An earthy and hot Zonda wind coming from the Andes warned Javier Cantero (Buenos Aires, 31 years old) that his father would not make it. He was walking through the center of Mendoza, in western Argentina, when he felt it while Marciano Cantero (1960-2022) was in hospital after a complicated operation. It was September 7, 2022. Hours earlier, the doctor had tearfully explained that Marciano had little chance of survival…
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An earthy and hot Zonda wind coming from the Andes warned Javier Cantero (Buenos Aires, 31 years old) that his father would not make it. He was walking through the center of Mendoza, in western Argentina, when he felt it while Marciano Cantero (1960-2022) was in hospital after a complicated operation. It was September 7, 2022. Hours earlier, the doctor had explained to him in tears that Marciano had little chance of survival and he knew that if the Enanitos Verdes singer and bassist died, he would have to step forward. “I felt like the moment I had to take the reins (…) and I had to go out and push my chest forward,” Javier Cantero tells EL PAÍS in an interview via video call from Argentina.
A day later, on September 8, 2022, Marciano passed away at the age of 62 and Javier took over the role of spokesman. He was responsible for calling his mother, Cecilia Hoffmann, and his father’s ex-partner in Mexico, Rocío Herrán; to Juan Mendiry, the manager of the Enanitos, and announced this in the WhatsApp group he created to provide information about the musician’s health. He then left the Cuyo Clinic, crossed the street and entered a Catholic church. “At that time I was very concerned with religion.” He returned and gave the media a message that multiplied on social networks: “After the operation he did not have such good moments. Today he was feeling a little better, but the situation was critical. The truth is that the outlook was not good. I don’t know what time it is now, but [su fallecimiento] It happened after a while. I didn’t have him for long, but every day with him was a gift,” and he concluded: “I want you to remember him, not only as the composer, singer, artist that he was, but also as a wonderful person. “ and my best friend in the world. That’s what he always said, friends [la canción de Enanitos Verdes] “He composed it because he wanted his son to be his best friend one day, and it came true.”
The final days of his father Horacio Eduardo Cantero Hernández – known as Marciano Cantero because of the resemblance someone found in him to the character from the 1960s series My Favorite Martian – depicts the life of an unstoppable but quiet, lonely rocker with some Signs of exhaustion. After a 42-concert tour of Mexico and the United States in which Enanitos Verdes celebrated his four decades of experience, the musician returned to the solitude of his native Mendoza. “The way he always explained it was that when he was on tour, he had to be with 650,000 people greeting him, talking, hugging him and taking photos, because at every show he always took photos with everyone who went and stayed until the last person . It made sense that he came home and he wanted to be alone and he wanted to be quiet, and the truth is that he was home alone and he was watching SpongeBob SquarePants and the History Channel,” Javier says.
In this solitude the signs of the illness became more and more obvious. He was completely weak; he had been eating ready-made soup all week because he no longer had the energy to cook for himself. Marciano’s older brother, Eduardo Cantero, went to his house to accompany him for some medical examinations. But what was planned turned into an emergency when he realized he was unwell. He saw him fall, couldn’t get up and said to him: “I’ll take you to the hospital immediately.” At that time it was difficult to guess what illness it was, the symptoms seemed to be “unrelated” from each other: he felt itching, his shoulder hurt and he had problems with one kidney. “He remained a bit reserved because he was afraid of doctors,” says his son.
This Monday, August 29, 2022, four days after his 62nd birthday, Marciano was admitted to the Cuyo Clinic, a private hospital in Mendoza, where an ultrasound scan (a test to analyze images of the organs) was carried out and the doctors found a tumor in the kidney. “A tumor that we didn’t have much information about at the time, but later it turned out that it was cancer (…) in the kidney.” There seemed to be metastases. Had [cáncer] in the diaphragm and spleen,” explains Javier Cantero.
XTC and laughter in the room
There were times of optimism in the hospital room. Javier stayed with him day and night. Even though he went out to get his own food, his father treated him to some of his own. Of course he grumbled about the taste of the hospital food. One day, despite his weakness, he got up and walked around the room. He called Cecilia Hoffmann, Javier’s mother. He laughed with her as he talked. The son occupied the bed and the musician sat on the chair for visitors. A fatal outcome seemed a long way off. “He was still him, we were still friends, best friends doing our thing.”
One evening, father and son heard an unfamiliar album by the British band XTC. Both fanatics. They also watched a documentary about the group. They fell asleep while listening to The Dukes of Stratosphear, a pseudonym XTC used in the 1980s. It is possible that the echoes of this music may have influenced Enanitos Verdes’ compositions at some point. Both share a nostalgic halo. The next morning Marciano said: “Wow, how good the album was, how nice to have shared it!”
Just as Javier Cantero had a premonition while walking through the center of Mendoza, his father had a dream in the hospital. “I think that [para mi papá] It was like a way of understanding that everything would be okay if he had to leave.” Javier prefers to reserve the details of this dream vision that Marciano told his brother Eduardo.
The injury that changed a sound
Marciano Cantero became a classic. His singing voice, close to the tonality of his speaking, had a clarity and gentleness that could be detected when touched. Generations of Latin Americans have in their memories the vocal timbre of nostalgic songs, melodic ballads with a base of drums and bass, coming from a bar, the radio, a party or a bohemian evening. She is “one of the most beautiful rock voices in Spanish,” says Mara V, singer and vocal coach, in a YouTube video.
His voice remained almost intact over the years. Not so the sound of his electric bass, which has changed for more than a decade due to an injury, tendonitis (inflammation of the tissue that connects the muscles to the bones), caused by a fall on a step that gave him a shock Suitcases caused in the armpit. Due to medical advice, he had to stop playing for a year. “It was very difficult for him because he didn’t know if he would go on tour or not, he didn’t know if he could play again,” explains Javier Cantero.
