Love Song Lives On
by Jen Graves - Arts Editor

Musician and Mexican immigrant Cenobio Hernandez wrote a song and dedicated it to his wife for her birthday on Nov. 22, 1943.

He died seven years later, at 87, and the sheet music for the song went into a relative's closet to collect dust.

Exactly 50 years after it was written, "Recuerdos," a slow bolero or Latin American ballad was released on a Brave Combo album thanks to the efforts of Cenobio Hernandez III, Cenobio's grandson -- also known as Bubba of Brave Combo.

But the song has traveled through more than just time.

American Olympic ice skaters Liz Punsalan and Jerod Swallow used the song for their 1994 and 1998 competitions in Lillehammer, Norway and Nagano, Japan.

And Sunday night, film producer Keiko Ibi from Japan won the Best Documentary Short Oscar for "The Personals: Improvisations on Romance in the Golden Years," Which included "Recuerdos" ("Memories:) on its soundtrack.

"People really like that song," bandleader Carl Finch said. "When we play parties and things, it's often one people will ask for."

The band, in fact, probably will play the song at Ms. Ibi's wedding to Greg Pak, a Korean filmaker who also used one of Brave Combo's songs in his 1994 film, "Mr. Lee."

"Recuerdos" definitely gets around. But where it's from is just as interesting as where it's been.

In Mexico, Cenobio played double bass, cello and a Mexican four-string guitar called a bajo sexto. He eventually composed more than 100 polkas, many waltzes and other songs in other styles, Bubba Hernandez said. The older man came to San Antonio in 1920 to escape the revolution in Mexico.

"We all know the Pancho Villa thing. Well, the rumor I got was that one of Villa's men had to use my grandfather's roof to pop off a sniper -- that's the legend I got," Mr. Hernandez said. "And at that point, (my grandfather and his family) were just like, 'Whoa, we're out of here, folks.' "

So Cenobio moved with his family to Texas on the promise of a job playing in theater orchestras for silent movies. He did that for a while, but before long, "the talking movies came in and the Depression, and so he had to go out and do the migrant circuit, picking cotton and strawberries."

Cenobio did, however, continue teaching music, Mr. Hernandez said, and "he was never real famous, but some people do remember, there are a couple of old-timers that do know him."

Mr. Hernandez never met his grandfather, but he and his brother, Ricky, a musician in San Antonio, gathered together his plentiful sheet music and have started working with it. The brothers organized a concert in November for the family to play Cenobio's music in San Antonio, which, Bubba said, was well-received by critics and audiences.

While Mr. Hernandez knows his grandfather only through family lore, he is certain of the man's musical talent.

"He would get these ideas and not have paper sometimes, and so he would write lines on his arms and write (music) on them, or he'd get paper bags, and I've seen the paper bags," Mr. Hernandez said.

Cenobio probably would be surprised to see just how far his little love song has traveled -- and through what tangled channels.

Mr. Finch said he wasn't sure how Ms. Ibi knew of Brave combo, but realized the connection with Mr. Pak when she sent Mr. Finch a finished copy of "The Personals" and the return address matched Mr. Pak's.

Then, Sunday night, in her acceptance speech at the Oscars, Ms. Ibi mentioned Mr. Pak, and the camera fell on him in the audience.

"Keiko had called about a year ago and we started making plans and asked if we could play their wedding, but we didn't really put two and two together yet," Mr. Finch said. "And we knew that she was the same Keiko who was using our song but didn't know it was the same person who was marrying Greg Pak, so it's been a little mystery here."

In the case of ice skaters Ms. Punsalan and Mr. Swallow, they became acquainted with Brave Combo's music through their coach in Detroit.

"Their coach was Russian and had defected," Mr. Finch said. "He somehow had our stuff. He was with the Russian Olympic team and he defected in New York, and over the next few years somehow settled in Detroit and became an Olympic ice skating coach (here) and had our music, and had his students skate to our music.

" ... So there's this Mexico-Russia-Korean-Japanese-Norwegian connection here."

All because Bubba and Ricky Hernandez stumbled onto a box of yellowed sheet music in an aunt's closet in 1975 and realized what a treasure they'd found.

Brave Combo will play "Recuerdos," which was also used on Fox's sitcom, "Bakersfield P.D.," at Rick's Place on the night of April 9.

Reprinted with the permission of the Denton Record-Chronicle