Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Aché - May 25, 2007

By Tom Pierce

Reprinted from www.albanyjazz.com

 

Master drummer Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Aché descended on the Whisperdome of the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady like a musical force of nature, Friday May 25, 2007. This was the last in a series of three Latin jazz concerts produced by the welcome new organization, Jazz/Latino, inc, headed by Dr. José Cruz. It provided most Capital District jazz lovers their first opportunity to witness in person the sheer talent, drive, complexity, and charisma that has resulted in so many awards and high level engagements with numerous jazz & Latin luminaries over the last 25 years, for this South Bronx native of Puerto Rican parents.

In addition to his galvanizing leadership presence on the drum set, additional percussion and vocals, the quartet included Jeff Lederer on tenor & soprano saxes and flute; Enrique Haneine on piano and Alex Hernández on bass. Noted as a well-versed historian, Sanabria opened the first song by reciting the rich, winding legacy of the music from Central and North Africa to the Caribbean, New Orleans, and New York.

While most would classify the genre as “Latin jazz”, one could make a case for it being termed “jazz international.” Although the shifting, intoxicating rhythms of the various songs played clearly owed much to the afro-Cuban tradition, this observer heard an equal or even stronger influence of Be-bop and an occasional hint of the avant-garde. The ghost of legendary Bop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, whose ground-breaking explorations and unification in 1948 of afro-Cuban music with Jazz, hung over the proceedings all evening; but the spirits of John Coltrane and drummer Art Blakey were also very much present---both in the music itself and also in the level of intensity and swing.

However, it would be a mistake to assume this enormously exciting music, which dynamically often rose from a soft whisper to a surging volcano, wasn't melodic or well controlled, as indeed it consistently was. Pianist Haneine played engrossing, impressionistic solos and accompaniment that were simply beautiful, and Lederer's horn work, in all the various tempos, was very moving; but not harsh or strident. And for all his formidable technique, Bobby Sanabria displayed considerable subtlety matching the mood each song called for.

Also very arresting was Sanabria's soulfully passionate singing and chanting while playing---no mean feat, given the invigorating colors and effects he used the full drum set to produce. This certainly added to the often spiritual quality of the performance, which was appropriate, given the venue being a church. He alluded to this in quoting Art Blakey that “wherever jazz is played, is sacred ground”.

Although he rarely provided song titles, he effectively held the audience's attention, not only with the vivid pictures and scenes this special music conjured up, but also his own humorously entertaining and insightfully descriptive repartee. A few attendees may have felt his frequent exhortations to stand, clap, and at the end, to dance the merenge, could have been cut back a bit. But the fact that the majority responded enthusiastically, indicated that the music was energetically compelling, as well as of very high quality.

One must extend grateful kudos to Dr. Cruz and all involved in Jazz/Latino, inc for bringing our community this rewarding music.

Who Needs El Cantante?

By Dr. José E. Cruz

 The recently released movie El Cantante did not do well by the critics. In an internet column Robert Wilonkski wrote: “[The movie] is a garish, dispiriting mountain of biopic clichés snorted through the lens of a fidgety camera that never pauses long enough for us to know the man responsible for making the Nuyorican sound a mainstream American commodity in the 1970s and early ’80s.” According to Marjorie Baumgarten, a reporter for the Austin Chronicle, “El Cantante is basically a formula. So what if the movie skips over all the musician's artistic and personal struggles and misses a great opportunity to reveal historic aspects of Latin music culture?”

 

Such a missed opportunity matters a great deal. Not every film about Latinos has to fulfill the responsibility that belongs more properly to historians and social scientists. Yet, if a film has artistic relevance it usually helps understand the human experience. I don’t know anyone who agrees that El Cantante falls within that category of artistic product. The movie is not even entertaining and provides no escape from daily life worries as musicals or light-hearted comedies tend to do. The story is constructed only as a pretext for the music; but even the music is shortchanged since all we hear are fragments of some of the most famous Héctor Lavoe songs. The viewer experiences a paradoxical mouthwatering-thirstiness effect---there’s enough music to get excited but not enough to be satisfied. I was further irritated by the soundtrack CD since it does not include many of the songs referenced in the film but concludes with a song by J-Lo that is just unbearable.

 

El Cantante telegraphs the musical trajectory of Héctor Lavoe, ignores important aspects of his life and career, and incurs in factual errors that add nothing to the drama. The viewer is left with the impression that his career begins when he meets Dominican musician Johnny Pacheco when in fact at the time Lavoe had been in New York City for four years and had a record of performance with artists such as legendary percussionist Francisco Bastar, better known as “Kako.” In the movie, Jerry Massucci, the founder of Fania Records, changes Héctor’s last name from Pérez to “Lavoe” but in real life the name was given to him by music promoter Arturo Franquiz. We never learn that Felipe “La Voz” Rodríguez  and Santitos Colón were major influences in Lavoe’s singing style. While the movie suggests that Lavoe was a womanizer, we never find out that he had two children---one with Nilda “Puchi” Román (Jennifer López) and another with a woman by the name of Carmen Castro. Puchi’s daughter from a previous relationship, Leslie, is never mentioned nor does she appear in the film, as if she didn’t exist, even though Lavoe adopted her. What is the dramatic purpose of claiming that he died of AIDS when the cause of his death was a heart attack?

Alright, El Cantante is not a documentary. For more details about the life and work of Héctor Lavoe the reader can refer to La Historia del Cantante Héctor Lavoe (Infante Publications, 1999), co-authored by his surviving son, José A. Pérez, with Antonio I. Mejías. A more recent, superficial but engaging book is Marc Shapiro’s Passion and Pain, The Life of Hector Lavoe (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007). Here I’d like to take the opportunity provided by the release of this film to say a word about the cultural history of Latinos in the United States. This is a story in which music plays a central role and Fania Records is a major actor. In the making of history, individuals who play a prominent role and/or make a significant contribution often do so in spite of themselves. I believe this is true in this story and I make some references along these lines to three main characters in the Fania saga---Willie Colón, Jerry Massucci, and, of course, the protagonist of El Cantante, Héctor Lavoe.

 

Fania was established in the 1960s by Jerry Massucci with the collaboration of Johnny Pacheco and it quickly became a cultural and commercial powerhouse in New York. As it often happens in history, the connection between Pacheco and Massucci was serendipitous. Pacheco needed a lawyer to divorce his wife and Massucci turned out to be a fan of Cuban music. Once they get tired of complaining about the lack of Cuban music in New York, caused by the breakdown of relations between the United States and Castro’s Cuba, they decide to do something about the musical vacuum by launching Fania; they do so with Pacheco’s recording Cañonazo. Pacheco has claimed to have co-founded the company but the founder was Massucci who got the label going with a $5,000 loan from his parents. After Cañonazo, Fania released Heavy Smoking by pianist Larry Harlow and then the company produced El Malo featuring trombonist Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe as the lead vocalist (Colón was nicknamed “El Malo” because he was such a bad musician; but Fania turned that around and gave him a gangster image). It is with the Colón/Lavoe duo that the company surges and starts selling records like hot cakes

 

There are some who claim that Fania revolutionized Latin music by accelerating the tempo of songs, using rhythmic figures as melodies, and by its emphasis on percussion. As a matter of fact, all of that was part of Latino musical practice during the 1940s and 1950s thanks to the influence of jazz and due to the creativity of musicians like Francisco Grillo (Machito), Mario Bauzá, and  Luciano “Chano” Pozo, among others. More than anyone else, Tito Puente is associated with bringing percussion out of the kitchen and into the living room, so to speak, and he is a leading exponent of the percussive style of playing brass and reeds. But Puente, who is a precursor of the Fania generation, was not the only one. I have seen pictures of Cuban singer Beny Moré’s orchestra where the percussion section is in front of the band. Percussive brass is also a distinctive element of the music of Dámaso Pérez Prado. Yet, many people believe that before Puente, in Latin music the sax and the trumpet were mostly played in swing style and that the conga, bongó, and timbales were always in the back section of the band. It is true that Puente changes all that; but he was not alone in doing so.

