Orquesta Revé, commonly known as `El Charangon', is a music legend in Cuba and a worldwide famous. The Orquesta Revé was founded in 1956 by Elio Revé, a brilliant musician from Guantanamo, who died in 1996. Today it is his son, Elito Revé, which ensures the musical direction of the band.
Many of the musicians and singers currently in the forefront of the Cuban music scene, have been at one time or another members of Orquesta Revé, and it is probably for that reason that the band was given the nickname of ‘Mother’ orchestra.
In more than half-century of history, the Orquesta Revé was not only an incomparable orchestra of popular dance music, but a laboratory from which derived other orchestras, other innovating and successful musical formulas. For instance one can cite Ritmo Oriental, Los Van Van, daN Den, the 440, Pupy, Chucho Valdes, Yumuri and well of others.
Elio Revé’s childhood took place in the Loma Del Chivo, a zone of Guantanamo area which is rich with folkoric traditions such as the Changüi, an ancestor of the Son, and the Tumba Francesa.
Within his artistic formation in Guantanamo, distinct cultural heritages are mixed and one can notice in its musical afro-Cuban synthesis the combination of afro-Spanish and the afro-french influences.
When in the middle of the Fifties Elio Revé settles with Havana, he decides to form an orchestra of the Charanga type with the objective to diffuse Changüi.
The initial discography of Orquesta Revé reflects this period of apogee of Charangas (Aragon, Fajardo, America) but also his inevitable search for new sounds at the time of the decline of the Cha-cha.
Through various stages, among which the most successful are the periods with Juan Formell at the end of the Sixties and the one with Juan Carlos Alfonso at the end of the Eighties, Elio Revé has been able to create its own style by making innovations as well into Changüi as in the format of Charangas.
Probably the biggest intuition of this brilliant Guantanamero was to conceive Changüi as an open musical genre which could be influenced by other musical forms or other rates/rhythms (changuì-shake, changuì- pachanga, changuì- guaguancò, changuì - timba).
Its relation with Changüi was extremely creative and successful, for its ambivalence with a foot in the tradition and the other in the innovation.
Ultimately it is with Elio Reve that alow Changüi to evolve from folk music to true orchestral genre. To reach this result, Elio Revé not only made it possible to his musicians to express their talents (on this subject the case of Formal is emblematic), but also he did not hesitate a second before revolutionizing the typical sonority of its Charanga, in successive phases, by changing the violins and the flute for the trombones of the jazz bands, by borrowing from Conjuntos de Son the Bongoes, Clave and Tres, by transferring to the Timbales the rhythmic figures from Changüi, or by giving up the style `Aragonien' of the voices in unison in order to introduce the Changuisera manner of singing; by using the fundamental drums (Bata drums) as as many colors of which those of Cajita Clouded, of Silbato or, even more dared, these shouts characteristic of Descarga Changuisera and its festive climax (“Juega! What, which, that? Ecuajey! With sancochar boniato! Chapalea! ”).
All these changes did not deteriorate of anything the heritage of Changüi owing to the fact that, without taking only one wrinkle, Changüi lives within the music of Revé while following its evolution. Its music, today like yesterday, is the happy expression of a creative synthesis between the cardinal points of the cuban music. We already underlined the dialectics between tradition and innovation, but it should be also noticed that the music of Revé is at the same time rustic and urban, a music resulting from the countryside Guajira and from the Rumba, a music ritmically complex but with easy melody has to retain.
Probably its most obvious characteristic, and the one which attracts us in majority, are the joy of its merry sonority which is transmitted to the urban areas, whatever they are, the joy of the Changuisera party. This is confirmed by the success of the tours that the Charangon undertook through various times, in Chile, in Peru, in Panama, in Puerto Rico, in Canada, in the United States, in Belgium, in Denmark, in Finland, in Sweden, in Switzerland, in Italy, in Germany, in France, in England, in Greece, in Spain, in Russia, in Japan and in West-Africa.
Furthermore, its music has always been a reference for the Salsero movement, as the following recordings testify this influence: Roberto Roena, Orquesta Broadway, Ralphy Leavitt y su Orquesta Selecta, Grupo Sabor de Nacho, Orquesta Tipica Ideal, Estrellas Cobo and many more….
Even Celia Cruz and Ray Barreto started to play Changüi.
With the beginning of the year the 90, during which was born the movement from Timba, Revé assign himself the task to pay homage to the Salsa movement, at the time of its decline, while asserting at the same time, in a movement of re-appropriation, its roots in the Cuban Son and its primarily Cuban charm with the huge hit which “Mi salsa tiene sandunga “.
After a few years Timba wanted, following the example of the Salsa movement, to proclaim itself as a musical movement. A `Dream Team' of Timba was created and it brought together the musicians and the most important orchestras of the country, but without including Elio Revé.
Today the Charangon is in a very successful phase nationally and internationally, at the top of its popularity, especially after the awards won in 2008 in Cuba and in France for its last recording “Fresquecito” and it is worth acknowledging that its ‘Timba’ has never been as good !