The revered keeper of Cuban musical culture has died

The beloved custodian of Cuban and Latin American music has died. Cristóbal Díaz Ayala passed away on May 4, at the age of 95, having shared with the world a vast and comprehensive treasure trove of vinyl, sheet music, books and so much more.

The original Díaz Ayala Cuban and Latin American Music Collection contains approximately 100,000 items that date back to turn of the 20^th century and together tell the story of a dynamic genre. The aficionado gave the entirety of his life’s work to FIU in 2001, when he delivered the priceless artifacts that his home could no longer comfortably contain. Notably, the prestigous gift continues to attract additional outside donations that have nearly doubled the holdings.

“Having that collection here brings and preserves one of the most important aspects of the Cuban nation itself, which is that capacity to generate such incredible music that essentially established fashions and trends in the world,” says Sebastian Arcos, interim director of FIU’s Institute of Cuban Studies, which coordinates awards in support of scholarship and publication around the unique collection. “It is a fundamental research tool for everybody who's interested not just in Cuban music but also Latin music in the last 100 years.”

The unassuming Díaz Ayala approached the university about transferring stacks and boxes of priceless gems to its library after he had already retired as a successful businessman and lawyer in Puerto Rico, where he continued to reside after leaving Communist Cuba in 1960.

Neither a trained musician nor musicologist, he saw his childhood interest blossom into an all-consuming passion that turned him into an authority.

Revered for his knowledge by luminaries such as the celebrated Cuban jazz saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera and others in the industry, Díaz Ayala built a reputation for his exhaustive research and solid expertise. He authored numerous articles and books, including the first definitive text on Cuban music, and produced the CD boxed set 100 Cuban Song of the Millenium. He spoke to groups all over the world.

“I was ‘contaminated’ early in life,” he said jokingly during an interview with an FIU writer decades ago as he recalled falling in love with the sounds of his country at the tender age of four. At the time, he lived with his family in a residential hotel near Havana’s famed Malecon district on the Gulf of Mexico. From the second-floor balcony, he could hear the outdoor café singers and municipal and military bands performing in nearby Antonio Maceo Park. That sparked a fascination the led during his teenage years to the co-hosting of a nightly radio program featuring jazz, swing, early bebop and the occasional Bing Crosby song. “A few years after that, I started to listen to classical music,” he recalled. “Musically speaking, I am promiscuous.”

The collection reflects his eclectic tastes. The oldest piece is a recording of an Italian tune sung by Cuban soprano Chalia Herrera that dates back to 1900. Other cherished items include two wax cylinders that captured performances by Cuban violinist Marta de la Torre. Among the jewels of embryonic Latin jazz are a 1931 recording by Orquesta Hermanos Castro that Díaz Ayala believed was the first recorded piece of Afro-Cuban music and jazz fusion, and a 1937 recording by Orquesta Arcaño featuring the first recorded bass solo by the legendary Cachao.

Uva de Aragon, a Cuban American author and a former professor and associate director of the Institute for Cuban Studies, was a longtime friend of Díaz Ayala and his wife, Maria Isabel Mendez Rosa (Marisa), who survives him. De Aragon recalls the commitment and precision with which he amassed what is today the largest assemblage of Cuban music and related materials in the world.

“In the '90s, I visited his house in Puerto Rico often,” de Aragon remembers. She stayed with the couple and recalls the warping of wooden apartment floors under the weight of bookshelves laden with LPs - “It was scary” - before they moved to accommodate their ever-growing cache. 

“I would get up in the morning, and he and Marisa were working on these three-by-five cards, making entries about whatever new things they would get. I saw this daily work, both of them together.”

FIU Librarian Veronica Gonzalez has helped digitize and disseminate the collection for 25 years and, in her role at the university, often traveled with Díaz Ayala as he accepted speaking engagements and honors. She corrobrates the high level of organization and documentation that added immensely to the research value.

“This was one of the reasons why FIU was able to accept his collection,” Gonzalez says,” “because his collection is a whole archive.” Without the extensive existing catalog, agreeing to store and make available such a great number of items would have been impossible, she explains, as the necessary work would have taken years and extensive personnel.

Understanding the university’s ability to share the collection widely once it arrived in South Florida from Puerto Rico, Díaz Ayala threw himself into creating the original online catalog, she adds.

And it paid off for more than scholars. Just as the collection helped Díaz Ayala himself reconnect with his roots, Gonzalez says, so too has it done so for others.

“Family members of people in exile call us,” Gonzalez shares. “They say, ‘I have been looking for this song for many, many years . . . and through the catalog, I found this title. I would love to see if it's possible for me to have the opportunity to play that music again,’” she says. And when at last they hear it, she adds, “They find that consuelo,” solace.

Arcos likewise grasps the emotional appeal, especially for people of a certain age. “The richest part of the collection is [from] Republican Cuba,” he says, which reflects the years 1902-1959, before oppression and an exodus that has seen too many dislocated from their homeland. “It’s the memory of youth. It's the memory of the first time they danced with a partner, with their first love.”

Thanks to one man, memory lives on.