“Te comiste un macho gordo/ You ate your fatty pork
no me diste chicharrón/ You didn’t give me any cracklings/
Cuando para mi melonera/ When I crop my melons
No te voy a dar melón / I won’t give any of those/
This folk chorus was the recurring inspiration of Oscar Mora Fornaris, a native guajiro from Maffo, who along with one of his brothers with a calabsh and a stool, respectively, sang the melody in the middle of the coffee plantations and his little house with a stick in the ground, in the farm of La Vigía, the property where he was born.
Cachao, as his people know him, is one of those common men who since his childhood awakened a passion for music, giving himself body and soul to weave his history in this town, which even after his 96 years revives melodies among its inhabitants.
“Hey Ñico, I follow Cachao, I have not been able to get my 40 cents to pay the tres”.
That’s where the nickname comes from; an unpayable debt worried the trecero, who had no way to pay off his commitment before the word of Ñico, the guitar player friend who “put his face” with a guarantor so that Oscar could achieve one of his dreams.
The nickname transcends in all Maffo, where every local corner knows the character of white complexion, tall height and slim build; a hair like snow for the sum of his years and eyes the color of the sky that refused to wear glasses to read newspapers, books and magazines and compose his scores.
Cachao and his musical legacy
Founder of several formats of the Cuban traditional music with attachment to the peasant idiosyncrasy, Cachao has always defended the identity culture, combined with different trades: the land with its various crops, the sale of bread; as an assistant in masonry, garbage collector; distributor of goods and responsibilities in agriculture as an agronomist technician, gave guarantees of livelihood in previous times, which provided valid experiences to this protagonist.
The former Region of Palma Soriano, gratified the agricultural knowledge of the local singer-songwriter in the development of vegetables; sowing and harvesting of vegetables for the feeding of 14 municipalities of the region, contributions that endorse his service record without moving away from the artistic sapience that distinguishes this man of the people.
Patron saint celebrations, weddings, birthdays, serenades, farewells, reunions, parties and personal invitations are witnesses to the skill on the guitar strings and the unmistakable timbre of Oscar Mora Fornaris, who values family and friendship “as the foundations that ennoble the soul”.
Music and life friends like Misael Fonseca -now deceased- and families like the Del Toro, and Cámara, in Maffo, shake Cachao’s feelings, in gratitude and perpetual veneration.
Three great Cuban jewels, according to him, form the fruit of his family of five children and three grandchildren, to whom he instilled his nobility and good manners inherited from the early education of Efrain Matos and Antonio Sierra, two great teachers of the area who welcomed in their private evening classes and quoted the disciple to know the primer of knowledge.
Oscar Mora Fornaris (Cachao), an aficionado par excellence of traditional music, is one of those exponents who loves his fellow man like life itself, who is not afraid to die tomorrow because he feels gratified by the people who have welcomed him on various stages, to welcome his art captive by nature, the guajiro, women, the son, and especially by his native Maffo.
Although his 96 years already conspire, Cachao is for his native Maffo an icon in the living memory of his people.
