Legendary musician, composer and singer Pedro Luis Ferrer is making his first appearance at the Towne Crier Cafe!

Ferrer occupies a unique place in Cuban music and social culture. He started his career in 1969, and has written songs that have endured in the minds of several generations in Cuba, where he is well known and well loved, both by the intellectually inclined and the more general audience.

Ferrer occupies a unique place in Cuban music and social culture. He has written songs that have endured in the minds of several generations in Cuba. He plays a variety of Cuban music styles, like Son Montuno, Punto Guajiro, Trova Traditional, Nengon, etc. But his main style is Guaracha, a vibrant genre originating in 18th-century musical theatre, contributing greatly to a national consciousness during the time of Spanish colonialism. His lyrics are charged with humor, social commentaries and obsessive references to food, which is something that’s present in the music of some of his predecessors (“soneros” like Los Compadres, Trio Matamoros, Barbaroito Diez, etc).

But it is the pointing social commentaries that distinguish his lyrics from the more trivial ones of his contemporaries. His witty, sardonic social commentary so irked the Castro regime that in the late ’90s the government banned his music from the state-run media (which in Cuba means all media).

Ferrer plays Spanish guitar and Cuban Tres (a guitar-like instrument), and will be accompanied by his daughter Lena Ferrer, who’s also a composer. Lena started accompanying her father when she was fourteen, almost thirty years ago. Lena also plays marimbula (also known as “bajo de flejes,” a Cuban percussion instrument derived from the African Mbira), clave, maracas and guiro. Their voices complement each other to produce a harmonic and contrapuntal unity where tradition and contemporaneity are combined.

Pedro Luis Ferrer has performed in over a dozen countries, from Croatia to Finland, from Peru to Spain, from Poland to Belgium, among others. He creates strikingly beautiful and uplifting music. During his long career his songs have been recorded by such artists as Celia Cruz, Omara Portuondo (Buena Vista Social Club), Gilberto Santa Rosa, Danny Rivera and Papo Luca. He is “a living heritage of Cuban culture.”

Tickets $30 advance, $35 door

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