The most recent record production by Ivette Cepeda and Reflection is full of love and hope. Twelve songs traversed by the miracle, each with its own story, which the interpreter told the press between laughter and tears, because if this material is loaded with emotions, it is:
«This is a very special album for me, it is an album that had a very long process … In 2018 I was in a process of frank recognition that I had to start renewing the repertoire and I had to find out what it was. the new thing we had to say. We have worked not to be a group of top and fleeting fashion, to stick a hit, but to sow something in the people who listen to us.
Then we started looking for songs. I have always liked the author song a lot, but I have no prejudice with any genre that is less popular because it is popular, so we have used all the necessary costumes to dress our songs of closeness and love towards all people, regardless of what they are. like this music or the other one ».
When the answers still did not appear and the search was incessant, both since the creation and in terms of finding support for a new record production, Ivette received a call from a pastor friend who told her about the intentions of a group of North American shepherds. to support someone to make a record in Cuba …
After the doubts that usually accompany surprise, the work began. It turns out that among the visitors who were proposing to finance his album was Doug Sarret, a leading American sound engineer who worked with the likes of Aretha Franklin. Sarret made the first recordings in EGREM’s studios in 2018 and in his own, Uno Mas Estudios, Nashville, Tennessee; he dealt with the mixes of string and wood orchestras.
Later, the COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges for the project, which was finally taken up by Cuban music producer Joel Domínguez: “Joel turned the house into a studio and they started to change some things. It was tremendous luck to find what the album was missing: it lacked a touch of Cubanness, landing on this land and guaranteeing that other part of identity: not only who I am, but where I am from. And then we find many songs that really benefited from that touch of guajira, batá, Cuban bolero, salsa; that which also challenged me musically to sing genres that I have always respected a lot and that I have left in the voices that have been prepared for them all their lives ».
Bis Music, the ARTEX record company, opened the doors to The rose of Jericho and he assumed accompanying the phonographic work, including a video clip.
The video clip
It seems that the order is not correct, because we talked about the video before going through the entire repertoire, but it is that Was maybe, a theme authored by Yhosvany Palma, appears here endowed with a very special meaning, since the audiovisual is dedicated to the beloved actress Broselianda Hernández, whose anticipated loss we recently regretted:
«It is a song that Yhosvany Palma had taken to an album entitled Son of fortune, that my husband had produced around 2000 or before, but he had it there and I really liked listening to that author; Yhosvany Palma’s work is breathtakingly beautiful. I discovered this song and told my husband to fix me up. When I sang it for the first time, the audience received it very well.
«But the day I went to record it, this news appeared on the front page. That was tremendous. I was never friends with Broselianda, I met her when I was 17 and was a fan, she would start first year. We were of the same generation, so they invited us to a party and I saw her as a very shy person, who hardly spoke; people laughed a lot with her, but she didn’t show up publicly. When I first saw her on a soap opera and found out what kind of actress she is — in When the water returns to the land, who made that role so controversial—, I thought: how good, how beautiful …
«In the recording I was singing and I was already seeing the painter and I saw what was happening and said: My God, and how am I going to summon these friends? They are his friends saying goodbye. The most impressive thing is that I saw this of the plastic image and one day I found Adrián Socorro on the internet, I’m looking at his work and I call him and say: “Look, Adrián, I’m Ivette Cepeda. Do you believe …”, and he says to me: “Oh, how nice; I love it, yes. My wife is a theater actress and we are shocked. Of course, you can count on me” ».
The clip was directed by Carlos Gómez, a member of the Guajiros Film project.
Repertoire
“It was difficult, nights and nights looking for songs, they all have a story behind them”, Ivette tells us, and she immediately remembers some of them:
«This album was born in my heart with the intention of honoring Santiaguito Feliú. That was the first song I chose: Yesterday and today in love; that hymn of hope, that song that tells us about leaving out selfishness and beginning to think that we are part of a whole and we must fight for that whole. Unfortunately, I never met Santiaguito Feliú; I simply approached his life for the first time on the day of his funeral at the Institute of Music. I approached Vicente Feliú, whom I love with all my heart, and he began to cry and asked me: are you going to sing? And I said: of course I’m going to sing. Thus was born the first song on this album.
