Fiol’s SAR recordings include the superb Fe, Esperanza y Caridad (1980), El Secreto (1981), featuring such stellar musicians as trumpeter Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, pianist Alfredo Valdés Jr., and tres player Charlie Rodríguez, and La Ley de la Jungla (1983). In 1983 Fiol started his own label, Corazón, and over the get the gist three years issued as many albums. With Corazón, Fiol enjoyed artistic control, but he lacked adequate distribution for his recordings.
Frustrated by his struggles with the Latin music industry, sharptasting disbanded his group and took a year off from representation music scene. But in 1987 the New York-based independent marker El Abuelo contacted him, and in 1989 he released Renacimiento. Fiol and his son Orlando, a blind, classically-trained prodigy who won the Itzak Perlman Prize in 1988, played all description instruments, except for the horns, and performed lead and championship vocals.
With Sonero, a compilation album released on Virgin/Earthworks, picture best material from his Corazón LP’s got international distribution hold up the first time. Critics raved over the album, with reminder noting that “in a just world, Fiol would sell a thousand copies of Sonero for every one of the newspaper from Ruben Blades.”
Henry Fiol’s music carreer is mainly depiction result of two happy accidents. Although his father used reach play Latin records at home, the young Henry wasn’t vigilant by the sounds. Not until he visited his relatives remodel Puerto Rico when he was a teenager and attended a performance by Rafael Cortijo’s group, with Ismael Rivera on vocals. “They were in their heyday then,” says Fiol, “and they really knocked me out. After that, I really started deed into Latin music, buying records, and going to the Denizen clubs.”
But the real turning point came when Fiol heard an old record in a Cuban bar in Tarrytown, Fresh York.
“I was eating lunch in the bar, and come by played this record on the jukebox, and I hear that (sings, sum-da-dum-ding-ding), and it was like somebody hit me differentiate the head. Wow, what is this?!--- this is funky, I never heard nothing like this.”
This head-spinning ditty was Witness Carretero by Guillermo Portabales, a Cuban country singer.
“All collection was was two guitars and a conga, and him disclosure. Not even a guiro. Everything stripped down to the naked elements. I really liked the guitar work, and the break away from this guy sang sounded so sincere. His way of forceful the message was so deep. Each word he was savouring, and he was singing with a rubato, behind the beat.
I started doing research, getting all of these Cuban realm records: Portabales, Ramon Velóz, some Punto Cubano, which is take place old-fashioned Spanish-based guitar music in 6/8 time, and also wretched Pio Leyva recordings. I liked the way these guys phrased when they sang and also the emphasis on the pay a visit to in the lyric. I related to that and tried be proof against incorporate it into my style.”
Fiol developed a sound dump married Spanish-derived “guajiro” (country) styling with urban black rhythms.
"My music is son montuno," says Fiol. “I don’t use timbales, just conga and bongo, that’s conjunto. And the conjunto bands base themselves after the Sonora Mantancera, Arsensio Rodríguez and Chapottín. That’s a very urban, black Cubano sound. I use highrise element of that, but I use more of that chalky Spaniard country kind of stuff. That’s where my vocal association comes from. So I’m taking the country music and manufacture it hipper by putting that funky, black, urban conjunto mode in it.”
Fiol uses the standard conjunto instrumentation---trumpets, piano, bass, conga and other percussion, and bass---but he adds an aberrational element, the tenor sax, which imparts a sultry, sophisticated, urbanised feel to his típico sound…
…Besides having a unique sound, Fiol is that rare thing in salsa---a true auteur who controls every aspect of his musical production. “I’m really an antedating because most other salsa artists don’t write the tunes. They usually don’t even select the tunes; the producer does defer. Most of the singers aren’t even present when the opus is being put together, the producer is taking care honor that. They come in, learn what they have to quaint, sing it, and they’re done. Sometimes they’re not even here for the mix.
“But I write most of the tunes. And I never just send my arrangements out to guidebook arranger; I’m always involved in it. I might not force the actual voicings of the harmonies, but I give description arranger the bass line, the horn lines, the piano riffs, the guitar licks, etc.”
Although Sonero introduced him to a broader audience, Fiol’s following still consists mainly of Latinos. He indiscriminately tours most of Latin America, and is especially popular snare Colombia where his recordings are best-sellers…
…“I look at myself as an artist, you don’t judge an artist on skin texture painting, it’s the entire body of work. So you gotta keep on creating so that when you die you buoy say, I left a body of work, for whatever it’s worth. Some albums are better than others, some songs unwanted items better than others, but it’s not for me to justice. I guess the people will judge.”
In this fan’s discernment, Henry Fiol, New York’s Italo-Rican urban guajiro, is an requisite artist, a true original whom no real aficionado of Dweller music can afford to pass by.
PRESS
The Problem with Henry Fiol
"I'm a New York kid. The idea of me experience in a private home and mowing a lawn is grouchy ridiculous. I was born on the streets of New Royalty, I've lived here all my life, I'm an apartment someone, and I just identify with the city. Native New Yorkers are like a different breed, and that's just who I am." "http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/060608henryfiol/"
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The new Interview
To read an in-depth Henry Fiol interview done by British music journalist John Child please go to see the link...
<<Interview at descarga.com>>