An operatic tenor who shattered racial barriers within one of Cuba’s foremost ensembles and later served as a cultural envoy across the United States and Europe, Antonio Machín occupies a foundational yet often overlooked position in the development of Cuban music. Though widely regarded as the preeminent sonero before the war, the discs he left from those years display an inconsistent standard. Multiple releases trace his path from 1929 to 1938, an active stretch in which the peak brilliance of his interpretations rarely found consistent replication. By temperament an itinerant figure, Machín may owe his present-day marginal visibility to that restlessness: he departed Havana for New York in 1930, moved from New York to London and Paris in 1935, and, on the eve of World War II, relocated from Paris to Madrid, where he remained until his death in 1977.
The defining circumstance of Machín’s youth was the collision between his operatic aspirations and the social constraints facing a poor mulatto born in Cuba at the dawn of the century. Traces of that operatic orientation surface in standout readings such as El Manisero, Lamento Esclavo, and Blanca Rosa, prompting speculation about how he might have navigated Verdi. In 1926 he traveled from his birthplace, Sagua La Grande on the island’s northern coast, to Havana with the aim of establishing himself as a vocalist. He quickly secured a featured role at the Casino Nacional of Havana, becoming the first singer of color to appear there. In 1930 the Casino Nacional orchestra took him to the United States, opening on April 26 at New York’s Palace Theater. Machín performed El Manisero (“The Peanut Vendor”), the first Cuban composition to achieve national hit status in the United States. Of equal consequence, American listeners encountered authentic Cuban music for the first time, with Machín and the orchestra helping lay the groundwork for the rhumba craze that swept the country throughout the 1930s.
Following the breakthrough of El Manisero, Machín produced roughly 200 sides in New York between 1930 and 1935, surpassing the recorded output of American pop star Bing Crosby during the same interval. Much of this work occurred in small-group settings, typically quartets featuring claves, tres, guitar, and trumpet. Although the lineups shifted, guitarist Daniel Sanchez appeared most frequently, sharing duets on the majority of these tracks. Sanchez’s agreeable baritone offered a contrast to Machín’s tenor, yet no evidence suggests he matched Machín’s vocal stature. The most prominent quartet participant, Mario Bauza, later served as musical director of the Machito orchestra and contributed trumpet to several sessions.
Even so, Machín’s voice sometimes emerges constricted and elevated, while the accompaniments remain lackluster. Several factors explain the uneven results. Inferior material bears part of the responsibility; significantly, two of his strongest pieces, El Manisero and Lamento Esclavo, were composed by Moises Simons, whose graceful melodies gave Machín room to extend his range. With the quartets, however, he rarely tackled numbers requiring bravura delivery—a missed opportunity, given his capacity to meet such demands. Sanchez’s presence may have encouraged safer choices. The quartet format itself posed limitations: Machín registers more powerfully, and more dramatically, when supported by a full orchestra, as on Lamento Esclavo. Quartet arrangements, by comparison, tend toward repetition and leave the impression that Machín was simply turning out numbers to meet demand. Nevertheless, his stature in both Cuban and American musical history remains firmly established. At his finest, Machín’s coloratura delivers an unmistakable visceral impact.
