Conga, a musical genre born out of African drum beats, jumped out of the carnival framework a long time ago and sneaked into the streets and the poorest living quarters, reaching out to the most unsuspected places. In the 1900s, Cuban musicians like Eliseo Grenet, Matamoros and Ernesto Lecuona launched this rhythm to a new dimension overseas, while Rafael Ortiz –a.k.a. Mañungo- composed a tune that made the whole world and his wife dance its bones out: “Uno, dos y tres, que paso más chévere, el de mi conga es...,” the chorus line goes.

But that was a time. Three decades have gone by and only a few people remember that song. That explains the red-carpet welcome that Añoranza por la Conga (Yearning for Conga) has received and why the song has climbed up the charts all the way to number one on the island nation. Author Ricardo Leyva –the leader of Sur Caribe Band who’s also the group’s lead singer, arranger, songwriter and producer- has just nabbed a couple of awards at the CUBADISCO 2006’s Grand Finale.

In search of the hidden keys to this rhythm’s successful revival –weeded out of its original ambience with the addition of new pitches and tones- Cuba Excellencies talked exclusively with Mr. Leyva, a man who’s not been blinded by the shining light of success.

Three nominations and a couple of awards in the most important event of Cuba’s record industry. Are you pleased? We don’t work to get prizes. The most important thing is when your band represents your people, to see a lady come up to you and tell you that her two-year-old grandson is always belting out the lines of Añoranza por la Conga; when a girl with a broken hip who was recently operated on tells you, ‘maestro, my first movement in rehab was to the beat of your conga.’ When someone sends you a letter that says, ‘you changed the way I look at drums.’ That’s what really counts for artists like me. In CUBADISCO the fabulous design of Credenciales –the album title- got a deserving award because our artists worked hard to get a Negroid but elegant cover. The music video also grabbed an award of its own, even though we stripped it of all special effects and sophisticated stuff only to underscore simple faces that appeared to be waiting for someone to put them on footage. We called nobody when we shot the Añoranza video, except the Conga de Los Hoyos. We got there with the camera and from the word go the whole barrio jumped on the street –women wearing nothing but their house gowns, kids holding washbowls in their hands. That’s conga, spontaneous and sizzling. Don’t you know what the big prize really is? That children who are five, six, seven years old have heard for the first time of a musical genre called conga, and that happened to people here in Cuba and in other parts of the world as well. I can’t expect anything better from life.

You had cut three previous CDs with EGREM –Cuba’s top record label. Con To is the first one and the bestselling album up to now. However, Sur Caribe got a good name in show biz with Credenciales. Why? That’s a curious thing, you know. Sur Caribe was founded in Santiago de Cuba nearly two decades ago, in the so-called capital of the Caribbean. The point is that people who live in lands bathed by this sea have sort of an ingrained rhythmic beat way deep down inside that goes beyond music and dancing. Even though we’d already recorded three albums with EGREM, we had also made a couple of tapes before that. The first one was called Exitos de Sur Caribe, and it goes without saying that it contains smash hits from eastern Cuba. However, the CDs we made with EGREM record label actually launched the band to a new national and international dimension. We’ve drawn some good and bad experiences from each and every project, though I must say that Credenciales, our latest CD, surpassed all of our expectations.

You grew up with Conga de Alto Pino, named after your birthplace in eastern Cuba. Then, why did you pick Conga de Los Hoyos to record Añoranza? Añoranza por la Conga is a musical tribute to the 490th anniversary of the foundation of the city of Santiago de Cuba. I’m one of those guys who believe that when it comes to son music you ought to think of Son de la Loma. If it’s troubadours from Santiago, you need to recall Sindo Garay and Ñico Saquito. We opted for a musical genre that had been barely tapped in a big way, which is conga. And since it was in Santiago where Conga de Los Hoyos was born, then we decided to pay tribute to that century-old institution as well, a band with several Grammy Award nominations under its belt. Curiously, conga performers from other bands also played for the CD. This is a huge popular movement that gathers entire generations of people and their families, where non-professional musicians from different walks of life play as well, so they love to join a flagship band like Los Hoyos.

The conga in Credenciales, was it just a lucky strike or you were actually determined to get the “forgotten” genres of Cuban music off the shelf? In Sur Caribe we want to make sure the abundant heritage of Cuban music will be here to stay. I believe in genuine things, in conga, the changüi, the son, guaguanco, danzon, rumba and bolero. These genres belong to us, yet we sometimes forget and start praising trends and sounds that have nothing to do with us. Some people say, ‘why do we have to play a danzon if nobody dances it? That’s old stuff.’ Perhaps nobody dances it, but it’s our responsibility to bring it forward, to our times, and make it sound in a contemporary fashion. That’s why Añoranza por la Conga includes contributions with the Santiago de Cuba Symphonic Orchestra. We try to do something traditional and contemporary in the same breath.

Añoranza por la Conga tells the story of a woman who’s not there and misses her people, her rhythm. Who’s Micaela? Does she really exist? Micaela does exist, but she’s nobody’s neighbor nor a well-known conga performer, not even a girl who went to another country. Micaela is my orchestra, Sur Caribe, that after being in Santiago de Cuba for the past twenty years has now settled down in Havana. And regardless of the smash hits, the tenderness and the respect of the public, she keeps longing for her barrio, her people and her congas. Every night we go to bed thinking of our mountains, the lights of the Santiago Bay, our friends. Even after having traveled overseas, to London, and performed there at the Cuban carnival for three days for some 80,000 people, we’re still homesick, we’re nostalgic about our hometown, our birthplace. That Yearning for Conga is the great metaphor, the longing for the roots, you know?

Now that Sur Caribe is approaching its twentieth anniversary in 2007, what plans do you have in store to celebrate that milestone? As we speak, we’re way too busy with a number of national and international commitments, let alone our ongoing work in the studio. We’ve also begun to shoot a documentary film about the history of conga and the history of Sur Caribe, directed by Isis Benavides. We’ve got plans to unveil that flick at the upcoming Latin American New Cinema Festival in Havana. But to us the popular celebrations are very important because making people dance is what our job is actually all about. That’s why we’re planning to perform in them. Therefore, the big bash we want to throw to mark the twentieth anniversary is going to be for everybody. We want to make a huge concert with lots and lots of people.

Will you next albums include songs that sound like Añoranza por la Conga? Sometimes I wonder if we could possibly go that song one better. I sometimes think that’s a one-and-only blockbuster. However, there are things to hold on to, concepts you cannot change, like respect for the public, a public you can’t let down. That’s our challenge, which as a matter of fact is as big or bigger than composing another tune like Añoranza. You don’t achieve that with another conga or another smash hit, but with your behavior as an artist and as a performer. Nonetheless, I can’t deny we’re very happy with the success of Añoranza por la Conga. Up to now congas were only heard or danced to during the carnival celebrations, and that happens only once a year. Today, conga is back in the streets, among the youngsters and the kids. We have it in the summer, in the winter, at home, in the car, even in disco clubs. And to Sur Caribe, that’s music to its ears.