Film explores forgotten Los Zafiros
May 3, 2007
BY TERRY LAWSON
FREE PRESS MOVIE CRITIC
A year or so after the CD and subsequent movie "Buena Vista Social Club"
became a sensation in the United States, bringing 1950s-style Cuban
popular music to a 1990 audience that had never heard it, the same
record company, Nonesuch, released other recordings by musicians heard
on the "Social Club" recordings, as well as one made in the early '60s.
"Los Zafiros!" collected recordings made by the band of the title, whose
name translates to "the Sapphires."
The music was different from the swaying sons and fiery boleros that had
captivated Americans. This, in fact, was American-style pop of the era,
doo-wop and early rock, music briefly heard and imported before Castro's
revolution, then filtered through the then-fashionable folk-pop of
nearby Trinidad that was called calypso.
The liner notes for the record, which I played incessantly for weeks,
said the group's popularity was such that it was considered the Cuban
Beatles, which admittedly I doubted until I saw the 2004 documentary
"Los Zafiros: Music from the Edge of Time."
In the film, director Lorenzo DeStefano tells the story of the band,
mostly through surviving members Manuel Galban, accompanying guitarist
(who is seen and heard in "Social Club"), and Miguel Cancio, one of the
four vocalists whose close harmonies originally owed at least as much to
the Ink Spots as to U.S. doo-wop acts like the Spaniels or Moonglows.
As R&B and contemporary pop music drifted, mostly illegally, into Cuba,
Los Zafiros became closer in sound and spirit to Motown, especially
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, another vocal group with guitar. The
band even performed Motown-style dance routines.
There is little film of the period, so the group's 10-year rise to the
top and then back down again is recalled mostly in photographs and the
memories of those who were there. Band members show us the clubs and
sites of the former theaters where they played as well as the graves of
their departed band mates.
At one point, Cancio is seen in the studio with Galban, singing a song
he wrote about the group's time together. Don't be surprised if you shed
a tear, not just for a band you've never heard of, but for fallen friends.
Contact TERRY LAWSON at 313-223-4524 or tlawson@freepress
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070503/ENT01/705030318/1036
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