ANGELA SUAREZ - BRIEF SUMMARY - The story of a 3-generation family of musicians
Enrique Suarez was born in 1897 in the gold mine town of Marmato, located at the western side of Cauca River, 80 kilometers west of Medellin. At that time, the English Western Andean Mining Company was exploiting Marmato’s rich gold mines. Barefoot and poor, Enrique used to peek in the windows of the English people’s houses. He marveled at the sophisticated nightgowns they wore, the tobacco cigars they smoked, and the music they heard on the Victrola. The town was living in political turmoil. Issues like slavery, people’s fight for freedom and a better life, the construction of democracy and, especially, a raving dispute for gold, were daily events in Marmato’s life at the beginning of the 20th century. A few years later, a circus company visited the town. Their music and the flute player fascinated Enrique. He joined the circus and left Marmato at the age of 18. He arrived in Medellin in 1915, where he soon joined the city’s music scene, playing flute in all sorts of settings, with classical orchestras and popular bands. In 1920, he co-founded one of the first jazz bands in the city and in Colombia: Jazz Nicolas Band. They played fox trots and swing, but also played famous songs based on Colombian rhythms, which were beginning to take shape as the national music of the country: pasillos, bambucos, waltzes, guabinas, as well as Spanish pasodobles and Cuban rumbas. He never forgot the sound of the orchestras played on the Victrolas by the English people in Marmato. He later heard those orchestras through short wave radio in Medellin. The famous Paul Whiteman’s orchestra fascinated him and became his main musical influence.
Enrique played with the most highly regarded musicians at that time in Medellin, and later he was considered the most important flute player of the 1920’s in Antioquia. After 15 years of being a professional musician, Enrique married Gabriela, and they started a family. He realized that a growing family would make more economic demands on him, and he quit music. He went into the the iron trade business and, during the second world war, through the iron shortage period, Enrique became rich, establishing himself as a prominent industrialist in Medellin. He had four daughters and two sons. One of his daughters, Angela, inherited his love and talent for music. She wanted to be an actress and a singer, and performed on a radio program when she was fourteen years old. However, afraid that she would suffer as a musician, Enrique did not allow her to pursue her dreams, and forbade her to perform. It was only after Angela married Luciano, a gentle and flexible man, that she was able to devote herself to the arts as she always dreamed. At age 38, Angela started to record the songs she loved in her youth: boleros and ballads. Angela became an important artist in the sixties in Medellin and throughout Colombia, recording eight LP’s between 1964 and 1972. It took courage to buck conventional ideas about being a woman and a musician in conservative Medellin. In those days, being a musician was considered to be lowly and of bad taste. Due to the intimate nature of her music and the sophisticated style she developed, Angela performed in various upscale nightclubs around the country, and was well received by the audience. Even though she didn’t become an artist of the masses, Angela had a small but true following that stuck with her for many years.
After six successful albums, her final two albums took a different direction, set by her record company, and album sales dropped. The early seventies were times of cultural confusion in Colombia. She became discouraged with her career and decided to stop singing. However, in the big picture, she made her dream come true and also encouraged her three sons and one daughter to become artists, which they all did. Luciano, her oldest son, became a rock and roller in London and then a rock star in Colombia; Claudia devoted herself to jazz, Brazilian, and Colombian folk music in the United States, has made four CDs, and continues to make music in Colombia. Jaime, her second son, became a blues piano player for several bands in Medellin. Felipe, her youngest, plays guitar and owns a restaurant in Sint Maarten Island in the Netherlands Antilles.
Angela died on the 22nd of August of 2006. This double CD/book is an homage to her life, which she lived with passion and joy, and to her music, with which she transcended in time. In presenting this musical family history, I aim to recover a forgotten musical heritage of Medellin. It is my wish to learn from my own path in life, therefore enriching my personal life as well as of those people of the community I live in.
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