 

The fusion of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and American musical elements in the United States dates at least from the nineteenth century. During the first decades of the twentieth century Caribbean infusions acquired more visibility in the figures of Machito, Bauzá, and Pozo. But this prominence was more creative than commercial. Among the commercially successful musicians the emblematic figure was Xavier Cugat, with his appearances in film, his mid-tempo merengues (merengue apambichao), and his cocktail lounge music. On a more artistic plane, the key figure was Puente, but only for being the best known musician, not for being the best. Competing for that title we have Machito and his AfroCubans, Tito Rodríguez and his Orchestra, Willie Bobo, Mongo Santamaría, Ray Barretto, and even Arsenio Rodríguez with his New York recordings of the 1950s. Charlie Palmieri was a major contributor with his charanga La Duboney and his brother Eddie revolutionized the sound of Latin music during the late 1950s and early 1960s with his group La Perfecta, which was baptized by big-brother Charlie as “trombanga,” due to the exclusive use of trombones, another innovation that is attributed solely to Eddie Palmieri even though others, most prominently Mon Rivera, beat him to the artistic punch. All these artists are part of the history that precedes and nurtures Fania as well as part of the context in which the company emerged. Eddie Palmieri’s sound and the voice of his lead singer Ismael “Pat” Quintana prefigure and serve as a guide for the sound and voice of Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe; Colón has said that he was inspired by Palmieri’s trombonist Barry Rogers---whose sound has been compared to that of a roaring elephant---as well as by Mon Rivera. Which means that Fania is an original in the classic sense: it revitalized a tradition, made it accessible to a new generation, to a broad audience, and in the process transformed the music and the musical scene. That’s what the life and work of el cantante Héctor Lavoe was about and what the movie fails to convey.

 

Fania was part of a process of cultural identity formation and development in Puerto Rico, the United States, and Latin America. In Puerto Rico, Fania’s “salsa” put wind behind the sails of the island’s cultural nationalism. Salsa gave a whole generation of Puerto Ricans a sense of self beyond political ideology. On the island, even statehooders love salsa. There was a momentary division between the so-called “rockeros” (fans of rock’n roll) and the so-called “cocolos” (fans of salsa) during the 1970s and 80s but it was superseded by peaceful co-existence and the eventual domination of rock by salsa. Things have changed since then and today many are unhappy about the state of Latin music in Puerto Rico and the United States. The film refers in passing to the crisis generated by the merengue explosion in New York and Puerto Rico. But as bad as things are today, merengue has been coopted and every year Puerto Rico celebrates the National Day of Salsa. When is the “National Day of Rock ‘n Roll” in Puerto Rico? Never.Yes, there are no more Hunts Point Palaces in the Bronx and El Corso is long gone from Manhattan but, who plays rock ‘n roll in El Barrio? To say Latino today is to say salsa. In this process of cultural identity formation and development, Colón and Lavoe played a key role as musical avant garde and as bearers of a Boricua and Latino sense of self.

 

Why did they play this role? First, they erupted into the musical scene with access to a rich musical heritage. Mon Rivera and Eddie Palmieri opened the door and Willie Colón walked right through. Colón rides on the coattails of Puente, Rivera, and Palmieri and with the help of Pacheco and Massucci he lands on top. Musically, Colón is not that great in part because some of his work desecrated the holy grail of Latin music---the clave. But the push and drive of the tradition was so strong that it transcended the deformities introduced by Colón and his orchestra, which was once dismissed by Tito Puente as a “kiddie band.” Yet, it is not surprising that despite that, Colón produced hit after hit during his association with Fania. With or without clave, his work was generally energetic, rhythmically strong, musical, and catchy. The simplicity of his melodies, the drive of his mambos, and the raw power of his moñas made his songs irresistible and unforgettable. Further, as a producer Colón was superb. We don’t know how much of it was fortuna or virtú but there is no question that Colón typically hitched his wagon to a winner---Lavoe, Rubén Blades, Mon Rivera, Ismael Miranda, Celia Cruz---and this is part of the explanation of his success. Add to all this the unique and seductive voice of Héctor Lavoe and therein lies a true combinación perfecta. In Lavoe one can hear the improvisational genius of an Ismael Rivera as well as the clarity and melodic power of a Ramito or a Chuíto el de Bayamón. In his singing Lavoe incorporated the best of the best and he had a unique sound. Tradition and innovation: who can beat that?

 

Second, both of them were commercially successful because they emerged when the market was at its peak. When Tito Puente began his career there were about 70,000 Puerto Ricans in the United States; when Fania released El Malo, there were close to one million. Aside from demographics, by the 1960s and 1970s culture had become a global commodity. The phenomenon known as la guagua aérea (airbus), made Puerto Rican migration to the United States a mass population movement and the same airbus took Puerto Ricans and their music outside the United States to Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia---in one word, to the whole world. Colón and Lavoe sold records globally and traveled across continents on a routine basis. This consolidated and deepened their impact.  

 

Finally, more than original, Colón was lucky. In the combination Colón-Lavoe, Héctor was the original element---with his melifluous voice, his jíbaro inflections, his melodic flow, and his improvisational talent. Fania started in 1964. In less than ten years it became a commercial empire, an octopus whose tentacles included the labels Alegre, Vaya, Inca, Tico, and Cotique. In that empire, Héctor Lavoe ocuppied a primordial position, mostly through sheer talent and in spite of himself. Even his negligence was memorialized with irony in the composition by Pacheco titled “El rey de la puntualidad” (the king of punctuality). His talent was such that any defect could be transmogrified into cuteness. “I’m never late,” the song says, “you are always early.” He was a relentless junkie; but to his public he was and will always be “el cantante de los cantantes.” As a bad musician Willie Colón is one of the best. But his success was more a function of association and circumstance than pure talent. Lavoe was pure talent; his talent was so forceful that it rose above the direst of circumstances. If Lavoe had not existed Colón would have been forced to invent him. How could salsa become so popular in places like Colombia, to the point that many thought it had been invented there, had it not been for artists like Lavoe? He was the key to Colón’s success and, of course, to his own.  

 

Going back to the movie. Many have decried the emphasis on Lavoe’s drug use. Unfortunately, the representation is both precise and minimal. He was worse than we are shown. A more important concern is whether his death at the age of 47 was inevitable. It is hard to know for sure, but his early demise could have been prevented. Among those who knew him, there is no agreement on this. Some believe that Héctor Lavoe’s greatest enemy was Héctor Lavoe. How else, they say, can one assess the life of someone who when asked what he would change if he could re-live his life answered: “I would not exchange needles.” Willie Colón has complained bitterly about his representation in the film but he protests too much. He comes out smelling like roses, giving advice to Lavoe, acting like a good friend. But, justified or not, he acts this way at the same time he kisses Lavoe goodbye and tells him that he is on his own now. In the end, those who tried to help were thwarted once and again by Puchi, her family, and Lavoe himself. Percussionist John “Dandy” Rodríguez recently confirmed that Lavoe alienated many people as a result of his drug abuse. In an internet forum, Rodríguez said: “I used to hang out with Héctor a lot, night and day, in the houses of our fans, until the day he entered the world of heroin. After that I would see him and said hello and kept walking.” And just like that, with people walking out of his life, lonely and abandoned, Héctor Lavoe met his maker.

 

One the best lines in El Cantante is that which describes Jerry Massucci as a “cop who became a lawyer and ended up as a thief.” One wonders if the casting agents selected for Massucci’s role an actor who played the role of a mafioso in The Sopranos with irony or naiveté. Some believe that this is a symbolic way of perpetuating an image of Massucci that is based on nothing but rumors and innuendo. According to a well-informed source, the only members of the Fania roster that believe that Massucci was a thief are Larry Harlow and Rubén Blades. According to this source, two is not a crowd. Nevertheless, Massucci was sued several times for bad contracts and dishonesty in royalty payments. These suits are considered legitimate or frivolous, depending on who you ask, and most were ultimately settled out of court. In a recent interview, Johnny Pacheco declared that Massucci tricked him out of his share of the company. “Today I consider myself an idiot,” Pacheco said,” I should have seen it coming.” This is suggestive but we don’t know what exactly it is that Pacheco should have seen coming and did not. In the end, Massucci, who had a reputation for being a good businessman, may have earned it simply because he knew how to make money; but, more often than not, to know how to make money one has to be a bit of a thief.

