Review Text
We have a hunger of the mind, which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more we are capable of seeing. -- Maria Mitchell We owe almost all of our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed. -- Charles Caleb Colton How do you describe the flavor of a mango to someone who has never tried one? --Wayne Dyer Don't try to describe the ocean if you've never seen it. --Jimmy Buffett I heard a lot of people play some really good songs. The difference was, I never heard Hugo Duarte play a bad one. -- A Hugo Duarte fan Someone once asked friend and house concert host, Jeanne Combo, to describe my music and here's what she had to say. "Trying to define Hugo Duarte's music is a bit like trying to define good Cuban food to someone who's never experienced it's satisfying, mouth-watering sensations. Throw in a creamy, caramel colored flan for dessert; top it all off with shot of kick-in-the pants, revive-the-dead Café Cubano, and there you have it. Like good Cuban food, Hugo's music is a combination of a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a whole lot of down-to-earth ingredients that come together in an adventure of the senses. You can't really describe it; you just have to try it in order to understand and appreciate the flavors and subtleties of whatever it is that you've just been presented." Such are the elements of this remarkably talented Singer/songwriter/storyteller. Duarte blends of a bit of Country, a pinch of Bluegrass, a handful of Southern rock, a cup or two of Blues, a dash of Island music, occasionally sprinkled with some American history, or tales of the sea, to form an eclectic style that doesn't fit into the traditional definitions of the Rock and Roll world, the Tropic/Island sound, Blues, Country or any other particular genre. Born of Cuban, Chinese, and Scots-Irish ancestry, Duarte's music is as diverse as his origins. His early childhood years were spent in Tigerville, South Carolina, an extremely small community in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was there he came to understand the basics of life in that close-knit, rural community where life was simple, where everyone's parents parented everyone else's kids, and music and song were an integral part of everyday life. Somewhere along the line, Hugo's family moved to North Carolina where Duarte's musical influences drifted away from the native Bluegrass and traditional country music that had been so much a part of his life and began to take a new direction. He began to focus on the Allman Brothers, the Marshall Tucker Band, Poco, the Eagles, Billy Joel, Elton John, Pure Prairie League, the Outlaws, Loggins and Messina, and many others. And that focus didn't stop there. It also included Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Led Zeppelin, Glen Miller, John Phillip Sousa, Aaron Copeland, and other equally divergent styles. A defining moment in Duarte's young life occurred when his long-time friend, Darrell Stafford, loaned him a guitar, an old Stella that had once belonged to Stafford's grandmother. At a formative time in a boy's life, when dreams take root, when idealism is at it's strongest, when words and melodies trigger the search for self, the loan of that old Stella marked a pivotal point on the compass in Hugo's young heart and mind. Visualize a 14-year-old boy, with that loaned Stella, sitting by the radio or dropping LPs onto a turntable and teaching himself to play along. This is the point where Hugo began developing his own brand of music, a style he dubbed "country music" because it wasn't that big a departure from what he'd grown up with. It was also during this time period that Hugo wrote his first song called "Dance For Me", a song about a ballerina. As Duarte continued to develop his music skills using various music styles as his guide, whether it was Soul, Country, Beach music, Rock 'n Roll, Classical, a unique blend emerge
