Buena Vista lead singer Ibrahim Ferrer dies

Cuban singer dies shortly after return from European tour

By ARCHIE THOMAS

Ibrahim Ferrer, the distinguished 78 year old front man of the Buena Vista Social Club band, died August 6 in Havana, Cuba. Ferrer fell ill last week after returning to Havana from a month-long European tour. He died of multiple organ failure after being admitted to hospital with gastroenteritis.

Ferrer was born at a social club dance in Santiago de Cuba in 1927 which his mother had attended as a reveller and begun singing in his early teens. He favored the traditional son and bolero musical styles and soon became a star on the Cuban music scene and sang with a string of popular bands including the Beny More orchestra. But Ferrer’s star waned and he slipped into obscurity in the period after Castro’s 1959 revolution. By the mid-nineties, he has quit singing and was surviving on a state pension when fate intervened dramatically.

In 1997 Texan world music aficionado Ry Cooder re-discovered the septuagenarian musicians who had packed out Havana’s clubs in the forties and fifties and formed the Buena Vista Social Club band. Ferrer was earning a little extra coin shining shoes on the streets of Havana when Cooder tracked him down. The resulting album sold four million copies, won a Grammy and catapulted Ferrer and co to worldwide fame.

Ferrer was immensely grateful to Cooder, saying "an angel came and picked me up. He said, ‘Chico, come and do this record." Ferrer, with his trademark leather cloth cap and winning modesty, was the undoubted star of the band.

Wim Wenders subsequent feature doc about Cooder’s project to revive the Buena Vista band was a worldwide box office success, nabbed an Oscar nom and took the band’s music to an even wider international aud.

Ferrer subsequently released two solo albums ("Tierra Caliente" and "Buenos Hermanos") both of which were produced by Cooder. In 2000 he scooped a Latin Grammy for best new artist - quite unusual for a performer in his seventies. Ferrer won the best tropical latin album Grammy in 2004 but being a Cuban citizen was unable to collect his gong in person.

"He was a very worthy person, to be admired, not only as a musician but also as a father and a husband" his wife Caridad Diaz told the AFP news agency. She added that "he completed his European tour with great bravery. We are deeply affected by his death."

Mr Ferrer is survived by his wife, six children, 14 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.