Septeto Santiaguero: 25 years of my life
Without professional music studies, the Maestro Fernando Dewar is nowadays on of the main characters of traditional music in Cuba, because of his musical path in the last fourth of century.
Graduated in Mechanical construction, his big musical calling brought him to study the Tres as an autodidact. At the beginning of 90’s he is leading Melodias del Ayer, the band that will convert, in 1995, in Septeto Santiaguero.
“We chose this name because is more commercial. It was about the traditional music of our city and at the same time it helped us to positioning the music that we wanted to make on national and international stages”.
Even if the name Septeto sounds the most traditional, - said Dewar several times – our music is full of contemporaneity. All that’s happening with Septeto today shows what you can do with traditional Cuban music”.
It’s very common to hear from the audience and form other artists, that Septeto Santiaguero “plays like an orchestra”. What is this for?
“Our grounding is Son. We work a lot on sonority, musical arrangements and we strive to keep our music close to everyone, above all to young people. The musicians are very talented too and they put all their heart and soul to what they do.”
You believe in young people and insists a lot to make them dance an enjoy traditional Cuban music. Why?
We think a lot of young people when we make traditional music. We focus on this because it’s the way to let our music traditions be known and that these traditions spread and circulate in Cuba and over the world.