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Musician, cuequero and tanguero, José Fuentes Pacheco was one of the important names in the development of Chilean popular music since the mid-twentieth century. The musician died at dawn this Saturday, as confirmed from the Casa de la Cueca, the premises of Avenida Matta that he kept with his wife and work partner, the also singer María Esther Zamora.
“FRIENDS, with great sadness but at the same time calm and resigned, we inform you of José Pepe Fuentes, he has just left. We are grateful for the expressions of support to María Esther, Óscar and those who make up the Casa de la Cueca. Goodbye Pepe Fuentes, Grand Master ”.
A native of Nueva Imperial, in Araucanía, the young Fuentes met the scenes. Born in 193, his artistic destiny was marked from home.
The mother dominated the guitar and singing – “she was one of the best in Temuco” -, the father was also a musician with instruction that allowed him to read sheet music, and a grandmother played the harp. “I was practically born a musician.”
In the mid-1940s, when he was barely fifteen years old, he left for the bohemian and highway epicenter of the country, Valparaíso, to start his career integrating groups such as Los Reseros, Los Troveros Porteños and Los Hermanos Clavero. In 1953 he joined Fiesta Linda as a pianist, authors of the hit “Ende que te vi”, although at that point Pepe was already a multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and singer.
That kind of mastery allowed him to carry his artistic career as an all-terrain musician until in 1960 his life took a turn. “A Bolivian group came and one member left and they told me if I would like to go to Argentina (…). I left here for 22 days and I came back when I was 22 ”.
Although in Argentina Pepe was praised for his mastery of the guitar – “ché, laburás very well the viola” was the comment he used to receive – he was forced to learn music with scores. In trans-Andean lands he joined Los Wawancó, a legendary Latin American team devoted to tropical music, where Pepe further expanded his stylistic domain that not only included cuecas but also a great passion for tango, another of the genres that Pepe loved and performed. as an artist all his life.
From there he left for Europe and progressed on the map until he reached the United Arab Emirates, always working as a musician and receiving praise, to finally settle in Barcelona.
“When I went to Europe, a local who called me told me where I had learned music and I said in Argentina. ‘Ah, half grace, if Argentines are the best musicians in the world.’
Despite the roaming, Pepe never stopped having contact with the Chilean Guitarists Union, of which he was one of its 31 founding members since 1954. “That’s when I learned when Luis Bahamondes died (…) I had started with him. as a young man (and with) Carmencita Ruiz and Ricardo Acevedo, one of the best guitarists in the world. (…) of the 31 of the union, I am the only one left alive ”.
Pepe Fuentes returned to Chile in 1982 and was reintegrated into the circuit despite the restrictions of the dictatorship, actively participating in what was called La Casa de la Cueca, installed on Matta Avenue in Santiago, a project with María Esther Zamora, daughter of the accordionist and singer Segundo Zamora, author of the famous cueca “Adiós, Santiago querida”, with whom he married in 1989.
In addition, it was in those days that he joined the famous group Los Pulentos de la Cueca, along with capital names such as Jorge Montiel, Pedro Zamora, Rafael Berríos (Rabanito) and Alejandro Espínola, with whom he recorded some albums.
For more recent generations, he embodies a living legend of the cueca after crossing his path with Álvaro Henríquez in the genesis of the Yein Fonda, recruited as a percussionist. “He looked for me for the tambourine!” Pepe revealed in 2015.
The leader of Los Tres had listened to Los Pulentos de la Cueca, hallucinating with Pepe’s ability. They got together to rehearse and the veteran musician noticed that Los Tres, as cuequeros, were good rockers.
“I told him ‘the drummer doesn’t know how to play cueca.’ And to the same bassist, who plays well, I said ‘look, like this, like this’, to the Titae. And Álvaro says to me ‘come on, are you going to tell me that you also play the guitar?’ (I told him) ‘More or less’ and he passed it to me ”. The rocker from Concepción watched Pepe dominate the strings until he declared “you won’t be leaving here anymore.” This is how Pepe Fuentes together with the singer María Esther Zamora, his wife, became synonymous with the Yein Fonda for decades
In that event that will become a regular, together with María Esther, in which they interpreted a repertoire that went through the tango, the ballad, the cueca, and the popular songbook of the old bohemia, which allowed him to gain the attention of the new audience.
After years of recordings and shows, his work was recognized in 2014 by receiving the President of the Republic National Music Award in the category of folk music. It was in the same season that he released his autobiography in verse, in the style of popular musicians entitled, of course, To the look of mine.
For the musician Mario Rojas, this background of Pepe Fuentes gave another dimension to the Creole musical expression. “It brought a new way of understanding folklore as music proper, as a musical contribution beyond the stereotype.”
This knowledge that allowed Pepe to write music academically “was of great help and served as a reference for musicians in general who came without that training,” emphasizes Rojas, in addition to highlighting that the reel outside of Chile allowed Pepe to easily get along with musicians and younger audiences.
For Daniel Pezoa of Los Tricolores, the figure of Pepe Fuentes, apart from standing out for a peculiar humor – “some jokes between the crude and the silly” -, was fundamental for the new generations of musicians, particularly thanks to the work of Los Pulentos of the Cueca.
“It was a resounding change with the youth, we enjoyed cuecas where we heard the enhancement of the drums, the arrangements on the bass, in the way of singing. Pepe looked for the musicians, put together the scheme and did them all. And from there was the union with Álvaro Henríquez. For me, he professionalized the cueca (urging) folklorists to study sheet music, to learn to perform their work as musicians ”.
Álvaro Henríquez defines the artistic personality of Pepe Fuentes as a beacon on the Chilean musical map. “He is a leader who chooses the songs, makes arrangements and voices. It has a very wide musical color palette with tangos, boleros, cueca, cumbia, etc. The value of Pepe and his work is incalculable. He has made hundreds of songs, cuecas and orchestral arrangements always linked to folklore. It is an example of musicality. His quality as a performer is also exceptional. For me he is a force of nature and a great one of Chilean folklore. The cueca lives in it ”.
