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Guantanamera
Lyrics: José Marti & Hector Angulo - Music: Joséito Fernandez

We need to begin with the Bay of Pigs, which in some ways is the Americans’ Waterloo. Guantanamera in fact refers to the west coast of Cuba, where the Americans had set up their base. This is to say that Guantanamera made its mark on History with a capital H. Guajira Guantanamera - its full title - has absolutely no military significance whatsoever because it means young girl, a little peasant girl from (the province of) Guantanamo.

The first couplet begins with a fragment from the Versos Sencillos, "simple verses", a work by José Marti, who was a 19th century Cuban poet. "I am an honest man and I come from the place where the palm trees grow..." Hector Angulo - a friend of Fidel Castro - added a few couplets to it at the beginning of the 1940s, basing himself on a story popular in Havana. Twenty years later, when the same Angulo sang the song for children at summer camp in New York, a certain Pete Seeger fell under its spell. He took the Guajira out of the title and became the first of a long line of famous performers. Helmut Lotti is a worthy name on a list that includes Joan Baez, Trini Lopez, Digno Garçia, Joe Dassin, Nana Mouskouri, Julio Iglesias, Phil Manzarena and so on.

The tune was written by Joséito Fernandez. Fernandez, was an unusual character who worked for the Cuban radio station CMQ: he would sing his improvised comments on the day’s event on news bulletins. It was in doing this that he "invented" the tune for Guantanamera in 1928. It was only recorded for the first time in 1941, under the title of "my biography" and with the sub-title of Guajira Guantanamera.

Solamente Una Vez
Lyrics & Music: Agustin Lara

"Just once in your life you will encounter True Love. Passion will enflame your soul just once. When this chance comes along, drop everything and take it. Even if it is for just one night." With its passionate violins and delicate swirls, the Mexican song Solamente una vez spellbinds us as it tells of the underlying passion that is Latin Love. A timeless drama that could leave no Latin lover cold. With Helmut Lotti’s husky voice, the drama is given an eternal value here.

Close your eyes and think of wind instruments. It’s not by chance that that it’s them says Eso beso. The pouting lips of the wind instrument section perfectly symbolise - even if it was Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf - what they’re talking about in Eso beso: "ooh that kiss" ! This light-hearted love song from Puerto Rico, stuffed full of its compulsory carambas, muchos, amors and sambas, makes the blood sing in the veins. And until further notice, the samba is still the "most swinging way to make love".

Yo vendo unos ojos negros cries its tears by the edge of the ocean. The abandoned lover puts his coal-coloured eyes on sale because they are bewitched by the woman he loves. And since she has gone, he feels betrayed by his eyes. It may seem like a Greek tragedy, but the origins are Chilean.

The two-four beat of La Adelita sets the tempo for soldiers marching off to battle at the time of the Mexican revolution. The soldiers have had to leave their loves behind at home and have to make their own way in love. La Adelita is the story of a woman camp follower and a sergeant, a love that is played out before the eyes of a soldier who is desperately in love and so is jealous of them. Just to make things clear, a camp follower is a woman who follows the troops and offers all sorts of delights : food, drink - and her body.

In this composition, Malaguena, the lady of Malaga, is serenaded on the balcony. her would-be suitor is as poor as a church mouse. Although the song is Cuban, it is all about the Spanish seaside town of Malaga. Malaguena is part of the piano suite by Lecuona : Andalucia, Suite Espanola, a work dating from 1928. Lecuona (1896-1963) is also the composer of Tabou, the instrumental hit by The Jokers. His Malaguena has also been performed under the English title of At the crossroads. But Malaguena is above all known for versions performed by Caterina Valente (‘54), Chet Atkins (‘57), Connie Francis (‘60), José Feliciano (‘70) and even The Tubes (‘75). And just so there’s no confusion, you should not confuse this Malaguena with the hit Malaguena salerosa performed by Trini Lopez in 1968 , written by Sanchez and Galindo.

In Adios mujer, Helmut Lotti bids farewell to the woman he loves in heart-rending English lyrics he wrote himself. As a genuine Latin lover, he is not afraid of pathos : "I will always continue to think of this magical night, even though we have no future together. In my dreams, our lips are always together. But now I must leave you."

What does a Latin lover with a broken heart do when he cannot sleep ? He sings gently to himself, that’s what! Esta noche serena seeks out popular wisdom about love in the fearsome nights at high altitude in the mountains of Chile. The evocative arpeggio expresses the sadness, perhaps even the "Hundred years of solitude" by Gabriel Garçia Marquez. Performed by Helmut Lotti, the rhythm is full of gentleness and is rather moving. "Because you are my sky and I am your Pole star, I will stay awake all night for you."

Here comes the camp follower again, the female "sweeper truck" used by the troops. The woman of easy virtue is now trying to sell not only drinks, food and her body, but also marihuana, trying to intoxicate the soldiers and make them forget their hardships and hurts (of the heart). One wonders how a woman as charitable as this could be given such a nickname La cucaracha, "the cockroach". But La cucaracha also refers to one of the periods of revolution in Mexico’s very turbulent military history, at a time when the soldiers fighting for liberty used to march in triple time.

Sangue di Beirona is the title that we can definitely say is at the origin of the Latino Classics project. It was when Helmut Lotti was working on Out of Africa that he discovered this song from the Cape Verde Islands. Although closer to Africa geographically, it has an undeniable Latin flavour - the language is Portuguese - which explains why it was finally not used for Out of Africa. But Sangue di Beirona prepared the ground for this new journey of musical discovery. Which just goes to show that Helmut Lotti allows himself to be guided artistically by his pure love of music.

