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THE CULTURE OF TOBACCO, AND THE WOMEN AND MEN THAT HAVE GIVEN IT BODY AND SOUL, HAVE ALWAYS HAD A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CUBAN AND INTERNATIONAL MUSICAL CULTURE

O n November 6, 1492, while he was waiting on the north coast of Cuba for the sea to get calmer and continue his first exploratory voyage to the unknown Antillean lands, Christopher Columbus described in his diary that he saw “men with a coal in their hands and certain herbs with aromatic smoke, dry herbs wrapped in certain dry leaf shaped like a musket…”
In the last summer of his life, in 1950, Eliseo Grenet, a remarkable Cuban composer that had returned from Paris, described in a café in Old Havana an image he was obsessed with: he compared the beauty of a young country girl with the brightness of the cultivated soil where he had seen her.
From the amazement writing in Genovese Admiral’s binnacle to the lyrics of Tabaco Verde, the culture of tobacco —tobacco plantations, the leaf, the making process, the smoke and the pleasure— and the women and men that have given it body and soul, there’s has been a close relationship with the Cuban musical culture.
Beyond the island, there are several references to the ties between music and tobacco. Far back in time, an aria composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, So oft ich meine tobackspfeife, transcribed in two different tones by his second wife in a notebook back in 1725, tells about the frequent use of a tobacco pipe by the composer.
In our time, the people’s choice award goes to Tabaco y Chanel, which helped Colombian Jorge Villamizar shed light on Bacilos Band —also made up of Brazilian Andre Lopes and Puerto Rican Jose Javier Freire—; although it’s important to highlight the success achieved by Colombian Manuel J. Larroche’s cumbia Tabaco y Ron, especially with Dominican Fernandito Villalona’s merengue version.
I’m not including here those songs related to cigars —or the inevitable Fumando espero with the sensual image of Sara Montiel, the cigarette of the homonymous song that is sung by Mexican Ana Gabriel, the melancholic lyrics of Colombian El Chico Jaramillo. Anyhow, I stand for Catalan Joan Manuel Serrat’s evocation in No hago otra cosa que pensar en ti (“I light up a cigarette and another one…”)
As for curiosities, we have Tabacos y cerillas in Spanish Francisco Alonso’s zarzuela Las de Villadiego, who also authored Las Leandras; or French Hubert Ithier’s album recorded in 1954, which includes La fete du tabac, presumably written during his visit to Cuba a year before.
There is a classic song of the so-called country music, The Tobacco Road —a title similar to Erskine Caldwell’s harsh novel—, a hit in 1964 by The Nashville Teens, a British band that was influenced by the traditional bluegrass beats of the United States.
 Back to Grenet’s song there is no doubt about its high poetic power, which can only be compared to the evocative theme sung by Mexico’s Guadalupe Pineda in 1981: “Tobacco-colored girl / orange skirt black voice / this is your night.”
 Because the Cuban people speak in metaphors, backed up by a melodic line that is closer to it: “The tobacco plantation gets lost / in its gauzes of blue fog / the bright sky / its light is consumed / the pretty tobacco farmer / is the fruit in pulp and juice / and the tobacco rises its aroma / in thousand spirals of smoke / Green tobacco in flower / your look is / range of hope / nostalgia color / shade of pride / Green tobacco in flower, your smile is / curled smoke / and it gets subtle / in your paleness / The tobacco plantation shines brightly / bathed by the tropical sun / and following the clouds it gets dressed up / of blue and deep red / and you’ll be / like green tobacco in flower / A torpor of life / in the lands that is illuminated / and loved by God.”
Tabaco Verde has fueled the repertoire of several of the main voices of the Cuban musical and lyrical scene —such as Esther Borja, Ramon Calzadilla, Armando Pico, Alina Sanchez—, although one of its most popular versions was recorded in the late 1950s by Ramon Veloz, a champion of countryside music. But the most innovative versions of all was sung by the original Las D’ Aida Quartet, also from that time, in an album produced and directed by Chico O’ Farrill, who helped bring Afro-Cuban jazz to the United States.
As for the bucolic vein, one of Jose Ramon Sanchez’s pages turns out to be paradigmatic. This Pinar del Rio-born singer couldn’t help reflecting the landscape of Vueltabajo and its tobacco plantations. His most acclaimed guajira, El madrugador, sung and recorded by tens of voices and bands since the 1950s to date, vehemently describes: “My soil is gorgeous / under the blue sky / and the brook is beautiful / as it flows near the hut / The tobacco plantation is beautified by the sunlight / and the usual loneliness of the grassland / is broken by / a ten-stanza poem / which is an anthem of freedom.”
However, I’d like to make reference to a song that is closer in time and has not always been taken into account when it comes to breaking this topic down. I’m referring to a tune written by Silvio Rodriguez, one of the founders of the Cuban New Trova and one of the most influential contemporary musicians in the Iberian-American region.
By 1980, Decimas a mi abuelo was usually performed by him in concerts and recitals, and it was included in the album entitled Oh melancolía. The song reflected a personal experience —his childhood in San Antonio de los Baños, southwest of Havana, related to his civic and spiritual growth: “I come from a place where the river flows / from the top of a mountain / from a family with aroma / of soil, tobacco and cold / I come from a place with spirit / where I spent my childhood / and when I left / to the city and trap / I knew that in Tampa / my grandfather talked to Marti.”
References to tobacco are also present in guaracha. An old album recorded by Trio Pinareño, dated in 1941, includes Tabaco, Azucar y Ron; Agustin Ribot was very acclaimed with Pancho Tabaco, performed by both Orlando Guerra (Cascarita) and Roberto Faz’s Band, and who didn’t dance and enjoy the matchless voice and fast-paced beats of Benny More in Se te cayó el tabaco, from 1958.T
This saga isn’t over. Who knows if there is another songwriter, another song round the corner, just waiting to surprise us all.