Eliades Ochoa, Palace of Arts Budapest, 29 May
- 21 May 2024 3:22 PM
Eliades Ochoa's performance at Müpa Budapest is sure to be one of the most exciting concerts of 2024.
Although the Cuban singer/guitarist has been a famous musician in his native country since the 1970s, it was only at the turn of the millennium that the wider world first encountered his name, thanks to the Wim Wenders documentary on the Buena Vista Social Club.
Touring as part of the events to mark the 25 years since the film's release, the artist will perform songs from different stages of his career in his own inimitable style here in Budapest on 29 May.
One of the key figures in traditional Cuban music, Eliades Ochoa was born on 22 June 1946 in the province of Santiago in the eastern part of the country.
Even as a child, he loved son cubano, a local musical style with Spanish and African roots. Dead set on nothing but his ambition to become a true ‘sonero', he learned to play the guitar.
From the late '60s, he started playing in bands, and the second half of the next decade found him becoming first a member, and eventually the leader, of Cuarteto Patria, which had been active since 1939.
In the 1980s, together with Compay Segundo, his elder by nearly four decades, he recorded Chan Chan, the song that we later heard him play both on the Buena Vista Social Club record and in the documentary.
The BVSC project, launched by the American guitarist Ry Cooder, is what finally introduced Ochoa and his fellow musicians to the wider world.
The singer/guitarist, whose trademark cowboy hat and black clothes have earned him the nickname of the Cuban Johnny Cash, has also been working steadily since then, including sessions in the recording studio: his latest album, Guajiro, was released in May of 2023.
Ochoa's concert at Müpa Budapest promises to be an unmissable evening for fans of authentic Cuban music.
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