 

So, who needs El Cantante? León Ichaso will never be a great filmmaker (what he did in El Cantante he tried once before in his biopic of Jimmy Hendrix; he doesn’t seem to learn) and El Cantante will not become a classic. But the movie reminds us that thanks to Fania and to artists like Héctor Lavoe the contribution of Latinos to American music is strong and substantial. Lavoe was a vulgar individual, a hopeless addict who could sing like no one else. Colón is a mediocre musician with an ear of gold, a clever musical imagination, and a knack for profitable liaisons. Massucci may have been a small-scale robber baron, a good businessman who probably helped and screwed people in equal proportions. Together these individuals made musical history in New York. Thanks to their work, salsa is now, like Latin jazz, integral to the American experience. In the movie, that contribution is obscured by J-Lo’s behind; it is blunted by Marc Anthony’s lethargic performance, and it is diminished by Ichaso’s narrative incompetence. What a waste! To promote the exposition and better understanding of Latin music in the United States we need better means of dissemination and discussion. One movie is not enough and a bad movie does not help.

 

Acknowledgement: Thank you to George Rivera for his willingness to share his vast knowledge about Latin music in New York. He is not responsible for my opinions or errors.

Fort Apache

By Dr. José E. Cruz

In March of 1980, the entertainment magazine Variety ran an advertisement that read: “A chilling and tough movie about the South Bronx, a 40 block area with the highest crime rate in New York. Youth gangs, winos, junkies, pimps, hookers, maniacs, cop killers and the embattled 41st precinct, just hanging in there.” It was an ad for the Paul Newman movie Fort Apache, The Bronx, scheduled for release in 1981. This representation of the South Bronx prompted the formation of a coalition of groups that met for the first time on March 5, 1980 at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. They named their coalition the Committee Against Fort Apache (CAFA) and got to work to stop production of the movie.Unable to do so, CAFA tried to stop the release of the picture. The movie came out and CAFA organized rallies and demonstrations calling for a boycott of the film. In this the group failed as well.

 

In his response to CAFA’s claims, the film’s director, Dan Petrie, argued that “The film does not insist that the people of the South Bronx have learned to live with inhumane conditions they created themselves. (...) The film does not lie about the reality of the Puerto Rican and Black communities. (...) The script does not rewrite history. (...) The picture does not excuse police brutality.” If anyone was blamed, said Petrie, it was the politicians. The film did not suggest that Puerto Ricans were animals who deserved to be treated like animals. Some Puerto Ricans and blacks were shown as victims, not as villains. The only villain in the film was an Irish policeman who was denounced by a fellow Irish. “It is our hope,” Petrie concluded, “that the picture will mobilize public opinion so that positive steps will be taken both within and outside the community to alleviate the ‘inhumane conditions’ which exist there.”

 

Fort Apache, The Bronx, failed to mobilize public opinion in support of Puerto Ricans, Blacks, or the Bronx. But the uproar it generated led to the creation of what is probably the best Latin jazz group of its generation: The Fort Apache Band. The group was named on a whim. Jerry González was invited to play at the Berlin Jazz Festival and when the promoter asked him for the name of the band, he thought for a moment and said: “Well, Fort Apache,” because that was “a famous precinct in the Bronx.” Later González would embellish the story by giving the naming a sense of purpose: “We wanted to show the world that there were good things coming out of the Bronx,” he has said. But consciously or subconsciously the naming was truly a reaction to the negative representation of the Bronx in Paul Newman’s movie, an attempt to appropriate, transpose, and resignify the name. 

According to Francisco Reyes II, who took photos of the band’s early performances, the core group of Fort Apache was actually members of Manny Oquendo’s Libre with alternating participants, expanding and contracting in size, depending on the blend of jazz and típico that leaders Jerry and Andy González were looking to achieve for a given gathering. The ensemble of Libre and its circle of talent included the late Mario Rivera on sax, Armando “Chocolate” Armenteros on trumpet, the late Jorge D'alto on piano, and Nicky Marrero on timbales. The ensemble quickly became recognized as the official band of CAFA and the musicians performed in school auditoriums and at street rallies where CAFA organizers were mobilizing communities to disrupt the production of Newman’s film. By the time CAFA’s campaign got off the ground some of these musicians had already recorded with Jerry González in his first album Ya Yo Me Curé (American Clavé, 1001, 1980). Although the recorded sound of Fort Apache begins with this album, it was not until 1982 that the band made its official debut with The River is Deep (Enja, 4040), the live recording of the concert in Berlin. Since then the band has produced ten albums and Jerry González has fronted two independent projects, both recorded in Spain, with Los Piratas del Flamenco (LOLA! LR 1003, 2002) and with his Big Band (an import not yet released on an American label. It sells on the web for the outrageous sum of $34)

 

What can one say about a Puerto Rican musician who launched his career with Dizzy Guillespie, moved on to play with Eddie Palmieri (“my university education,” González calls that stint), then joined forces along with brother Andy with Manny Oquendo (Jerry calls him “the Art Blakey of timbales”) and Libre? González himself says: “I am bilingual---I speak Spanish and English. I can play the blues and I can play the rumba.” And this is the feature of the Fort Apache Band that is most compelling: its musical bilingualism. No other band on the scene masters the intricacies of the jazz and Afrocuban tradition like Fort Apache does. As drummer Steve Berríos, one of the original members of the band, puts it: “We know how to say the same thing in different languages.” Bilingualism is perhaps not the best way to describe their practice. According to Berríos, when they play jazz they don’t think “I’m playing jazz now.” And when they play in clave they don’t think “I’m speaking Spanish now.” Instead, the articulation of these two ways of playing is simultaneous---“it’s so much, that it’s subconscious,” Berríos says. The band plays hard, con abandono, with subtlety and swing, con ritmo y con mucho sabor. The listener is apt to find all these things in every one of their recordings, sometimes within the same song. They are tight and they know the score really well. One time at a gig in Amsterdam, Holland, the lights went out while the band was playing and they kept going without missing a beat until the lights came back. If you are a musician, try to do that; you’ll see how hard it is.

 

On May 7, 1980 CAFA held a demonstration outside Studio 54 during a dinner organized by the Mayor’s office in charge of film promotion. On May 15, the City Council’s Committee on General Welfare passed a resolution calling Newman’s film racist and heeding El Diario-La Prensa’s call for a boycott. The following day over 100 people mobilized by CAFA disrupted filming at 162nd street and Westchester Avenue. On May 20, hundreds marched throughout the 41st precinct in the Bronx chanting “No se Necesita, Película Racista.” In a press conference held in front of the precinct, Congressman Bob García condemned the film as a symbol of “everything that is wrong with this country” and called for its boycott. Four days later, CAFA organized a march from the offices of United Bronx Parents at 156th Street to Hunts Point Park on 163rd. Nineteen groups, as well as the Catholic Vicariate of the Bronx and Planning Boards 1, 2, 4 and 6, sponsored this event. The sponsors also included black, Dominican, and Chicano organizations.

 

Despite all these efforts CAFA did not stop Fort Apache, the Bronx.  Yet, it did accomplish several important goals. As the late Puerto Rican activist Richie Pérez put it, “CAFA was the spearhead of a mass community movement. It was a broad coalition, uniting different sectors of our community and different perspectives. This was its main strength.” The Fort Apache campaign also created an opportunity for left-wing groups to advance a long-term political agenda. One organization that took the opportunity was the People Against White Supremacy. Another was the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights. Most important, the campaign unified the black and Puerto Rican communities like never before and enabled cooperation between Puerto Ricans, Gays, Native Americans, and the Chinese community in New York. One observer concluded: “The fight against Fort Apache has had a dynamic effect in Black and Puerto Rican communities as well as in the country as a whole. Perhaps it is a beginning for some of the struggles of the 80s.” In many ways it was. In addition, it was the beginning of the Fort Apache Band, a landmark event in U.S. musical history. Listen to this band and you’ll agree. 