The fear of being abandoned is one that haunts Latin men who are always overflowing with passion. "Kiss me, kiss me" begs Besame mucho, "because I’m afraid of winning you only to lose you again". Known throughout the world, the love song Besamo mucho is in fact the nightingale aria by Goyescas, the second opera by the Spanish composer Enrique Granados (1867-1916) who drew his inspiration from paintings by Goya, but did not enjoy the success one might have expected. His opera was due to be previewed in Paris in 1914 : but the First World War put paid to the hopes of the composer. His creation moved to New York along with the cream of the opera singers and was first performed in 1916 in the presence of Granados. But its triumph was short-lived. On the return trip, the ship carrying Granados and the singers was torpedoed by the Germans. Goyescas thus experienced a brutal and premature death. There is only one surviving recording of it (with Consuelo Rubio and Ana Maria Miarte).

For the famous nightingale aria, Granados had sought inspiration from his own work, The girl and the nightingale, which was a piece for piano that he had composed in 1911. But he had to look much further to find the theme for Besamo mucho. A fact that was largely compensated for later in the numerous hit versions, in particular by Andy Russel (the first under the title of Besamo mucho in ‘44), Jimmy Dorsey (‘44), Caterina Valente (‘58), The Coasters (‘60), The Beatles (‘62), Dalida (‘76) and Placido Domingo (‘90). As familiar as Besame mucho is to our ears, Helmut Lotti adds a subtle intensity that has been lost from view for many generations. A return to his roots? Well yes, because at the end of the day, Helmut is a genuine nightingale.

Originally an instrumental, countless lyrics have been written over the years to the Argentinian theme of El Choclo. And Helmut Lotti adds some himself, written in English. He opens up his performance with the very essence of the tango : "Every tango tells the story of its dancers’ souls." Something along the lines of : dance a tango with me and I will tell you who you are. This is a Helmut Lotti who knows how to let himself go, while still remaining in control. An incomparable artist.

The slow two-four beat of the tango was first heard in French and Italian drawing rooms just before the First World War. But its origins go back to both sides of the River Plate, to Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The Cuban habanera, Argentinian milonga and Uruguayan candombé all maintain an explosive relationship with the tango. But the whole art of the tango is to go to the very edge of an explosion without ever setting it off. It is an art that Helmut Lotti masters with finesse, as he demonstrates to the full here.

The ship of gold, La Barca de oro will soon be setting sail. The singer is departing and leaving the woman he loves behind. Not just for a while, but for ever. "Your ears will never hear my songs again," he sings to her. A farewell romance with Mexican origins that does not become bogged down in the lyricism of a sailor drowning in his tears, even "if the tide washes away my ocean of tears". Subtle and refined, the poetry of the words and sounds instead transform it into a delightful love song. And the masterful timbre of Helmut Lotti’s voice even allows one a glimmer of hope that at the end they might see one another again one day, somewhere, no matter how vain that hope might be. It needs a master’s touch to make that tiny distinction.

A magnificent love song that first saw the light of day on the sun-soaked beaches of the Caribbean, where the tourists are currently seeking the sun during the cold European winter. Cuando calienta el sol lays bare the split in the Latin soul in the twinkling of an eye. Because even when it comes to nostalgia there is room for a certain amount of gaiety. It is only in the presence of the sun that the singer feels "the beats of your heart" in the sand. The fresh memory of the woman he loves runs in parallel with the temperature on the beach and reaches it zenith in the vocal intonation of Helmut Lotti.

It is while rocking to the rhythm of the music that La marinero tells the story of a sailor. His girlfriends are waiting for him in port. This song takes Helmut Lotti across the sea to the vastness of Brazil, where extreme poverty and boundless riches rub shoulders, but where no group of human beings is complete without heart-rending songs and passionate pirouettes. Helmut Lotti succeeds here in the most marvellous manner.

The "bambologist" Tom Miller has found traces of the "kissing dance" that go back to the 17th century. Louie Perez, the drummer in Los Bobos confirms that La bamba is above all a wedding song that comes from the region of Vera Cruz, in the south of Mexico. Andres Huesca made the oldest known recording of the song in around 1908, only then it was under the title of El jarabe Veracruzano, "the wedding in Vera Cruz". But there are countless variants of this folk dance that also has couplets without number, some of them often "invented" on the spot.

Richie Valens was the first to bring out La bamba in 1958. And more than just ‘bring out’! In fact, it was only the B side to his single Donna. In the United States alone, some one hundred and fifty performers were to imitate him. Without taking into account all of the Twist and Shout’s that have an identical melodic structure and the same beginning. But La bamba has stood the test of time, due in particular to Trini Lopez (‘66), Dusty Springfield (‘68), Neil Diamond (‘69), Raymond van het Groenewoud & (father) Nico Gomez (‘83 in the film Brussels by Night) and Los Lobos (‘87).

The magnetic force of La bamba lies in the little piece of bravura executed traditonally by the dancer: the scarf of one of the men is thrown on to the dance floor and turned into a knot by the dancing feet. This knot is then thrown into the air as a climax. The lyrics begin with the words: "To dance la bamba, you need a little charm, a little luck and something else, too. To dance la bamba, you need to move your pelvis, your hips and something else, too." Anything extra that is required is supplied by Helmut Lotti who throws it into the arena. And something else, too. Latino Classics ? It’s such a beautiful Helmut Lotti, you could kiss it. Arilongo, arilongo, arilongo, el sombrero me lo quito y me lo pongo!