Oblivion: A Memoir by Héctor Abad Faciolince

Author:Héctor Abad Faciolince [Faciolince, Héctor Abad]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Contemporary, Biography, History
ISBN: 9789584215000
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2006-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Marta Cecilia to my mother, Taché to my father, Marta to her siblings, she was the star of the family. Ever since she was a little girl it was clear that none of us was as cheerful, as intelligent or as full of life (and believe me there was competition, and very tough competition, from my other sisters). At the age of five, she began to play the violin, and from time to time went to the conservatory, where a Czech teacher – Joseph Matza, an extraordinary musician who had been first violinist with the Freiburg Opera – said it had been years since he had seen as much talent as he saw in Marta. Somewhat out of his milieu in these tropics, Matza conducted the University Band on weekends (sometimes on a Sunday my father would take us to hear a concert in Bolívar Park) and got our sad little orchestra to play everything he could. He ended up an embittered alcoholic, and his students would pick him up off the street in the early hours of the morning, but even the beggars looked out for him, saying: ‘The maestro’s drunk, let him sleep.’ In his lessons, Maestro Matza would tell his pupils, looking at his instrument with devoted rage, ‘This is my closest enemy.’ Maybe that explains why, by the age of eleven, my sister Marta had grown bored of the violin, deciding it was a very sad instrument that demanded unwavering devotion and was made for playing old music, whereas she was very modern, from the rock era. So she gave up the violin with no regrets and without upsetting my mother and father, who never put any pressure on us, and started playing guitar and singing. She exchanged Maestro Matza and his ‘close enemy’ for the friendlier guitar and a Colombian teacher, Sonia Martínez, who taught bambuco folk songs that Marta wasn’t terribly keen on, but at the same time excellent vocal technique and guitar accompaniment. She learned more with Andrés Posada, her first boyfriend, who is now an extraordinary musician, and Pilar, Andrés’ sister, another great musician, and the three of them would spend the afternoons together singing songs by the Beatles, Joan Manuel Serrat, Cat Stevens, and others.

By the age of fourteen she was already singing in a group, the Cuarteto Ellas, with another extraordinary singer, Claudia Gómez, and Marta was the first person in our family to win prizes for performing (in truth she was the only one) and appeared in the newspapers and on some television programmes. She used to go on tour all over Colombia, and they went to Puerto Rico, San Andrés and Miami, places her siblings couldn’t even dream of seeing. Marta was also a natural actress and would recite lengthy speeches by heart at my older sisters’ parties when they turned fifteen, which was the most important age for a young woman in those days: the age she was ‘presented to society’. And she was also the best

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