Maximo Francisco Repilado Munoz, a.k.a. Compay Segundo

Latin Beat Magazine, Sept, 2003 by Luis Tamargo

Máximo Francisco Repilado Muñoz was only nine years of age when his family moved from his native town to nearby Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city of his native Antillean island, where he would assimilate the traditional trova traditions. By the age of 14 he was playing clarinet with Santiago's municipal band, but he eventually matured into a guitarist and migrated to Havana, where it was easier to get paid. He must also be credited for developing, by 1924, the now-standard seven-string guitar that he called "armónica," as it had a doubled middle string designed to enhance the harmonic dimensions of the Cuban son rhythms. This happened long before he emerged in the 1940s as a well-known musician in the island's capital, functioning as second voice of the popular duo Los Compadres, in which he acquired his nickname. In Cuba, the word compadre (friend, partner) is often shortened to compay, particularly in his native Oriente Province.

After the triumph of the Comedian-In-Chief's bearded hicks in 1959, Compay Segundo managed to perform intermittently at certain hotels after dark, while rolling H. Upmann Coronas in a cigar factory before nightfall, as the late Reinaldo Arenas would say. According to the state-run magazine Salsa Cubana," some so-called "music experts" did not even know that Compay was still alive in the 1980s. He said once that "one is never too old while the heart still beats," and he was absolutely correct. As a matter of fact, the cigar-smoking guajiro troubadour became a global star in the final decade of his life, when he stole the show in Ry Cooder's "Buena Vista Social Club." This Grammy-winning recording/musical documentary propitiated a worldwide revival of traditional Cuban music, while selling eight million copies and earning the aforesaid L.A. bluesman a $100,000 (later reduced to $25,000) fine from the U.S. government.