The Conga

By Dr. José E. Cruz

Reprinted from Latino New York magazine, July/August  2007

A few years ago I got into trouble when I said in a public forum that without the conga Latin music had no soul. At the time I was thinking of Latin Jazz, not Latin music in general. This clarification did not appease my critics. Was I saying that the conga drum made Latin Jazz? Didn’t I know that it was possible to play Latin Jazz without Latin percussion? I did my best to finesse my observation but to no avail. Music has no essence, I was told, and Latin Jazz was no exception. I was also asked to do a thought experiment. Imagine a band leader whose group consisted of piano, bass, drumset, sax, and congas. The band leader is told by a club owner that she can only afford a quartet. Which instrument would you say was more likely to be cut off as nonessential? The conga drum, of course! Yet, the conga drum historically played a seminal role in the development of Latin Jazz.

 

In music circles some argue that Latin Jazz was created by Mario Bauzá, the legendary Cuban trumpet/sax player who was musical director of the Machito Orchestra, with the composition Tanga, a tune that is distinctive because of the piano vamp that introduces the melody. Not everyone agrees with this claim. In fact, some even dispute the notion that Tanga was composed by Bauzá, claiming instead that Bauzá stole the composition from Machito’s sax player José “Pin” Madera. Others claim that Latin Jazz came about as the result of the collaboration between Dizzy Guillespie and Cuban conga player Luciano “Chano” Pozo. In this view, Pozo and his conga playing provided the link between Afro-Cuban rhythms and Jazz melodies and harmonies that made Latin Jazz distinctive and recognizable as something new and different. 

Some claim that before Pozo, only trap drums were used in Jazz. For this to be true, however, one would have to agree that before Manteca came about Machito and his AfroCubans were playing strictly Latin music rather than Jazz or Latin Jazz. One would also have to ignore the presence of a conga player in Benny Carter’s band in 1937 simply because his performance was unmemorable. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the presence or absence per se of the conga drum in recognizable Jazz ensembles is not the defining criterion of Latin Jazz. If this is so, it becomes more important to know whether the conga drum contributes something creatively different. I would argue that the essence of Latin Jazz is the clave which can be present in music without the congas. The congas make the presence of the clave explicit–in other words, the congas visually suggest that there is something in the music that is distinct, whether you are able to recognize the clave or not. This is, I believe, what Chano Pozo and his tumbadora did. People may not have known they were listening to the clave but they knew something different was happening. But why not credit Machito and his AfroCubans with the creation of Latin Jazz? I would say because it was Dizzy Guillespie, not Machito, who brought together a recognizable Jazz form–Be Bop–and a recognizable Cuban form–the clave. Pozo recorded with Guillespie in 1946 but it was not until Manteca came out in 1948–shortly before Pozo’s unseeming as well as untimely passing–that the union of Jazz and Latin was effectively sealed into a distinctive marriage. Before Manteca there was courtship and there were affairs but after Manteca two became one. Did the conga drum do the trick? Guillespie claimed that before Manteca Jazz was exclusively based on straight fours, which one can best appreciate by listening to the bass going boom-boom- boom-boom, repeatedly. In Manteca, however, the opening bass line is different: the bass no longer “walks;” it jumps, skips, and hops, so to speak. Yet, if Latin Jazz is distinctive because it incorporates the Cuban clave, then its outward expression must be the tumbao rhythm that is propelled by the conga; in turn, the conga visually suggests the presence of a creative element regardless of whether one knows it is called the clave. In Cuban Fire (London: Continuum, 2002), Isabelle Leymarie notes that after listening to Manteca in January of 1948, the French critic André Hodeir wrote: “The introduction of the bongo in the rhythm section is an excellent idea. It creates a rhythmic diversity, a kind of polyrhythm one can expect a lot from, and which is quite in the spirit of the new style” (p. 194). Hodeir confused the conga with the bongó, a mistake that is commonly made by many even today. In fact, Dizzy Guillespie himself did not know the name of the peculiar-looking instruments Pozo was playing when he first saw him. When he said he wanted them in his band he called the congas “Tom-Toms.”

 

No one makes that mistake today. And whether they are called erroneously bongós, by their American name of congas, or by their original Cuban name of tumbadoras, there is no disagreement that, essential or not, the congas make Latin Jazz recognizable even to those who cannot hear the clave. There is soul in Latin Jazz even in the absence of conga drumming–we can call it clave. When Jerry González, the fabled leader of the Fort Apache Band, plays the trumpet one can still hear the clave; but when he puts the trumpet aside and settles down in front of his four (sometimes five) congas, the cooking really begins and we know for sure we are listening to Latin Jazz.

Jazz Latino

By Dr. José E. Cruz

Reprinted from Latino New York magazine, September 2007

What exactly is Latin Jazz? Among musicians, there is no unanimous answer. Some even deny the existence of this genre. Jazz is Jazz, they say. You can insert a conga drum into a Jazz ensemble and the group will still play Jazz; if the music sounds Latin, you may be hearing a Mambo, they claim. Others argue that if the music is based on the Cuban clave and incorporates improvisation, the result is a hybrid form---Latin Jazz. On this basis, some refer to Latin Jazz interchangeably as CuBop or AfroCuban Jazz; more recently, the role of Puerto Rican and Dominican rhythms has been acknowledged under the umbrella of AfroCaribbean Jazz.

Ironically, one of the greatest exponents of Latin Jazz, the late Ray Barretto, was one of its greatest detractors. Barretto always saw himself as a Jazz musician. To the end of his days he claimed that Latin Jazz did not exist. In his view, there was Jazz with Latin or Latin with Jazz but no hybrid form. Jazz had an essence that had been laid out by King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. If you said Jazz you said straight fours; Latin was basically straight eights, according to Barretto. Latin rhythms and harmonic structures were not part of the original mix. In his own playing he did not see a contribution to fusion. He saw his role in Jazz ensembles as supportive rather than constitutive. The interaction between Chano Pozo and Dizzy Guillespie was creative. Barretto did not see himself in the same way. Rather than use his conga playing to transform Jazz, he used it to provide a platform for musicians to stand on. “I have to worry that I have a drummer brother out there,” Barretto once said. “He’s doing his thing…and I don’t want to step on him. My life as a drummer has always been basically as an accompanist.”

 

Barretto had a love-hate relationship with Latin music. “El Watusi,” (1962) for example, made him famous. As he put it: “it got me to move out of the Bronx.” Yet he did not like to be reminded that the song even existed. Once he was asked to play it and he simply said: “No, I can’t, I won’t in deference to good music.”

 

Barretto was right about “El Watusi.” It is a “dumb tune” (his words) based on the repetition of a very simple vamp. But his ambivalence about Latin music was driven by more than artistic concerns. His yearning for inclusion into the cultural mainstream was another reason for his attitude. After “El Watusi” he kept searching for another hit, getting involved in anemic pop projects such as the albums Señor 007 (West Side Latino WSLP 4278, 1965) and Can You Feel It? (Atlantic SD 19198, 1978). He recognized the low quality of these recordings later on. As he put it: “[El Watusi] messed my mind up because I lost track of what good music was about for a long time.”

 

His ambivalence was also part of his struggle to define himself as a musician. He wanted this definition to be dictated by artistry rather than ethnicity.  This is where Latin Jazz came in as an irritant. To him Latin Jazz was a category based on ethnicity not music; it boxed-in, segregated, and stifled Latino musicians, forcing them into a musical identity not of their own choosing. To him, being classified as a Latin Jazz musician prevented his entry into a wider market. The category had more to do with gatekeeping than musicology.

 

The problem of typecasting musicians according to ethnicity is separate from the problem of defining Latin Jazz. More often than not, the two issues get confused or conflated. Barretto may have felt typecast and segregated but that is not evidence that Latin Jazz is a marketing ploy to regulate competition in the Jazz market. And it is not clear whether his recognition as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005 was prompted by his Jazz work during the 1950s or by his Latin Jazz work during the 1990s. In all likelihood it was for both. Yet, I’m sure that Barretto was grateful to be recognized without reference to the Latin side of his work.

 

In the end, if Jazz is the combination of blues, improvisation, and swing, the addition of the Cuban clave should result in Latin Jazz, regardless of who’s playing. But maybe it is not so simple. When is the mixture of these elements a synthesis and when a mere juxtaposition? The definition of Latin Jazz depends on knowing the difference.

 

Author’s Note: All citations are from Billy Taylor’s Jazz at Kennedy Center, Broadcast on WAMC, September 22, 1998.

