6 de febrero de 2025

Radio 26 – Matanzas, Cuba

Emisora provincial de Matanzas, Cuba, La Radio de tu Corazón

The name of the Somavilla family is linked to the history of Cuban music.

In January 1899, on the corner of Coronel Verdugo and Laborde streets, in Cardenas, a glory of Cuban music was born: Maestro Rafael Somavilla Pedroso.

He was the only boy of four siblings who were orphaned at a very young age under the care of America, the eldest sister. Rafael was five or six years old. He was the son of a Spanish emigrant who died very young, at the age of 33. Two years later he lost his mother.

His first studies were in a public school in his hometown.

Although his family had no tradition of musicians, from a very early age he was inclined to play music. First he studied the trumpet, then the cornet and at the age of twelve he was already conducting a small group at school, until at 16 he was already in charge of the Children’s Band in Jovellanos, where the family lived for two years.

One of his teachers -who later became the first trumpet in his orchestra- was Félix Covarrubias.

His favorite instrument was the trumpet, but he also played the violin, guitar and piano.

Between 1919 and 1920 the Somavilla family moved to Matanzas because of Rafael’s work.

In 1979 I interviewed Maria Antonia and Teresa, the Maestro’s sisters who were alive, and his daughter Lourdes, at the family’s home on Tirry Road No. 87, in the city of Yumurina. It was one of those afternoons that make you love what you do. I remember the sisters, already old ladies, talking about Rafael with devotion.

Precisely, it was Lourdes who recalled the time when her father worked in a tobacco shop.

«… it seems that at that time there was no good economic development. I remember that my aunts sewed a lot, until late at night, in the wee hours of the morning, and he worked in the tobacco shop. First it was here in the house, a little thing, which was at the back. Later the factory became bigger and he moved to Dos de Mayo and put his workers there. He played in the orchestra and had his factory. That would last about four or five years.»

In Matanzas he organized the music band of the José María Casal Asylum for several years: from 1950-51 until 1959. It was an orchestra that enlivened the dances and parties of the Liceo, the Spanish Casino, the Spa and nearby places on traditional dates.

But he also conducted the Popular Music Orchestra, the Municipal Band, where he also played the trumpet, and the Symphony Orchestra, in which he was appointed chief conductor in 1963.

«In Papi  was worth admiring – it is Lourdes who takes the floor again – the fact that he did not have the opportunity that those who dedicate themselves to art have now, to study in provincial and superior schools of music. He was a true autodidact, he studied his own methods. He even left a solfeggio method of his own almost finished. Until his last moments he was like that».

That method of music reading forced the student to read music as one reads a book, a method that remained unfinished due to his sudden illness.

With that ability he had, after the triumph of the Revolution he also worked in the beginnings of the amateur movement and served as music teacher at Manuel Sanguily High School until the attack on Playa Girón.

The last thing he did was to teach at the Art School and conduct the Symphony Orchestra until he handed over the baton to Reynold Alvarez Otero and Mario Argenter Sierra.

Those close to him remember him as a person of good character, jovial, kind, however, he was firm and sometimes even a little angry when the students did not study.

He traveled to Hungary and Germany on cultural exchanges.

«We considered him, the truth -Lourdes refers to her and her brother-, not as a father, but as a comrade, that is to say, we had the confidence to reach him at all times without any problem. We always found advice, good guidance, never repression, imposition. He would try to convince us, but he never coerced us.»

Rafael Somavilla Pedroso died at a quarter to twelve on October 27th, 1973 at the Calixto Garcia Hospital in Havana. He was 74 years old.

That year he gave his classes as usual. Already in July he did not feel well. The process of illness was very short, barely three months. During his stay in the hospital he asked the director three times to come to Matanzas.

He is buried in the cemetery San Carlos Borromeo, in the city of Matanzas. The Band of Music accompanied his funeral, as years later it would do it with that of his son. And his own son, Rafael Somavilla Morejon, mourned his death.

The name of the Somavilla family is linked to the history of Cuban and Matanzas music.

Written by Maritza Tejera.

 

 

 

 

 

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