When he was finally able to pick up the instrument again, its sound changed. “From then on he was gradually able to play with super light basses again. Had to stop using Fender basses [los tradicionales]Gibson, the Music Man, which he used for live recordings, and found a luthier from Texas named Scott [Beckwith]with his Birdsong brand, and used it for many years until he started building his own basses and eventually came across the Fender [más ligero]with all the fender, the wood paint I’ve used over the last few years and with the Hofner.”
Marciano’s son recalls a September 2008 concert at the ND Ateneo Theater in Buenos Aires to describe the sound that preceded the injury. “All year long he used a very spicy bass sound, very hoarse, bright, Japanese, and compared to every show after 2018 with the Fender and the Hofner, which is a super Paul McCartney sound, duller, rounder . “It’s got that bass that fits well into the mix…The band’s sound has changed very noticeably.”
“Martian 2001”
A few months before his death, Marciano Cantero gave his son a gift that, from a distance, seems like a symbolic act of passing on a legacy. In January 2022, he gave him one of the Fender basses he used on tour and told him, “Look, when the day comes when I can’t play the bass anymore, take it.” “Learn these Enanitos show in case I can’t continue playing.”
Javier did. He learned the songs on bass, the lyrics and the choruses. But he doesn’t consider himself a Green Dwarf and although he has experience with his own group and has taken part in some honors with his father’s songs, he takes on the role from a different position. “What he left behind were two unreleased albums that were practically ready for release but still need finishing touches and a lot of re-recording, but the songs are composed, his voice is recorded and the lyrics are finished. Now I see it as him telling me, “Look, it’s your turn, so prepare yourself and I hope you’re up to the task”… and the truth is, I’m doing my best to do that make two albums the way he wanted them.
At one point in the conversation, Javier Cantero shows the camera the cover of a CD with a handwritten title on a white paper background, Marciano 2001. This material will be released soon, although there is no official release date yet. Exit. “I’m working with a team that is helping me restore the 2001 album to bring it to the quality that fans expect today and also to be able to release it on vinyl, on CD and also with visual artists .” We’re still in full swing. If it were up to me, I would already be on the streets, I would already be on Spotify, I would already be in record stores, but it’s a slow process and believe me, the one who’s worried the most is me. I’d like to say it’s coming out this year. [2023]“.
There is another album with unreleased songs. The compositions of these two albums correspond to a period in which Marciano was exploring himself: “He was desperately trying to hit the rock walls and say, ‘I want to get out of the standard’ that came from so many albums, from Big Bang, Guerra Gaucha, Planetario, who were like the rock of Enanitos, the classic formula.”
Javier Cantero has performed songs by Enanitos Verdes and unpublished compositions by his father in various tributes. With kind approval
“The river goes on”
Enanitos Verdes was born in 1979. It began with performances in bars in Mendoza and continued with concerts in small theaters in the same province and in other nearby theaters. The initial line-up consisted of Marciano Cantero as singer and bassist, Felipe Staiti on guitar and Daniel Piccolo on drums. After trying their luck in Buenos Aires in 1983 without much success, they took part in a festival in 1984 where they were declared Grupo Revelación. In the same year they recorded their first self-titled album, Los Enanitos Verdes, with Sergio Embrioni (1960-2011) as a guest musician. The rest is history.
The song that I still sing, from the debut album, became a hit on the radio of the Argentine capital and launched a career that today makes Enanitos Verdes one of the longest-running rock bands in Latin America and even worldwide. behind groups like the Scorpions (58 years), Chicago (56 years), El Tri from Mexico (55 years) or the legendary Rolling Stones, who can already look back on a 60-year career.
Felipe Staiti (Mendoza, 62 years old), the founding guitarist, has taken over the leadership to keep the band going. Now he is also a singer and has integrated a new line-up together with Antonio Jota Morelli (Santa Fe, 62 years old), who has been drummer since 2009. “I think the best way to combat this absence is more music. We dwarves have always been in a river, the river flows and is never the same. Although the shape looks the same, the water flows, and unfortunately that has now happened, but the dwarves embrace this sadness and expose our chests to the bullets […] The river continues to flow,” Staiti said in an interview with the Mendoza community in January this year about the group’s participation in the 2023 Thanksgiving holiday.
Guillermo Guille Vadalá (Buenos Aires, 55 years old) is now the bassist. The musician is a legend of the instrument, having played with personalities such as Pat Metheny, Luis Alberto Spinetta (1950-2012) and Fito Páez. The cast is completed by Damiano, Damián Castroviejo (Buenos Aires, 43 years old) and Arita Rockdríguez, Adriana Rodríguez (Mendoza, 45 years old) in the choirs. The Mexican Bosco Aguilar (Mexico City, 36 years old) plays the keyboards. “Now being on stage with them and playing the songs that influenced me from a young age is something amazing that makes me honored and grateful,” Aguilar tells EL PAÍS via Instagram message.
Enanitos Verdes will perform in Mexico City on November 29th and Monterrey on the 30th. In December they will participate in the Bésame Mucho festival in Los Angeles (USA) and in March 2024 they will debut at the Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires. Aires, after a tour that included Spain, Italy, Puerto Rico, Colombia and the United States.
Perhaps the wind brought Marciano Cantero back to the Cordilleras near his hometown of Mendoza. And somewhere the song of the same name will always be heard, in which one verse says: “And so the years can go by / And I take a thousand directions / I know that I have left a world behind me / Always following an ideal / Please me.” a brave hunter / In the stars.”
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