel Prado (Me dices que te vas), Manuel Merodio (Te olvidaré), Jorge del Moral (Por qué si estás en mí no estás conmigo), Lolita de la Colina (Tu ausencia), and Roberto Cantoral (Déjame sola, Demasiado tarde). For several years starting in 1945, she was labelled the best singer in the country by entertainment journalists, and in 1954 started receiving her top awards for record sales.

In the late 1950s, Guillot recorded in Mexico with the José Sabre Marroquín orchestra, and in Cuba. There, she recorded primarily with the Hermanos Castro orchestra; in addition, she made recordings with René Touzet, the Riverside (supported by a string section), and with the Humberto Suárez Orchestra, which accompanied her on her last album made in Cuba: "Olga de Cuba" (1960), in which she appears reclining on a balcony of the Havana Hilton (renamed the Habana Libre after the Revolution).

The next year, the album "Comunicando con Olga Guillot," featuring songs recorded with several different orchestras, made its debut. Sabor a mí, by Mexican composer Álvaro Carrillo, became the most popular song of the 1960s.


4.
When she left Cuba in March 1961, Guillot was the star of the “Serenata Mulata” cabaret show at the Capri Hotel. She was replaced by Celeste Mendoza, and later by Gina León.

After Cuba came a brief stay in Caracas. A few months later, the maestro Sabre Marroquín invited her to work in Mexico. She settled in the capital and immediately began recording with the Musart label, accompanied by orchestras led by such musicians as Cuco Valtierra, Juan Bruno Tarraza, and Jorge Ortega. These were the days of Poquita fé (Bobby Capó), Escándalo (Rubén Fuentes) and Cualquier pretexto (Vicente Garrido). Gradually, her style as interpreter became more aggressive, lively, and rhythmic.

Guillot released an excellent record with songs by María Greever, accompanied by Sabre Marroquín´s orchestra. She popularized songs like Seguiré mi viaje by Alvaro Carrillo and Remate, by Rubén Fuentes. In 1963, she was awarded a Palme d’Or by the Cannes Film Festival as the best Latin American bolero singer, a prize she accepted at an art academy in Hollywood.

On October 31, 1964, Guillot gave her first solo concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall, where she returned twice more. She also performed at the Paramount Theater on Broadway, as well as at the Olympia Theater in Paris. Over the years, her performances met with great success in various Latin American capitals, as well as in Madrid and Barcelona.

She continued recording and performing through the years. Mexico and Miami were her home bases. In every city, her performance was an act against the Revolution: “ I won´t come back [to Cuba] as long as they are in power.”  She sang El son se fue de Cuba (Bolero Gone Away From Cuba), and Nostalgia habanera (Havana Nostalgia). In 1988, she celebrated the half-century anniversary of her career with a tour around the world, including Israel.

When she recorded the songs Vete de mí by Virgilio and Homero Expósito and Escándalo by Rubén Fuentes with Los Sabandeños, Guillot refused to release them on an album that she knew the Cuban singer Silvio Rodriguez was also invited to participate in. “Him or me,” she said. The solution was Solomonic: Two different albums were made.

In 1996, a Mexican label released a double CD, "The Queens of Cuba: Olga Guillot and Elena Burke," featuring live recordings by Guillot and studio recordings by Burke. In 2001, the album "Faltaba yo" was released, with Guillot interpreting songs by Manzanero, Meme Solís, Frank Domínguez, Mario Clavell, Juan Bruno Tarraza, among others, and including Estremece su Alma adentro, by Puerto Rican Silvia Rexach. She was called the Queen of Bolero, the Mother of Bolero. Merely to say her name was to identify one of the main singers of the sentimental style.

For a long time, any record store carried at least five of Guillot’s recordings. She put her stamp on many boleros considered Latin American classics—like Campanitas de cristal by Rafael Hernández—and on popular songs, rancheras, and ballads.

In her last years, she spoke about her desire to return to Havana. It would have been good. Omara Portuondo sang for her (and with her) a few years ago, in the Dominican Republic. In the photo, she is smiling. I don´t know if they talked about this point.

When she was asked, on the radio, to share one wish, I heard her say: “To have a cup of café con leche at sunset, there on the Malecón [the waterfront in Havana].”