«I had promised Polito that I would sing a song, but I didn’t know which one. This he had always sung a cappella, for the first time they made an arrangement. They contacted Aute and he gave them permission to do this song, which is one of the most important songs on the album because of the message it has: this song began to work for me in my mind, to convince me that this was not a matter of a disc, but it was a matter of one thing in life.
Upon Rare trees, the song by Carlos Varela, commented: «Knowing how, both Cubans and people around the world have seen the need to go there or turn here looking for their reason for being and living, one day we realize that that this place where we have gone, which seems like paradise, is not ―because no place conditions anything, all the answers are in us―, so I also propose this song, because there are many couples, many families that have separated because someone you think that the place where you arrived or the place where you are going or where you are is not the best, but then you can find the truth that everything is inside you. It is an invitation to finally have a mature look at the realities, which are not unique to our country.
The rose of Jericho
Nor is the selection of the title the result of chance. The theme of Joel Domínguez that closes the phonogram meanings grow from memory, back in the days when she was training as a teacher:
«I have a vague memory of when I was studying teaching. We were studying very particular forms of life that occur in nature and then a teacher taught us the Rose of Jericho, which is a dry, woody thing, it looks like a piece of root and can thus be flying through the desert for six hundred and even a thousand years , but it does not die. They also call her “the resurrection plant”, because she has what we all have: that possibility of resurgence, for the plant with water and for us with a little love.
«This album talks about that, about how life has moments of splendor and wonder when we find the meaning of love, when we find a wonderful partner or a special friend or a work to which we dedicate ourselves with all our hearts. This album talks about the crises that confront us with what we love the most. This album also talks about the attachment to that which we wanted after we left it, because we didn’t have the strength or courage to defend it and, furthermore, it tells us about the reunion and the wonder it is to start over ».
The guests
Another source of satisfaction for Ivette Cepeda has been the participation of great musicians in the album, a merit that is recognized by Joel Domínguez:
«We had Maraca on a song that truly for me is a great work of art what he did, we were able to summon Maykel González doing a solo that I consider historic and wonderful, we were also able to contact a gypsy singer who sent us his recording from Madrid , Moisés Moldani Hernández, who participates in My life is in it, the theme of Aute ».
Horacio «El Negro» Hernández also participates: «We chose him because he is a percussionist without equal, but also because he has lived what he expresses Rare trees. He is a person who comes and goes from the world, who left Cuba to play with the greatest musicians and here he is again, convinced that what this song says is a simple truth, it is not something to overwhelm oneself ».
I think that the participation of these musicians adds a lyricism and a virtuosity that exceeds the thresholds of our group with sounds that do not exist in our group.
My life is in it
And I steal the third title of this album to name my last epigraph, because that is how Ivette Cepeda defends this phonogram: «I hope you enjoy it, I am in love with my son of the pandemic, I don’t know if it is better or worse, it is only one more son and as such I will defend him in this life with much love. He was born in the most difficult time ».
“I am very committed that this album is not the last, that we continue forward, that the public receives what we have dreamed of.”
Together with Reflexión, it has already begun to promote the work included in La rosa de Jericó during its presentations at the Casas de la Música, they will be present at the Guantanamo festival Chocolate con Café and, of course, there will be a presentation concert: «I already have it In my eyes, I am dreaming about it, I wish that in the concert we could do some duets that we could not do in the recording, because it was the hardest moment of the pandemic and I could not sing songs with people that I dreamed of, but I hope that in the presentation it can be done.
The material is available in all digital stores and in ARTEX establishments, in addition, in some of the concerts that Ivette Cepeda and Reflexión are offering in cultural centers, memories will be on sale flash with the disc.
