Juan Carlos Formell, an acclaimed singer-songwriter who settled in New York after defecting from Cuba and ultimately took over as bassist for his well-known father, Juan Formell, in Los Van Van, some of the influential bands of post-Revolutionary Cuba, died on Saturday throughout a efficiency in New York City. He was 59.
His loss of life, from a coronary heart assault he suffered onstage on the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts within the Bronx, was confirmed by his romantic and musical accomplice, Danae Blanco. Mr. Formell, she stated, had hypertension and arteriosclerosis.
Since fleeing Cuba for New York City in 1993, Mr. Formell had charted his personal musical course, releasing 5 solo albums and incomes a Grammy nomination in 2000 for greatest conventional tropical Latin efficiency for his debut album, “Songs from a Little Blue House.”
When his father died in 2014, Mr. Formell agreed to hold on his legacy because the bassist for Los Van Van, the Afro-Cuban dance band co-founded by his father. The band’s present lineup additionally contains his brother Samuel on drums and his sister Vanessa Formell Medina on vocals.
The band was only a few numbers into an lively set on the Lehman Center when Mr. Formell wandered away from his upright bass, doubled over as if to catch his breath, then lumbered towards the rear of the stage. As the band performed on, Abdel Rasalps Sotolongo, the Van Van singer referred to as Lele, and Javier León Peña, a sound engineer, have been serving to him offstage when he collapsed close to the curtain.
After a quick announcement that Mr. Formell was having a well being drawback, the band took a break of greater than a half hour, then returned to complete the set, enjoying for almost an hour in an obvious tribute to Mr. Formell, a buddy, the musician Ned Sublette, who was current, stated in a telephone interview.
Mr. Formell was a fourth-generation member of certainly one of Cuba’s most well-known musical households. His great-grandfather, Juan Francisco, was a preferred bandleader. His grandfather, Francisco Formell, was a conductor of the Havana Philharmonic and the arranger for the Lecuona Cuban Boys, a preferred large band beginning within the Nineteen Thirties.
His father, Juan Formell, together with fellow giants of Cuban music, César Pedroso, referred to as Pupy, and José Luis Quintana, referred to as Changuito, based Los Van Van in 1969, fusing conventional Afro-Cuban genres like son cubano with components of rock, soul and disco.
With the blessing of the Cuban authorities, the band toured the world for many years, creating a world following. It gained a Grammy Award in 2000 for greatest salsa efficiency for his or her album “Llego…Van Van/Van Van is Here.”)
Despite his household title, Mr. Formell’s path to musical success was not simple.
Juan Carlos Formell was born in Havana on Feb. 18, 1964, the eldest of three kids of Juan Formell and the cabaret singer Natalia Alfonso.
When he was three weeks outdated, his mother and father despatched him to stay on the outskirts of Havana along with his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, the conductor, had been ostracized by the Castro authorities for being a part of the outdated guard. Mr. Formell instructed The Los Angeles Times in 2000 that he had been teased by different kids for having holes in his footwear.
Even so, he set his course towards music, learning on the Alejandro García Caturla and Amadeo Roldán conservatories in Havana, and later at Cuba’s National Art School.
Influenced by Afrocubanismo, the Cuban creative motion centered on Black id, in addition to the negrista motion in poetry, significantly the work of Nicolás Guillén, Mr. Formell was already composing by his teenagers and learning bass with Andres Escalona of the Havana Symphony Orchestra. He went on to play bass with the jazz pianist Emiliano Salvador.
He was additionally a gifted guitarist and hoped to carve out a profession as a singer-songwriter, however felt unable to specific himself freely beneath the restrictions of the government-controlled Cuban music industry, his former spouse, Dita Sullivan, stated in a telephone interview.
“While nonetheless in my 20s, at a time when most musicians are stuffed with hope,” he as soon as stated, “I used to be resigned to a way forward for marginalization.”
In 1993, whereas on tour with the dance band Rumbavana in Mexico, he defected, crossing the Rio Grande close to Laredo, Texas, and ultimately settling in New York City. The transition was not simple.
“When you permit Cuba, you don’t exist,” Mr. Formell stated in a 2005 interview with The Chicago Sun-Times. “You come right here, you’re invisible. You come right here and nobody cares. If you wish to defect, you’d higher have a assist system.”
Even so, he constructed a profession performing solo and with varied ensembles at New York jazz golf equipment just like the Blue Note and Birdland earlier than releasing his Grammy-nominated debut. Mr. Formell adopted with “Las Calles del Paraíso” (“The Streets of Paradise”) in 2002 and “Cemeteries of Desire,” a 2005 rumination on the Latin musical flavorings of New Orleans, together with “Son Radical” (2006) and “Johnny’s Dream Club” (2008), which a Village Voice overview stated wove “an unforgettable spell.”
His music, rooted in filin, a romantic, jazz-inflected style of Cuban fashionable music, in addition to son cubano, a standard type mixing Spanish and African influences, celebrated the pure great thing about his homeland in addition to its sophisticated historical past, together with of slavery and revolution.
“Although my songs don’t particularly discuss politics,” he stated in a 1996 interview, “they mirror the truth of Cuba from my perspective and never from the attitude of the system.”
In addition to Samuel and Vanessa, his survivors embody his different sisters, Elisa Formell Alfonso and Paloma Formell Delgado, and one other brother, Lorenzo Formell González. He and Ms. Sullivan separated in 2012 and divorced in 2021.
In a Facebook post asserting his loss of life, Los Van Van stated it might proceed its tour of the United States, “paying tribute to Juan Carlos in each efficiency, each musical be aware, in each Vanvanero alternative as Juanca would have needed.”
Content Source: www.nytimes.com