Aquiles has obsessively favoured scrap material from the bodywork of old cars or containers of the most varied types to make small walking human figures, or perfectly flattened squares grouped according to an impeccable arrangement. He has not abandoned canvas, however, using a combination of techniques to produce an abstract work where graffiti connotes the emotional impact in the direction that the artist is interested in.
Several sources have been pointed out regarding the 'nueva trova', or new trova, which came about during the second half of the 1960s: the 19th-century 'trova' movement originated in Santiago de Cuba; the then newly-found movement of the 'new Latin American song', with such important figures as Chilean Violeta Parra; and the American folk and protest song, preferred by Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. With a very Cuban approach, entirely divorced from criollo stereotypes, it exhibits an extraordinary formal liberty as well as unusual themes and innovative poetic resources within the national song catalogue. Accompanied in its beginnings almost exclusively on the guitar,
the most famous exponents of this genre, Pablo Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola, would join in 1969, together with other singer-songwriters, the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC, headed by famed guitarist and conductor, Leo Brouwer. Since then, other varied instruments would accompany songs that have spoken, daringly and freely, of love, heroes, motherland or society's imperfections. Throughout successive generations, all around the country, silenced or favoured by the media, the nueva trova songs have accompanied the lives of millions of Cubans and Latin Americans who identify themselves in Pablo Milanés's Yolanda; Silvio Rodríguez's Ojalá; or Carlos Varela's Guillermo Tell.
| New Trova |
| by CubaAbsolutely Team |
Cuban Music
Cuban Music
