Compay Segundo Forever
The Excelencias Group invites you to review the life and musical work of Máximo Francisco Repilado Muñoz, who was the oldest troubadour on Earth and was born in Santiago de Cuba.
Compay Segundo was born on November 18, 1907, in Siboney Beach and lived 95 years of work, joy, musical chords and great vitality.
Before music touched his life, this humble man of Santiago worked as a cigar maker and a barber after his family moved to Santiago de Cuba.
Once he arrived in the cradle of son and bolero, Compay Segundo joined the bohemian life at Heredia Street and the whole city. That was when he met such artists as Sindo Garay, who was a close friend of the family, Miguel Matamoros and Ñico Saquito.
In the 1940s he created “Los Compadres” duet, along with Lorenzo Hierrezuelo, as a reference to the traditional way of greeting people in the countryside of Cuba and that was when Francisco Repilado found his artistic name: Compay Segundo. Compay is short of compadre and Segundo stands for his voice.
Through September 1955, “Los Compadres” fostered and extolled Cuban traditional music and, ever since “Compay Segundo y sus Muchachos” began conquering the applauses of different and demanding national and international audiences. Son, guaracha, bolero, guajira, changüí and bolero-son played the leading role in Compay Segundo’s over 100 songs.
The band he headed until his passing away, on July 14, 2003, performed in Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, Chile, USA, Canada, Colombia, Martinique, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Holland, Germany, Belgium, England and Japan.
This internationally acclaimed artist visited the Vatican’s Nervi Hall in February 2000, invited by Pope John Paul 2nd, where he sang his mythical “Chan Chan” accompanied by prestigious artists.
His participation in the Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club album was very important in his career.
The composer of Macusa, Las flores de la vida, Saludos Compay, Bilongo (La negra Tomasa), was also a writer. Compay Segundo was the author of a play entitled “Se secó el arroyito”, a drama on rural love with a simple argument based on the conflict between rich people and the poor ones.
In 1996 he became an exclusive artist of Dro Music, Spain’s Warner Record, and a member of Spain’s Association of Authors and Editors. He was also given the Félix Varela Order, the highest cultural recognition handed by the Cuban State.
Compay Segundo was always wearing a suit, hat, carrying his guitar and, every so often, a fine Habano, with his characteristic smile he was the artist with the record of concerts given after becoming 90 years old. His first musical performance took place when he was twelve, with sextet “Los seis ases” at the popular “El Tívoli” neighborhood in Santiago.
Compay Segundo didn’t receive musical education, but he was a legendary voice in terms of Cuban son and he was respected due to the singularity of the “harmonic”, an instrument he created by blending guitar and tres.
