Lágrima Negras

The five main characters in this 75 minutes documentary are musicians who, on finishing their performances, have to be assisted off the stage. Not because they are too tired after playing and dancing their hearts out, but because the stairs pose too big a risk to their fragile legs. It’s because the average age of these ‘Golden Oldies’ is 80 years. Lágrimas Negras follows these five Cubans, ‘the Grandfathers of the Salsa’, four of whom before reaching their retirement age used to work as manual labourers. Together they perform as ‘La Vieja Trova Santiaguera’ (The Old Troubadours), playing acoustic Cuban ‘son’, the music that became salsa, with the energy and dynamism of musicians a fraction of their age but with the grace of all their years. Four of them had never left their island until their unexpected rise to fame in 1993 took them on tours abroad.