Adiós, Mario

By Dr. José E. Cruz

On August 10, 2007, the multi-instrumentalist Mario Rivera passed away in New York Ci ty after an unsuccessful battle with cancer. The world of jazz, Latin jazz, and salsa lost one of its greatest and most accomplished practitioners. But not a word was written about him in the mainstream press. As producer and critic George Rivera put it, “if it’s not a Puente or a Celia Cruz [they] have no idea of who’s who.”

 

Born in the Dominican Republic in 1939, Rivera’s career spanned over half a century. I remember listening to him for the first time as a child in Puerto Rico, when the Tito Puente record 20th Anniversary came out in 1967 on the Tico label (LP 1151). If you have not heard this record, find it, listen to the first track “Mambo a la Tito” and pay close attention to the baritone sax solo. It’s a great introduction to Mario’s music. He can be seen on the back cover of the album, smiling broadly to the left of Puente, in a photo taken at the 3 & 1 Club in New York City.

 

Rivera’s main instrument was the saxophone but he could play everything. If you go to YouTube you can see him at the Bern Jazz Festival playing the saxophone, the flute, and the timbales as well as scat singing and trading flute solos with Dave Valentín. But that’s not all. He could play bass, guitar, piano, and all kinds of wind and percussion instruments. No musical language was foreign to him; he could play them all and play them all with excellence, a rare quality. He was best known as a sideman with Tito Puente. Behind the scenes he was the main instigator of what came to be known as Puente’s Latin jazz ensemble. He also played with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Slide Hampton, Machito, Eddie Palmieri, and Chico O'Farrill. Only last October he played with Cuban piano master Bebo Valdés in Miami. I had the pleasure of seeing him in January 2007 at the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) conference in New York City. There he accompanied trumpet player Brian Lynch and trombone player Conrad Herwig in their Latin rendition of the music of Miles Davis. At the end of the set, Herwig introduced Rivera to the audience deferentially by calling him “our father.” Remarkably, there was not a hint of illness in that performance, even though, as it turns out, he was only seven months away from death.

In 1996, Rivera released El Comandante, which to this day stands as the only effort to systematically blend merengue with jazz. According to those in the know, the only comparable work is that of Tavito Vázquez, a Dominican sax player who was an inspiration for Mario’s work. El Comandante was Rivera’s one and only production as a band leader. His band, the Salsa Refugees, came about as an attempt to escape the restrictions and limitations of salsa. It was also a meeting ground and training camp for up and coming talents such as Andy and Jerry González, Steve Turre, and Dominican compatriot Michel Camilo. Rivera also fronted the Mario Rivera Sextet but left no recordings by this ensemble. Unfortunately, his efforts as a band leader were sporadic and short-lived. It is also regrettable that El Comandante has been out of print for a long time. The recording came and went, largely unnoticed and unappreciated, something that affected Rivera deeply. It took almost a decade before the recording developed some traction but today it remains the only work of its kind. I would not be surprised if now that Mario is gone someone decides to reissue El Comandante and it gets the wide attention it deserves. This would be the kind of irony that besets so many artists: their work is better known in death than in life.

 

Even though “El Comandante” was Rivera’s nickname, he could not escape his role as the consummate sideman. Yet, listen to the song “No Pienses Así,” in the Eddie Palmieri 1973 recording Sentido (Mango Records, MS 103), where he introduces the song and plays an incredibly coherent and musical solo while riffing along the vocals by Ismael Quintana. His role there is commanding, so prominent that one can think of it as Mario Rivera with Eddie Palmieri instead of the other way around. Similarly, there are a number of tunes in the Tito Puente repertoire where Rivera not only shines but steals the show as well. His last performance as a sideman includes a solo that will be for the ages. Rivera played it on the soprano sax in the song “Flamenco Mood,” which was recorded by the Latin Giants of Jazz live at IAJE and it is included in their cd Trip to Mamboland (Gigante Records, 2007).

 

Shortly after Mario’s death, expressions of both sadness and appreciation filled the internet. Reviews by Robert Palmer and Jon Pareles from the 1980s that were posted online noted Mario’s ability to play “demanding contemporary jazz” as well as his capacity to mesh cross-rhythms smoothly and with precision in a mixture of standard jazz and pan-Caribbean music. The inevitable complaint was also registered. Bandleader Bobby Sanabria wrote: “Like so many musicians who are Latino and have been an integral part of the jazz world and the world of their own native culture, [his] contribution has been long overlooked by those who write the history of both genres.” Striking a different note, Miami journalist Enrique Fernández wrote: “Sidemen are the unsung heroes of music; they back legends but seldom become superstars. But Rivera was a legend on his own right.” In a tongue-in-cheek reference to Mario’s role as a mentor of countless musicians, Fernández added: “If Rivera (...) had not made a name for himself as one of the most sought-after sidemen in jazz and Latin jazz, he could have had a successful career as a music therapist.”

 

Mario Rivera was a seminal figure in jazz and Latin music; he was a pioneer, a mentor, and a master. His record and contributions are there to see and enjoy for anyone who cares to pay attention. He was a steadfast musical presence and a major creative figure; this may not be known to the New York Times but it is common knowledge among peers and connoisseurs worldwide. On August 19, 2007, two days after Rivera’s burial in the Bronx, his friends demonstrated their appreciation at a jam session held at the Nuyorican Poets Café in Loisaida, Ne w York. A wider celebration took place at a memorial service held at St. Peter’s Church on 54th Street and Lexington Avenue on August 27. On that date The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra performed under the direction of Arturo O’Farrill. Luminaries such as trombonist Papo Vázquez and sax player Bobby Porcelli, joined Rivera’s son Phoenix, an accomplished drummer, to honor our fallen musical giant; fallen but not forgotten. Death be not proud for El Comandante lives.

Salsa Meets Jazz, Part I

By Dr. José E. Cruz

In 2004 I spent close to seven hours glued to a microfilm reader at the New York Public Library looking at old copies of the Village Voice published between January 7 through December 30, 1980. I was searching for an answer to a very simple question: when did Salsa Meets Jazz begin at the Village Gate? Salsa Meets Jazz was the name of a series conceived and organized by the late promoter Jack Hooke and the owner of the Village Gate, Art D’Lugofff. It was held on Monday nights to showcase Latin orchestras and jazz soloists. D’Lugoff organized the series out of his love of dancing. Mondays were selected because they were “slow nights.”

Salsa Meets Jazz did not bring D’Lugoff huge amounts of money but it certainly made Mondays more lively at the Gate. During the seven years I lived in New York City, on Monday nights the Village Gate was my church and Salsa Meets Jazz was my religion. Nowhere else in the city could one dance (or listen) for hours to the music of Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri for a mere $10. On any given Monday one could see Dizzy Guillespie or McCoy Tyner playing alongside Luis “Perico” Ortiz and Charlie Palmieri, respectively, while Ray Barretto or Johnny Pacheco hung out at the bar. Whenever Puente played it was not unusual to see Bill Cosby sitting quietly, listening in the dark.

When this article was written, the Gate was part theatre and part CVS pharmacy; in 2009 it was a refurbished club by the name of Le Poisson Rouge. In its heyday, the club, located on the corner of Bleecker and Thompson streets in New York’s Greenwich Village, was one of the most prominent alternative cultural establishments in the city. Salsa Meets Jazz was just one of many offbeat, avant-garde spectacles featured at the club. Before he was a celebrity Bob Dylan sang there. Billie Holiday also made appearances at the Gate. In 1969, when he ran what Herman Badillo has called a “drunken campaign” for mayor of New York City, Norman Mailer used the Gate for some of his events. During the Salsa Meets Jazz period it was easy to spot celebrities such as Christopher Walken, Robert Duvall, Al Lewis (who played Granpa in the series The Munsters and later ran for President with the Green Party), Mick Jagger, Peter Gabriel and Joe Jackson. One night in the 1980s, Robert DeNiro passed by me going down the stairs into the club. He was short and skinny and wore a pony tail.

