(Prensa Latina) Cienfuegos, Cuba - A sculpture of Benny
Moré, one of the Cuban popular music icons, will be unveiled here
Saturday, it was announced Monday. Provincial government official José
Ramón Garcia explained the sculpture, made by artist José Villa, will
be placed in the most central intersection of the city, 250 kilometers
southeast Havana.
Anchored and without pedestal, the 1.83-meter bronze statue shows the figure of Benny (1919-1963) walking as one more passer-by in Cienfuegos´ Paseo del Prado, the longest promenade in Cuba. It will also show his inseparable attributes: wide-brimmed hat and the baton-like walking stick he used to lead the musicians of his famous Banda Gigante (Giant Band).
Melted at the workshops of Havana´s Higher Institute of Art, the sculpture will be donated by its author to the harbor city also know as La Perla del Sur (The Southern Pearl). In one of his most famous songs, Moré, born in Santa Isabel de las Lajas, a municipality of this province, stated that Cienfuegos was the city he liked the most.
Every two years, Moré is paid tribute in this, his home town, by colleagues and dancers with an International Festival of Popular Music named after him. The fame of the Havana sculptor Villa grew in the last years due to sculptures he made of former Beatles star John Lennon, US novelist Ernest Hemingway and the popular street celebrity known as The Knight of Paris, all of them in the Cuban capital.
The pieces are characterized by being at the reach of the people, conveying a sense of closeness.
World Music Central
http://www.worldmusiccentral.org/article.php/20041126194020538