Compay Segundo - Mejor De La Vida
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Free Music Notes for Mejor De La Vida
Free Music Review: Bravo!
Hit: 5 Stars
If you love "Introducing... Rubén González" and "Buena Vista Social Club," this disk is just as essential. Very well done. (And if you like this disk but don't know of the other two, you should.)Free Music Review: Vintage Guitar magazine review:
Hit: 4 Stars
Ninety years of age seems a fine time to bring out a CD. Cuba's elder statesman of music, Compay Segundo, first found a wide listening audience in the USA with Ry Cooder's formidable Buena Vista Social Club album. But Segundo has been playing in his native land for almost seventy-five years now. Still, it's never to late to catch onto a good thing. This new, solo album features Segundo's haunting vocals front and center, accompanied by his armonico guitar, a seven-string creation with only six tones, the third string repeating a tone. He is joined by a variety of musicians, incuding Raimundo Amador and his flamenco guitar, and many others. The sound of Segundo's sons and other songs is a lilting, bouncing feel, propelled by the soft percussion of bongos and maracas. The music is sweetly evocative, perfect for dancing or staring into the bottom of a glass of beer.Free Music Review: Closer to original BVSC than "Calle Salud" is
Hit: 4 Stars
"Lo Mejor..." is a wonderful record that is much closer to Compay Segundo's contributions to the original BVSC disc than his 1999 "Calle Salud," which while a great record in its own right, has clarinets, women singing duets and other stylistic elements which mark it as somewhat different than BVSC. "Lo Mejor..." has some absolutely lovely and dramatic numbers, "Desdichado" and "Para Vigo me Voy" among them, that truly can make one almost cry due to the power of the music. At first listen, this music sounds almost simplistic, but on later hearings it shows incredible inventiveness (i.e. triple against double time) and great beauty. Rarely does one hear such optimistic music in a minor key...I am grateful these musicians have gotten wider exposure since BVSC.Free Music Review: good stuff, but not as good as the others in the collection
Hit: 4 Stars
Maybe it's just because I have over 30 CDs of Cuban music, but this is not my favorite. Compay is great and I like his voice, but I prefer son/son montuno and the styles of these songs don't appeal to me as much as those of other CDs like "El son es el mas sublime." Certainly worth listening to, but not as stunningly brilliant as the others in the collection.Free Music Review: Good Guitar Music from Castro's Paradise
Hit: 3 Stars
Compay Segundo is a 90 year old Cuban guitarist. His age alone makes this CD somewhat of a miracle and an impressive accomplishment. Listening to it, you would never realize that the fingers that are moving that fast playing all those great songs are fingers that are almost a century old. It is a pity in some ways that the American embargo against Castro prevented this great music from getting to America for so long.You may recognize Compay from his work on Ry Cooder's great album Buena Vista Social Club. It's also worth noting that this CD does sound more like Compay's work on BVSC than any other album he's worked on, including Calle Salud.
Unfortunately this disc doesn't have nearly as much variety to it as Cooder's which is probably it's biggest problem. After awhile all the great guitar and percussion work just starts to kind of blend together and I sometimes forget what track I'm on since many sound similar. There also appears to be some bad electronic mixing that was done afterwards, someone told me it sounds like they tried to add an echo.
Nonetheless this is a superb effort. In particular there are a couple of tracks where Martirio and Felix Valoy add their vocals to the already superb instrumental sound and the result is quite amazing.
There are two tracks that stick out a little in my mind. "Frutas Del Caney" is an older song that Compay does true justice to in this version. And track 8, "Es Mejor Vivi Asi" has some great vocals that seem to cut straight to my heart.
If you're looking for a truly great example of Cuban music, then I'd recommend trying Buena Vista first, there is also another CD put out in that same line called Buena Vista presents Ibrahim Ferrer that I think is better than this work as well. However if you have both of those albums or if you just want some more good Cuban music with a great flamenco inspiration then I recommend this CD.