The answer to my question should have been easy to get were it not that the documentation of the series is spotty, the recollection of living protagonists is dim, and the meaning of salsa meets jazz has never been precise. Did Salsa Meets Jazz begin in 1961 with a performance by Herbie Mann in November or in 1963 with Mongo Santamaría’s historic September appearance at the Gate? Did the encounter begin in 1966 with the performance captured in the recordings Descargas at the Village Gate? According to D’Lugoff, who owned the Gate from 1958 to 1994, after the 1966 Descargas, Salsa Meets Jazz began “sometime in the 1970s.” However, according to the program printed by the Tribeca Performing Arts Center for its “Remembering the Village Gate” lecture series held in 2004, “the series was dormant from 1970-1980.” After I looked for articles about the Village Gate in the New York Times from 1966 to 1980 the answer remained elusive.

Nevertheless, it is safe to say that the key years in the evolution of the series are 1961, when Herbie Mann sets a precedent for the marriage of jazz and Latin at the Gate and 1963, when Mongo Santamaría provides a template for the Salsa Meets Jazz format. Mann’s contribution in 1961 was suggestive of the series but not precisely focused on Latin elements. This is how Scott Holden Smith describes Mann’s performance in his review of At the Village Gate: “Back in 1961, there it all is: a base of bebop with the Latin beat, but also Middle Eastern and African influences. There’s funk on this CD, there’s cool, and Bossa Nova, and samba, and bebop.” The key phrase in the review is “a base of bebop.” In contrast, Santamaría’s 1963 performance, recorded live and released as Mongo at the Village Gate is a true blend of Afro-Caribbean and jazz components. If salsa is a pan-musical category that encompasses a host of Caribbean-origin patterns and structures, the music by Santamaría in 1963 represents the earliest recorded instance of salsa meeting jazz at the Gate, provided we indulge in a bit of reading history backwards and agree to call “salsa” what in 1961 was actually “AfroCuban.” I emphasize recorded because the Village Gate began to hold jazz performances on Monday nights with Herbie Mann in 1960 and it could be that during that year there was an encounter between jazz and Latin. But we don’t know for sure simply because the documentary evidence is not available. Be that as it may, even though Mongo Santamaría’s 1963 performance is not the first instance of the encounter between Latin and jazz at the Gate, it is the archetype of the Salsa Meets Jazz series’ style in more ways than one.

First, before his sound acquired jazz textures, Santamaría was prominent in Latin circles. Because he was expanding his musical horizon outward from Latin sources, his evolution was truly a case of Latin meeting jazz. That evolution is captured in the 1963 recording. Second, whereas Mann appropriated elements of the Latin tradition, Mongo infused Latin elements into American forms. The best example of this in Mongo at the Village Gate is the song “Nothing for Nothing” which Santamaría transforms from blues to Latin jazz by injecting an approximation of the Yeza rhythm into the piece. Yeza, also known as Iyesa, is an African-based rhythmic pattern that originated in the province of Matanzas, Cuba. Third, Mongo at the Village Gate includes at least three compositions that prefigure the Salsa Meets Jazz style: “The Jungle Bit,” which has the feel of Ray Barretto’s 1963 hit “El Watusi” but is a better composition; “My Sound,” which is a killer conga solo that foreshadows similar displays during the series by Barretto, Francisco Aguabella, Daniel Ponce, and Giovanni Hidalgo, among others; and the beautiful bolero “The Morning After,” which brings to mind a 1986 rendition at the Gate of “Lover Man” by Conjunto Libre with jazz soloist Chico Freeman which I recall vividly even though I saw it twenty-one years ago ( I will never forget that Jerry González did not want to leave the stage and continued playing until he was good and ready to stop, all along ignoring the annoyed admonitions to call it quits by the host Chico Mendoza.)

In 1963 Herbie Mann had another appearance at the club that became Returns to the Village Gate. About this performance Scott Yanow wrote in the third edition of Michael Erlewine’s  All Music Guide to Jazz, The Experts’ Guide to the Best Jazz Recordings: “Mann really cooks on four of his own originals, plus ‘Bags' Groove,’ blending in the influence of African, Afro-Cuban and even Brazilian jazz.” In 1966 Atlantic released Mann’s Monday Night at the Village Gate recorded with the recently deceased Carlos “Patato” Valdés on congas. In this album three songs display Afro-Caribbean inflections: “Motherless Child” is played to a cha-cha beat; “In Escambrun” has the feel of mambo-samba fusion and “Young Turks” is a fast-paced mambo. But these are still appropriations rather than infusions of Latin into jazz. In the Tico-Alegre Descargas, which took place also in 1966, there is a mixture of Latin and jazz but the event was conceived and understood as a fundamentally Latin show and it did not include any recognized jazz performer. Thus, Mongo’s appearance at the Gate in 1963 and his 1967 encore remain the best recorded examples of the infusion of Latin into jazz at the Village Gate and therefore the closest approximations to the encounter between Latin and jazz formalized by the Salsa Meets Jazz series. I should add that the 1967 performance had a most pleasurable and exciting feature: a version of “Afro Blue” with Julito Collazo on vocals and chékere. This show was recorded and released as Mongo Explodes at the Gate, a recording that is now rare and that I was able to get from France through the internet at an exorbitant price.

If one looks hard, one can find references to “salsa” in recordings of the 1960s. Examples are the mid-1960s song “Guajira in F” included in vol. 3 of the Alegre All Stars,’ Lost and Found (Alegre LPA 8430; Re-issued in CD format by Fania Records, 1996) and the cover of the 1968 Ricardo Ray/Bobby Cruz album Los Durísimos which is sub-titled “salsa y control.” Yet, the term begins to be used as a pan-musical category in the 1970s. So, how could the series Salsa Meet Jazz begin in the 1960s? It did not. Jazz met “Latin” at the Gate in 1961 and “AfroCuban” or “Latin” met jazz in 1963---we can call these encounters “salsa meets jazz” only if we read history backwards. More properly, we can say that they marked the beginnings of a formal encounter later on baptized as Salsa Meets Jazz. It would be a while before the actual series would properly begin.

Author’s note: My appreciation goes to the late Ray Barretto, Andrea Brachfeld, Ignacio Berroa, Art D’Lugoff, Rachel Faro, Willard Jenkins, Arturo Gómez, Walter Ramos, George Rivera, and Bobby Sanabria for their assistance in the preparation of this article. Needless to say, they are not responsible for my errors.

Discography

Descargas at the Village Gate Live TICO All-Stars (Vol.1 TICO SLP 1135; Vol. 2 TICO SLP 1145; Vol. 3 TICO SLP 1155).

Herbie Mann, At the Village Gate (Atlantic SD 1380, 1961; Re-issued in CD format as Atlantic 1380-2, 1964).

--------, Monday Night at the Village Gate (Atlantic 1462, 1966; re-issued in CD format by Wounded Bird Records WOU 1462, 2001).

--------, Returns to the Village Gate (Atlantic 1407, 1963; Re-issued in CD format by Wounded Bird Records, WOU 1407, 2001).

Mongo Santamaría, Mongo at the Village Gate (Riverside RLP 93529, 1963; Re-issued in CD format as Riverside OJCCD-490-2, 1990).

--------, Mongo Explodes at the Gate (Columbia 9570, 1967).

Salsa Meets Jazz, Part II: ¡A Descargar!

By Dr. José E. Cruz

Before Salsa Meets jazz became officially a series, the Village Gate hosted a descarga session that was recorded live and released in three volumes titled Descargas at the Village Gate. According to famous disc jockey Symphony Sid (whose given name was Sid Torin), the 1966 Descargas at the Village Gate project began with his phone call to Morris Levy, president of Tico Records. Tico was the company that hosted the most prominent performers of music from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean in New York during the 1950s and 1960s. “Let’s make a Latin jam session to end all descargas,” Sid told Levy, and all it took for the proposal to get off the ground was a gruff response at the other end of the line. “Crazy!,” Levy said. Levy then phoned the other Morris—Morris Perlsman, a.k.a. Pancho Cristal: “Call Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, and Joe Cuba.” Soon after, a small army of movers and shakers went on a mad dash to the descarga. “Se Fueron a la Lucha” is how Puerto Rico’s premier horse race narrator, Rivera Monge, would put it had he been a witness to the preliminaries for the event.

