Eliades Ochoa, the Cuban musician known for having been part of the Buena Vista Social Club and for always wearing a Stetson hat , presents his new album Guajiro , a vibrant tribute to son with the participation of Panamanian salsa singer Rubén Blades.
 
The musician, a stocky man who superbly embodies son –the popular music originating in eastern Cuba–, remembers that he was born on an isolated farm in the hills.

Ochoa relates that her first experiences were listening to her parents play music. His father played the tres, a guitar with three double strings, and one of his uncles accompanied him on the guitar.
 
"I was very attentive to what they were doing and I was already following them with the maracas," says this son of a peasant.
 
Later, he would host a weekly radio program on 
Trinchera Agraria , before becoming an emeritus sonero and recording ʺChan Chanʺ with Compay Segundo to become part of the Buena Vista legend.
 
Ochoa claims his roots in this new album. «I am a guajiro», he sings from the second song.
 
"Guajiro does not mean that he is a brute person," says the last active musician of the epic that was the Buena Vista Social Club.
 
His grandparents emigrated to Cuba from the Basque Country, in Spain, in the second half of the 19th century and this musician gives the mountains of his childhood a special shine, timbre and luster.
 
This, thanks to an eight-string guitar, which he invented when he was young.
 
This unique instrument allows this troubadour to reproduce the sound of the tres and the classical guitar, which opens up his possibilities and enriches his music.
 
In this new album, "no song is similar to one another, I had the need to contribute something different (...) There are boleros, guarachas, mambo, merengue" and salsa, with the participation of Rubén Blades as a star guest.
 
The premiere in 1999 of Wim Wenders' documentary about the only two concerts outside of Cuba by this group of elderly Cubans taken from oblivion or retirement, moved audiences around the world.
 
But Eliades Ochoa definitely turned the page at that stage. Installed between Havana and Madrid, he has little contact with the survivors of the Buena Vista Social Club orchestra.
 
"I would like you to see Eliades Ochoa wanting to maintain the son but leading it to a joy that is understood, without breaking the fort, because that word 'son' is very strong," says the musician, about to turn 77.
 
"I maintain it but always thinking that we must move forward, that the world is advancing and one cannot be left behind," he abounds.
 
The musician wants "to feel things different from what I have been doing for a long time, without losing tradition," he reiterates.
 
Ochoa, whose black clothing combined with a Stetson hat earned him the nickname of the Cuban Johnny Cash, will tour throughout the year in Europe, North America, also passing through Morocco.