Trío Matamoros

The Trío Matamoros, a Cuban musical group,^[2] ranks among the foundational ensembles of the island's trova tradition, an act whose recordings helped spread the son of eastern Cuba to a far wider audience.^[1] The group was founded in 1925 in Santiago de Cuba, the southeastern port long regarded as a cradle of son during the early twentieth century, and it gathered three local musicians who each sang and composed in addition to performing.^[1] Miguel Matamoros led on guitar, Rafael Cueto played a second guitar, and Siro Rodríguez supplied the maracas and claves that anchored the ensemble's rhythm.^[1]

In a detail that captures the crowded musical scene of late-1920s Cuba, the ensemble first worked under the name Trio Oriental but adopted the Matamoros name in 1928, after its members discovered that another group already carried the original title.^[3] The repertoire centered on boleros and son, two genres then consolidating their characteristic forms, and the trio toured widely through Latin America and Europe while recording in New York, a circuit that reflected the era's expanding transnational market for Cuban music.^[4]

Miguel Matamoros (1894–1971) stands out as one of the most productive composers in the son idiom, and several of his works entered the standard Cuban repertoire.^[5] His first major success arrived with "El que siembra su maíz," and he followed it with enduring numbers such as "Lágrimas negras" and "Son de la Loma," pieces that remained closely tied to the group long after their initial recordings.^[6]

The ensemble proved unusually flexible in format, reshaping itself over its long career as a quartet, a septet, and a full orchestra rather than remaining fixed as a trio.^[9] In 1934 the group recorded "El desastre del Morro Castle," among the first numbers to commemorate the disaster of that ship, and in 1940 the singer Guillermo Portabales appeared with the trio.^[10] For a tour to Mexico, Miguel Matamoros enlarged the act into the Conjunto Matamoros, and between 1945 and 1947 the expanded group engaged the young Beny Moré, then little known, as a vocalist, an engagement that preceded Moré's later emergence as a leading voice in Cuban popular song.^[7]

Critics of the period admired the Trío Matamoros for the close harmony of its singing and the literary quality of its lyrics, attributes that secured the group's lasting place in Cuban music history.^[4] Later surveys of the island's traditions, including Philip Sweeney's guide to Cuban music, list the ensemble among the canonical artists tied to the origins and growth of son.^[8] The group is widely regarded as an important force in the rise of son, and after roughly thirty-five years together its members announced that they would disband in May 1961, having performed their final concert in New York the previous year.^[9]