This composition by Guillermo Portables is a typical guajira (country lament) from the east of Cuba, a style which is very popular in West Africa.  Sometimes known as the Cuban ‘blues’ it is, in fact, derived from the Spanish tradition.  Eliades Ochoa is the song’s perfect interpreter.  A close associate of the guajira maestro Ñico Saquito, who was Portabales mentor, Eliades is deeply immersed in tradition and wears his cowboy hat to identify himself as a country man.  Born in Santiago into a whole family of guitarists and singers, he first picked up the instrument at the age of six.  As a youth he was a familiar sight playing guitar in brothels and bars around Santiago and by the early 1970’s he was a regular at Santiago’s celebrated music club ‘Casa de la Trova’.  In 1978 he took over the renowned Cuarteto Patria, a group which has existed in some shape or form since 1940.  Like Compay Segundo he plays a self-made hybrid of guitar and tres, doubling the D and G strings of a standard six string guitar.