Getting the jam session to happen was a horse race, full of anticipation and excitement. Sid announced the event on his radio show on WEVD and the response was dramatic. “Are you offering to raffle Brigitte Bardot?,” an incredulous Art D’Lugoff asked Sid after taking a rash of reservations. But no such bait was needed given the ridiculously low price of admission: $2.75. From today’s vantage point, that would be a handful of change but even then it was a very good deal. Moreover, and surely most important, the line-up was to die for. On May 23, 1966, the descarga took place with a historic gathering of luminaries—Al Abreu, Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, Ray Barretto, Pedro “Puchi” Boulong, Santitos Colón, Joe Cuba, Cándido Camero, Rafael “Chivirico” Dávila, José “Cheo” Feliciano, Vincent Frisaura, Israel “Cachao” López, Johnny Pacheco, Charlie and Eddie Palmieri, Víctor Paz, Bobby Porcelli, Francisco “Chino” Pozo, Tito Puente, Ricardo Ray (who was listed in the liner notes with his given name, Richard Maldonado), José Rodrígues, Bobby Rodríguez, Johnny Rodríguez, Jr., Barry Rogers, Jimmy Sabater, and Ramón Sardiñas, a.k.a. Monguito. The live session included the great Cuban tres player Arsenio Rodríguez but due to a technical malfunction he cannot be heard in the recording. Even though the recording was released in three volumes, the descargas took place as a single event, the plural form of the noun probably determined by the fact that each of the numbers recorded was a descarga in itself. Had jazz soloists been added to the mix, Salsa Meet Jazz would have started with the descarga. By definition a descarga is about improvisation and improvisation means jazz, but no recognized jazz performer was included so in a strict sense the session was not Salsa Meets Jazz.

Between 1960 and 1969 there was Latin and Latin Jazz at the Gate. As an event or process salsa does meet jazz during that period but there is no evidence of an official Salsa Meets Jazz series. As for the Latin element, one song by Ricardo Ray and Bobby Cruz, titled “Pancho Cristal” is suggestive of what went on at the club after the 1966 descargas. The song describes one aspect of the Latin scene there. Interestingly, the lyrics refer exclusively to elements of the Afro-Cuban rather than the jazz tradition, such as the guaguancó, the bembé, the rumba abierta, and the tingo talango. The guaguancó is a mid to fast tempo rhythm played at a rumba. A rumba is a neighorhood party. Traditionally, bembé is a festivity in honor of orishás —Yoruba deities—or to celebrate the anniversary of Santería initiations. In secular circles the bembé is a party that involves a jam session. A rumba abierta is a fast tempo percussion jam involving one or two conga drums to provide a rhythmic base over which improvisation on a high-pitched conga drum called quinto takes place. The tingo talango is a species of Cuban drum.

A rough translation of the Spanish lyrics to “Pancho Cristal” read as follows:

Pancho Cristal is calling me

Pancho Cristal is calling me

The guaguancó is on

And it goes like this

Let’s go to the Village Gate

The place to go and see

The voice of the conga drum

And the stars of today

He’s got a bembé in the works

Ralph Lew is by his side

It is something to behold

Pancho Cristal

Let’s go to the Village Gate

The place to go and see

The voice of the conga drum

And the stars of today

During the montuno (the call-and-response part of a song), the coro sings “Pancho Cristal is jamming at the Village Gate” and the sonero responds as follows:

1. I’m telling Pancho Cristal to take me to the bembé.

2. I can play tingo talango, if you take me to the bembé.

3. And I will play the conga drum like a child’s game, Pancho Cristal.

4. I will dance the open rumba if you take me to the bembé

5. The tingo talango as if it was a children’s game, Pancho Cristal

6. Pancho Cristal, I’m telling you, take me to the bembé.

What does this song tell us about the presence of Latin music at the Gate before Salsa Meets Jazz took off as a series? It suggests that after 1966 Latin and jazz sustained their encounter through descargas. One could argue that descarga and jazz are two sides of the same coin. Nevertheless, as “Pancho Cristal” indicates, in the descarga the balance is heavily tilted in favor of the Afro Cuban element. The sound of the descarga was closer to the sound of the Salsa Meet Jazz series than the presentations described in part one of this article (see January issue of Latino New York) by Herbie Mann and Mongo Santamaría in 1961 and 1963 respectively. Mann and Santamaria provided a model and the 1966 descarga provided a foundation for the series; the actual Salsa Meets Jazz was yet to come.

Author’s note: Several websites indicate that volume 1 of Descargas was released in 1965; volume 2 in 1966 and volume 3 in 1967. The website of the Smithsonian Institution, however, dates the release of volume 1 to 1966. The liner notes in the original LP also say that 1966 was the year of the event and the CD reissues all have a production and copyright date of 1966. Thus, 1966 is the most likely date in which the descarga was recorded.

Discography

Descargas at the Village Gate, Live Tico All Stars, (TICO LP 1135, SLP 1145, SLP 1155, 1966; Re-issued on CD).

Ricardo Ray/Bobby Cruz, Los Durisimos (Alegre Records, SLPA-8700, 1968

Salsa Meets Jazz Part III: A Series is Born

By Dr. José E. Cruz

Did Salsa Meets Jazz begin “sometime in the 1970s” as Art D’Luggof claims? If so, how does that jibe with the notion that the series was dormant during the 1970s? Between 1970 and 1979 the New York Times, for example, published 53 articles about the Village Gate. Salsa Meets Jazz is never mentioned. In an assessment of jazz during the 1970s Dan Morgenstern declared the decade rife with “unity in diversity.” He noted the resurgence of bebop as its main stylistic feature and made Dexter Gordon emblematic of bebop’s comeback. In his view, the decade spawned some hybrid forms but aside from a vague reference to “experiments involving Third World influences” no mention is made of experiments in Latin-jazz fusion. From Morgenstern’s review one can only infer that the salsa meets jazz phenomenon either did not occur or was not worth mentioning. In all likelihood, it was not worth mentioning by the likes of Dan Morgenstern because, even though there was no official series, there is evidence that salsa met jazz during the 1970s.

The following account from, Peter La Barbera, a saxman who had played with the Buddy Rich Band, provides that evidence:

It was before they called it salsa meets jazz. Art D'Lugoff got the idea to have Monday, a slow night, to combine a jazz soloist with a Latin Jazz Group. I got in at the beginning of something that would continue for some time to come. Eddie (Lockjaw) Davis was matched with Eddie Palmieri and the Puerto Rican troops came marching all the way down toward the end of the Island to give some bright colors to the drabness of muted Greenwich Village alleys. They came all the way down from One Hundred and Tenth street, loud, joyous and ready to celebrate the Sun of Latin Music on this Monday, this day of dreariness and wear, this day of blues and pain, this day after the celebration of the weekend. The Puerto Ricans came down and it was going to be a fiesta. Jaws was with Basie at the time and represented the essence of swinging. Eddie [Palmieri] was about to take the music of Latin America and elevate it to newer heights never treaded before. He took the piano of Noro Morales and pounded it into percussive abstracts that would set off the cellar club and raise it into the frenzy of Bleecker Street with a Puerto Rican victory of the night. (...) Jaws, up to that point, didn't do too much with a Latin groove. It took him two or three bars into the music before he melted into Eddie's clave. The Gate swayed and moaned and Eddie [Palmieri] created the tension. The tension you knew would eventually explode and send the Puerto Ricans and the rest of us rising to our feet and lifting our arms in the air at the climax, which came again and again through the bongos, the bells, the chorus, Eddie's pounding piano and Jaws. It was no longer Monday and we were no longer in the Village at the Gate. The music elevated us to another place where physical time's no longer accounted for.

The reference to Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Count Basie places the performance anywhere between 1964 and 1973, the years that bracket Davis’ last tenure with the Basie Orchestra. But the reference to the “Sun of Latin Music” is the clincher because the title was publicly conferred to Palmieri by Harvey Averne in 1973. This would make Peter La Barbera a keen observer because Averne’s designation appeared in the liner notes to the record Eddie Palmieri & Friends in Concert at the University of Puerto Rico. It is not until 1974 that the moniker goes into wide circulation after the release of Palmieri’s album by the same title. Thus, after Mann, Mongo, and the Descargas made their appearance, salsa met jazz but, as far as I have been able to establish, the only documentary reference to that presence after 1967 is the one cited above. La Barbera notes that this show took place before “they called it salsa meets jazz” but his description matches the Salsa Meets Jazz format. Therefore that type of performance must be the basis for Art D’Lugoff’s recollection placing the series “sometime in the 1970s.”

