MADRID, Spain.- “I am the song that I sing; whatever its composer. That’s why, when I don’t deeply feel a song, I prefer not to sing it”, said the great singer, composer and pianist Ignacio Villa, who went down in the history of Cuban music as the great Snowball.
Precisely this feeling that he put into his performances was one of the elements that made songs like “Ay amor”, “Drumi, Mobila”, “I don’t want you to forget me”, “But you will never understand” and “If you could want”.
Ignacio Jacinto Villa Fernández, one of the most charismatic Cuban musicians, was born on September 11, 1911 in GuanabacoaHavana.
Influenced by his mother, Ignacio Villa enrolled at the Conservatorio Mateu in the capital at the age of twelve. Since then he has not abandoned music, making his debut in the thirties at the cabaret “La Verbena” in Marianao.
In these early years he worked as an accompanying pianist in silent film screenings at the Carral cinema in his hometown.
Very soon the successful Rita Montaner discovered him and asked him to accompany her on the piano in her presentations at the Sevilla Hotel in Havana. This encounter with “La Única” would help catapult his career.
With Rita Montaner he made a successful tour of Mexico that made him achieve world fame. From then on, Bola de Nieve performed on stages in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Spain, France, Denmark, Italy and China, among others.
Although there are various theories, most musicologists agree that it was precisely Rita Montaner who gave it the nickname “Bola de Nieve”; and that on the aforementioned trip to Mexico, the singer ordered them to write “Rita Montaner and Bola de Nieve” on the presentation poster.
In addition, he shared the stage with great artists such as Teddy Wilson, Lena Horne, Ary Barroso, Libertad Lamarque and Esther Borja.
In the fifties it had already reached relevance both outside and inside Cuba. The CMQ radio network broadcast “El show de Bola de Nieve”, a program where Ignacio Villa invited well-known musicians of the moment.
Starting in 1965, his performance every night in the Havana restaurant “Monseñor” became an artistic event that transcended national culture.
On October 2, 1971, while he was sleeping on a stopover in Mexico City, from a trip that would take him to Peru, Bola de Nieve died of a heart attack.
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