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Ignacio Vila, known as "Bola de Nieve," or "Snowball" (a legacy of the
time when Blacks were primarily comic figures, without themselves
having the right to exercise that debatable specialty: I remember the
thirties, white actors rubbing themselves with
wax like Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer to replace
the blacks in the role of negrito, always clumsy,
thieving and stupid -most of the great Cuban
actors of the time got their start playing the
negrito). Bola sang and accompanied himself
a at the piano, with a repertoire running from
musical settings of Lope de Vega to la Vie en Rose, with all
the territories of Cuban popular music in between. In the wake
of the great master Lecuona he traced a path with twists as intricate as
his variations on Guillen's poetry, from the sleaziest bars of Havana all
the way to Carnegie Hall -and later to the capitals of the East, where a great
black artist was a political plus for the regime. If I understood correctly he was fairly disoriented
by the course of events after '68 but good comrades hastened to add that he didn't have the
faintest sense for politics, a reproach which is curiously applied to artists whenever they're
critical, and never when they approve.

Bola died in October 1970.