Do you remember what year you recorded Sabroseao con la Ritmo?

No I don’t, but it must have been in the 1980s. [editor: It had to be in the early 70s - we'll try to get more discographical details from Humberto and Maza]

Sabroseao marked a big change in the style of the band – much more modern and using very exciting bloques, efectos and tempo changes. How did this new style come about?

The thing is that when you are young, you are always trying to do new things. We were influenced by the chachachá. At the time, there were two orchestras here, La Orquesta Aragón and La Orquesta de Fajardo y sus Estrellas. By the way, I heard that Fajardo died about two years ago in New York. Then we started to put together our orchestra… At first, we worked for about five years in Tropicana, because my uncle was… I’m from Cienfuegos, and my uncle was the manager and timbale player for La Orquestra Aragón from Cienfuegos. They had too much work, they were playing lots of dances and we were just starting, so he gave us the Tropicana cabaret.

So we started to work at the Tropicana, but as I was telling you, when one is young, you are always looking for new horizons, and so we started to play and it resulted in a hybrid or a fusion between La Orquesta Aragon and La Orquesta Fajardo. You know that chachachá was slow and Fajardo was a little bit more aggressive. We took both things and we achieved results because we were aggressive. In addition, at the time, a school for musicians opened and we were eager and had lots of questions, so we started to study. Everyone started to study and a real result could be seen in the studio. We were yearning to…we realized what a charanga was but we wanted to do something different, within the charanga. And it was successful, it can be seen in all those records, and there is all those things…los efectos. The guy who played the pailas, who has passed away, and I, both graduated as drummers, but he never played as a drummer…He created a type of rhythm there. The tumbadora player, who is still alive, but is blind, and I are the only ones who played the güiro. He was the güiro player, but switched to the tumbadora, and I was the tumbadora player, but ended up as the güiro player. I started of playing the tumbadora. 

When did you start to play the güiro?

In Tropicana, because he would get tired. He would get tired playing the güiro, so I told him, look, take the tumbadora and I’ll play the güiro and it worked out better, because he was a good and better tumbadora player and I was an average güiro player.  

Not any more, many consider you to be one of the best güiro players of all times.

Well, I have made a living out of it for 55 years.

Did Pedro Calvo ever sing with Ritmo Oriental? If not, who is the singer on Que se sepa bien mi amor who sounds a lot like Pedro?

No, that is not one of our songs.

No? But Pedro Calvo did sing with RO?

Yes, Pedrito was a singer in the orchestra near the beginning of the Ritmo, in the 1970s.

Sabroseao was released on an EP for EGREM…

Almost all our records were recorded at the EGREM studios.

And it had three other songs?

Yes, but we recorded few 45s. Every year we recorded an LP. An LP that later became the CDs.

Was Mi socio Manolo also released on 45 or only on LP?

On LP. Mi socio Manolo, that was our emblematic song.

And it never came out as a single?

No, it came out as… if it did come out as a single, I don’t know about it. Because, you know, it’s been a long time and…look I have a great discography of the RO but I have it lent out, because there are always people asking to lend them stuff. I have to go start to ask for it back, because people like to make copies of those things, to have an idea of what was made at that time.

Sabroseao was released on an EP for EGREM that had 3 other songs: Quiéreme mucho, Qué historia, and Chica te quiero ver.

That was an EP with four songs.

Here is a list of songs that RO recorded.

This song here that is called Quien dice is not by Juan Crespo but by Rufo.

I was in New York and I was talking with… What’s his name, what’s his name…? Anyway, the guy from FANIA who EGREM sold all of my work to…

I have a song that Papo Lucca recorded for me and some other guys also recorded it, a song called Canto de felicidad, a guajira [TN: a type of country music] and someone got paid for it. [editor: he's talking about Sonora Ponceña's Canto al amor, an apparently uncredited cover - it's definitely taken from Canto a la felicidad.]

Anyways, I was over there,… damn what’s the guy’s name…? [editor: it could be Ned Sublette, but he wasn't associated with Fania] These guys from EGREM sold the masters of all of those records to the guys over there. When I was there he…damn it, what is that American’s name?...He gave me two boxes of my CDs and when I got here I started to give them away to people, I have a bunch that I lent out that are two albums of Ritmo Oriental that have the history of the band, Volume One and Volume Two, that have a lot of those songs.