Rating:
Genre:
Soundtrack
Release Date: 07/17/2007
Though very popular in their native Cuba and Miami,
Los Zafiros' very existence remains unknown to almost everyone outside of that region. The 80-minute documentary
Los Zafiros: Music from the Edge of Time does much to illuminate their intriguing story, combining outlines of the group's history with scenes of the surviving group members revisiting friends and relatives about 40 years after the peak of their stardom. Dominating the film are the memories of the two surviving
Zafiros,
Manuel Galbán (better known as part of
the Buena Vista Social Club) and co-founder
Miguel Cancio who, by the time this documentary was made, had moved from Cuba to Florida, though he visited Cuba to shoot many of the scenes in this documentary. It could actually be said that there's too much emphasis on the emotional reunions and nostalgic story-telling, and not quite enough on
Los Zafiros' actual music and career, though fortunately the inclusion of fuzzy black-and-white vintage '60s clips of the group does much to vividly illustrate their charm and appeal, and there are plenty of teary and merry scenes of informal music-making and conversation about the good old days. Too, there are some interesting tangents to the
Los Zafiros story that aren't explored beyond the surface or at all, like their popularity among the expatriate Cuban community in Florida; the novelty of being able to perform in Europe and Moscow at a time when traffic to and from Cuba was very limited, and any unusual challenges or difficulties that might have been encountered in professionally performing and recording music so heavily derivative of American
doo wop at a time when relations between Cuba and the U.S. were very tense. Several rough comparisons of
Los Zafiros' significance in Cuba to that of
the Beatles seem stretched, given that the two groups shared few stylistic similarities. If you're willing to indulge the performers and filmmaker's obvious forgiveness of sentimentality for the era and what the group represented, however, it's a window into a music, time, and place of which many outside of Cuba remain unaware.
The DVD also contains a whopping hour and 25 minutes of extras, most of those being deleted scenes and interviews not used for the principal documentary. Although a few of these are interesting (particularly a segment with an original member who left before their rise to fame), frankly these portions are going to be too much to wade through for most viewers, with plenty of informal jams and conversations that don't add any more to the story than similar scenes from the main feature do. There are too many general reiterations of what a great group
Los Zafiros were without much specific interesting elaboration, and one interview with a fellow Cuban singer seems to use a brief positive comment about the group as an excuse to feature her own performance and
a cappella vocals for several minutes. On the other hand, footage of several archival
Los Zafiros performances from the '60s is quite valuable and entertaining, as are some excerpts from other not-strictly-related '60s Cuban television programs, featuring both other musical performers and some Cuban TV commercials from the era.
~Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
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