Remembering a man who was forgotten

Ibrahim Ferrer stood up and pointed towards the stereo at the other end of his Chicago hotel room. It was playing his Buenos Hermanos album, a blast of warm Cuban soul to counter the wicked wind blowing in off Lake Michigan that afternoon in February 2003.

Ferrer was rightly chuffed about the album. It was the one he felt he had been destined to make since he first started out singing in Santiago bars and carnivals in the 1940s. But he was also pleased for another reason: "If it wasn't for this, I would be back in Havana shining shoes and selling peanuts."

No matter where the Buena Vista Social Club success story took him, from the great performance spaces of Carnegie Hall and Albert Hall to gold and silver discs, Ferrer never forgot how lucky he was. When the call went out for him to come down to the Egrem Studios in 1996 to sing a bolero for some cat called Ry Cooder, Ferrer was just another name from a bygone era scratching a living, claiming his pension and watching the days go by.

"They offered me $50 for the recording session," he chuckled. "I had never received more than seven pesos before for a recording, so they got me. I couldn't believe it, I couldn't say no to that."

Something clicked when he arrived at the studio and met other old troupers from the golden age of Cuban music. Ferrer was recounting a truly life-changing moment when he talked about that session.

"I went to the studio and my old friend Compay Segundo was there, and so was Eliades Ochoa and all these other great musicians like Rubén González and Barbarito Torres. When I walked into the studio, Eliades started playing Ay Candela and I started singing along. That was all it took."

Ry Cooder has said that walking into the studio during those sessions was akin to "walking into a religious shrine". For Ferrer, the sessions were about "finding old friends". There was magic in the air, and every time you listen to that Buena Vista Social Club album you get to hear a little more of it. The millions who heard the album were smitten and they wanted more. Wim Wenders released a film about the making of the album, the band went on a tour that spun around the globe several times, and solo album followed solo album.

This was Ferrer's time in the sun, and he relished it. He was the star of the Buena Vista show, his velvet tones transforming each son ballad into dramatic, epic paeans of love, life and loss. He also demonstrated some nifty dance steps when the spotlight hit him. He had waited so long for this that no one could begrudge him this success.

Yet in the midst of everything, all those sold-out shows and all those blockbuster albums, Ferrer kept his feet on the ground.

"I haven't changed, I'm still the same person I was before all this happened. Don't forget that I was born in 1927 and most people have only began to hear about me in the last five years. For most of my life, I was an unknown, I was forgotten. People used to always say that my voice wasn't worth much, that it wasn't the voice of a principal singer. I would get work as a backing singer but nothing else. I didn't seem to fit in. I was allowed to sing guarachos and sons, but I never got to sing boleros because I was told I was not good enough for them."

He stopped for a moment and beamed brightly. "Now, though, it's all very different. I can sing what I want to sing. I was born to do this, so what can I do?"

Ibrahim Ferrer died last weekend in a Havana hospital from multiple organ failure. Despite his bad health, the 78-year-old had recently finished yet another European tour. The Cuban don may have had a long wait for success, but he made the most of it when it came along.