Filin is a style of music that combines traditional Cuban bolero with American jazz and blues. Over the next few weeks, Portland vocalist Jessie Marquez will explore the genre in a series of performances and conversations at El Centro Milagro, the first of which will take place this Saturday, Aug. 15. The series will culminate in a full ensemble performance on Sept. 5 as part of the Montavilla Jazz Festival.
Marquez joins us to talk about her connection to Cuba and the musical relationship she sees between the island and the U.S.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross. We’re going to spend some time with an art form that is yet another argument for nations to listen to each other’s music, even or perhaps especially when their governments are against each other. Filin is a style of music that combines the slow, romantic Cuban style known as bolero with American jazz and blues. It’s like Caribbean balladeering combined with intricate harmonies and a yearning for a better life.
Vocalist Jessie Marquez will explore the genre in a series of conversations and performances at El Centro Milagro in Portland over the next month, beginning this Saturday. Jessie Marquez now joins us in the studio. Jessie, welcome to Think Out Loud. It’s good to have you.
Jessie Marquez: Great to be here. Thank you for having us.
Norcross: You are here with your guitarist Ben Graves, and let’s hear a song.
Marquez: Yeah, we’re going to play “Realidad y Fantasia.”
[“Realidad y Fantasia” playing, performed by Jessie Marquez and Ben Graves live in studio]
Norcross: That was a song called “Realidad y Fantasia.” Jessie Marquez is the vocalist and she specializes in a form of Cuban-American music called Filin. She’s here with her guitarist Ben Graves. That was beautiful.
Marquez: Thank you.
Norcross: What is filin music? I think feeling is kind of at the center of it.
Marquez: It is. It’s a feeling music. And in Cuba, they spell it F I L I N, which is the way it sounds in Spanish or how it’s spelled in Spanish. Filin music was originally the Cuban bolero, which came about in the late 1800s in the eastern provinces of Cuba with the troubadours with the guitars. And then in the ‘40s and ‘50s, people in Cuba were listening to a lot of cinema music, and they were listening to a lot of jazz and blues. So they took those sounds, they took those harmonies and they created something new, a new genre, and they called it Filin. And it was such an important kind of moment musically in Cuba that they actually called it the “movimiento,” the feeling movement.
I like to think of it as a conversation between people, between music, musical styles, that kind of inhabits this place somewhere in between traditional Cuban music and American or North American music. And in that way, it speaks to me personally.
Norcross: Why? How were you exposed to it and why did it speak to you?
Marquez: Well, my father grew up in Cuba. He was about 13 when the revolution happened, and his family members were actually immigrants to Cuba. My grandfather was Spanish and my grandmother was Italian, but Spanish-speaking Italian. So they were there raising their family. They were middle class and had a small business, and the revolution was coming. When it happened in 1959, New Year’s Eve, it was a very exciting time. And, the Barbudos, the revolutionaries…
Norcross: Yeah. The Castros.
Marquez: Exactly, [they] came to the neighborhood where they were living, because there were some military installations there. They all partied together that first night and my grandmother ended up making pots of soup for the Barbudos over the coming weeks.
So I grew up hearing these stories about Cuba, and it was all very interesting and exciting. But it wasn’t until I actually went to Cuba with my dad in 1996 that it really hit home. Everything looked, of course, very different, kind of exotic, but I recognized the way that people moved. I recognized their gestures and their sense of humor. That made a really big impact on me, so I kept going back to Cuba.
I spent 10 years making regular trips, and I ended up collaborating with members of the Afro-Cuban All Stars. I recorded a CD down there. I performed in various venues. And during those travels and during those experiences, I became really exposed to Filin music. I heard all these great stories and anecdotes about different artists. And I think for me personally, it speaks to me because it is a genre that is in this in-between place. I can relate to that. It’s not purely Cuban, it’s not purely North American, and I feel like I can sort of inhabit that place.
Norcross: What parts of the North American part of Filin music are actually present? What does Filin draw from blues and jazz?
Marquez: Well, the harmony, definitely jazz harmony above all. Yeah, I think it’s speaking the harmonic language.
Norcross: Yeah, you connected with the notable Filin composer Enrique Cárdenas. What was that experience like?
Marquez: Well, for a couple years, I performed in the Boleros de Oro festival in Cuba, which is a bolero festival that travels around the whole island. They send artists from Havana on buses and planes to different provinces, so I went to Santa Clara, I went to Holguín, I went to Santiago de Cuba. And in each of these places, you perform, you collaborate with local artists and perform with them in theaters or in street parties, whatever venues that happened to be there.
So when I was in Santa Clara, I met Enrique – he accompanied me on a lot of the songs that I did and played me his own compositions, and I was very moved by them. And the next year, I went back to Santa Clara to the festival and we spent more time together. I learned more of his songs. I like to sing songs by composers who are lesser known. I like to sing songs that I feel maybe need to be sung or that have not been heard, and to give voice to those songs.
Then also, just on a practical level, it’s a really, really hard time to be in Cuba, and it has been for many years. It’s kind of this cyclical thing where there was a special period where the economy just fell apart after the fall of the Soviet Union. And over the past few years, things have just been really deteriorating on the island, and the power grid is just completely unstable, and people are just living under really very dire conditions. So another part of my motivation is to support musicians there with resources and technical support. I’ve sent computers, funds, food, things like that.
Norcross: Yeah, and we’ll talk more about that in a bit, but I think we should hear another song.
Marquez: Great.
Norcross: Do you have something for us?
Marquez: Yeah, so we’re gonna play another song. This one is by Enrique Cárdenas. It’s called “Varadero Mulata.” This Varadero is a beautiful, beautiful beach in Cuba with white sand and crystal blue water, and there are lots of hotels with cabarets and women, dancers, rum and cigars, and palm trees. Everybody wants to go to Varadero.
Norcross: You set quite the scene for me there.
Marquez: Yeah. So the song compares the beach to a beautiful mulata woman and also to Yemayá, the Orisha or goddess of the sea.
[“Varadero Mulata” by Enrique Cárdenas playing, performed by Jessie Marquez and Ben Graves live in studio]
Norcross: You’ve been listening to Jessie Marquez and guitarist Ben Graves. Jessie is a Portland vocalist, and she performed in our studio.
“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.
