AUTHENTICITY, TRUE SENSUALITY and passion are elements frequently missing from today's music charts. More often than not you're served a caricature of sex and love, from near adolescent dance-school-trained poppets like Christina Aguilera or Justin Timberlake. For sultry smooching there's the manufactured shriek and exaggerated wriggle of Shakira, and for knowing, nudge-nudge, wink-wink sauciness, there's the newly sexed-up Jewel.
Of course, they are all professionals, but they also seem to have a predictable production-line commercial nature to them that robs them of genuine emotion.
Strange then that the sexiest, earthiest, most passionate sounds around are coming from a frail 77-year-old former shoe shiner from the barrios of Cuba. Ibrahim Ferrer was one of the stars of The Buena Vista Social Club, a group of pension-age singers and musicians whose discovery by blues icon Ry Cooder seven years ago made them international stars and one of the biggest, most surprising, success stories of modern music.
Despite his years, Ferrer is among the youngest of the band and, in the spirit of ambitious young pups, he has taken time from the group to record on his own and most recently, to promote his second solo album, Buenos Hermanos (Good Brothers). His worldwide tour, which started at the beginning of the year, reaches Hong Kong on Friday. So many months on the road would be punishing enough for musicians a quarter of his age, but Ferrer displays none of the signs of a weary man. In fact, the thing that hits you most when you talk to him is his incredible energy and cheer.
Speaking through an interpreter, Ferrer is lively, quick-talking and answers questions punctuated by laughs of delight. It seems the septuagenarian still can't believe his good luck. 'It shows that sooner or later if you want something it will come,' he says in whirr of animated Spanish. 'I would have liked my mother to see this, but I am happy that all my family, my sons and my daughters, have seen me do this and now I am in a better position to help them.'
This run of success is second time lucky for Ferrer. After decades of trying to break into the big time, he decided to turn his back on the music he loved in 1991, writing it off as a lost cause. But within 10 years his fortunes had changed and The Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon had catapulted him into worldwide recognition. Last month he cemented his renewed star status with a Latin Grammy award for Buenos Hermanos. 'Something I had been expecting from my youth, something I had hoped for all my life has happened,' he says of the success that took him as much by surprise as the music-listening public.