The Salsa Meets Jazz series was the result of a concatenation of intentions, decisions, and events. Art D’Lugoff’s need and intent to make his club more profitable and his related decision to open the Gate for a series of Monday jazz sessions in 1960 is the initial link in the chain. The booking of Herbie Mann in that year opened the door to the fusion of Latin and jazz. In 1961 that marriage is formalized in Herbie Mann at the Village Gate. However, it is not until Mongo Santamaria’s appearance in 1963 that the model for the series acquires its definitive musical shape. Then in 1966 Symphony Sid lays the foundation for the actual series with his Descargas. On the practical side, the redoubtable music promoter Jack Hooke and the Puerto Rican/Dominican impresario Ralph Mercado coordinated the salsa side of the series whereas Art D’Lugoff assisted with the jazz bookings. Concerning the name of the series, drummer Bobby Sanabria offers the following account:

Jack moved the "Latin Meets Jazz" concept to the Gate in the 60s for occasional concerts. Once the term salsa started to be used in the 70s, they utilized that word to promote it as "Salsa Meets Jazz" instead of "Latin Meets Jazz" in the 80s. Art D'Lugoff didn't invent the concept. It was Jack's idea. (...) At least this is what Jack explained to me.

The series was also possible because of Art D’Lugoff’s love of music and dancing—Salsa Meets Jazz brought the two together. This was important after the demise of the Palladium, which closed its doors in the same month of 1966 that the Tico descargas took place. The series supplemented the dancing that went on in the cuchifrito circuit. This was critical because during the 1980s people went to places like Casino 14, on 14th street and 4th Avenue, Casablanca, on 52nd and Broadway, or the Corso on East 86th street, to dance, punto. At the Gate one could dance or listen or both.

The documentary evidence for the official start of the series can be found in one of eleven articles about the Gate published in the New York Times in 1980. According to Robert Palmer, “Salsa Meets Jazz at the Village Gate, a series of Monday-night encounters between established Latin bands and jazz soloists, is only a few weeks old. But the shows, with the WRVR-FM disc jockey Roger Dawson playing host, are already attracting a large and loyal audience and threaten to become a Monday night institution.” A few weeks old?  Indeed. Palmer’s article was published on June 4, 1980. According to the Village Voice, the first Salsa Meets Jazz event of that year took place on May 12. Thus, when Palmer published his piece the baby was three-weeks old, give or take a day. What happened in that year? Who played the series? What was the 1980 scene like for Latin jazz beyond the Village Gate?

Salsa Meets Jazz Part IV: 1980 and Beyond

By Dr. José E. Cruz

The year 1980 began with a bang at the Gate. On Friday, January 18, the club featured Count Basie and his orchestra. The following Friday patrons got more swing, along with a blast of percussion, from Buddy Rich, that most exuberant of jazz drummers. On April 11, David Chertok presented Jazz Highlights on Film. From April 12 to May 2, the Gate welcomed the music of the Duke Ellington Orchestra led by Mercer Ellington; Count Basie had a reunion with Joe Williams, Maynard Ferguson blew his horn all the way up from the basement theatre to the stratosphere, and dancers got a chance to hark back to the 1930s with Panama Francis and the Savoy Sultans in what D’Lugoff called the Saturday Midnight Stomp. The first one was held on April 5, from midnight ‘til dawn. The admission price for this event was $2.95. “Depression Prices for Depression Dancing,” was the catchy slogan of the Stomp sessions. Francis was scheduled for three Saturdays in a row, followed by the Widespread Depression Orchestra on April 26 for a four-week round. At this point D’Luggoff’s plan was to start the Monday-night Salsa Meets Jazz series at the end of April.

On May 12 Salsa Meets Jazz entered the scene with none other than Eddie Palmieri and Típica 73. No jazz soloist was listed in the Village Voice ad announcing the event but according to Ray Barretto, the slot was filled by Sonny Stitt. Palmieri was followed by Tito Puente and Bobby Rodríguez, with Billy Harper on tenor saxophone. The next date was June 9 with Ray Barretto and the father-son team of José Mangual and José Mangual, Jr.; trumpeter Jon Faddis was the jazz soloist. After June 9, there is a three-week gap in the record. From June 30 through the end of October, with only one exception, the series took place weekly. The last session of the year featured Típica 73—the group played the series four times in 1980—and Conjunto Clásico, with saxophonist Charlie Rouse as the jazz soloist. This was October 27. By the end of December Salsa Meets Jazz had been silent for almost two months so the club had to do something. On New Year’s Eve dancers and listeners had a ball with Stanley Turrentine and a Latin jazz Orchestra.

What were some of the distinctive features of Salsa Meets Jazz in 1980? What can be said about the Latin jazz scene today based on what took place in that first year? The series could have been called Charanga Meets Jazz. A charanga group played in 10 of the 19 shows held that year. According to D’Lugoff, this was a function of popularity. After a decline beginning in the mid-60s, charanga became hot in the late 70s and early 80s and this translated into revenue—a consideration that was at the heart of the series. It is interesting, although not entirely surprising that, given its strong presence at the Gate in 1980, charanga is not as prominent today as it was then.

Given the combination of seasoned and young talent represented—José Fajardo playing opposite Dave Valentín or Ray Barretto playing opposite José Mangual, Jr.—participants must have considered the future of Latin music in New York secure. Who would have thought that the artists representing the most promise in 1980—Héctor Lavoe, Angel Canales, Bobby Rodríguez, Luis “Perico” Ortiz, José Mangual, Jr.—would be either dead or nearly forgotten a generation later? It is amazing that at the dawn of the 21st Century, the “old timers” in 1980—Barretto, Eddie Palmieri—continued to be among the most prominent keepers of the flame. (Barretto, of course, passed away in 2006. In 2009, Palmieri was still alive and kicking a hell of a lot) Of the young musicians that played the series in 1980 only Dave Valentín has enjoyed worldwide prominence and success thereafter.

Interestingly, Valentín was the only Latino musician to appear as guest jazz soloist in 1980. According to D’Lugoff, he earned the spot due to his strong presence within jazz circles. His association with Herbie Mann was an important reason for this. Tony Sabournin offers a complementary explanation. In his view, the flutist’s collaboration with Noel Pointer allowed him to “show his stuff” and his work with Manny Oquendo’s Libre made him realize that the mixture of típico with jazz would carry him farther than the easy-listening banalities of pop-jazz.

One whimsical feature of the series concerns the so-called “mystery jazz soloists.” For one-third of the shows held in 1980, patrons went in not knowing who the jazz artist would be mainly because the promoters were not sure themselves. In contrast, master of ceremonies Roger Dawson, from WRVR, was a predictable fixture of the series during its first year. Had Symphony Sid not been out of the picture due to relocation to south Florida, where he hosted a salsa show every Saturday night on WBUS, he would have been D’Lugoff’s natural choice of MC. Before settling for Dawson D’Lugoff considered Paquito Navarro but drug-related problems made Navarro undesirable for this role. Yet, Dawson was not a lesser choice. His value was in his connection with a radio station that was well known as a salsa-jazz crossover outlet.

In 1980, Tito Puente performed at the Gate twice but Mongo Santamaría did not make an appearance. In August, the series listed McDonald’s as a sponsor. According to D’Lugoff, Puente and Santamaría were always welcome at the Gate. Puente’s two shows and Mongo’s absence simply meant that their availability was limited. As for McDonald’s ad hoc sponsorship, “they were interested, we were interested, and so we made a deal,” is how D’Lugoff explained the company’s participation. It would not be the last time that salsa and jazz met fast food.

What was it like for Latin jazz outside the Gate? A host of Latin jazz artists performed 76 times in gigs around town between January and December. This number is not exact because it does not include all the dates for the Afro-Cuban Jazz Masters series inaugurated on October 28 by Verna Gillis at Soundscape. Also, some performances may not have been advertised in the Village Voice or the New York Times. If we assume that there were no gaps in the series at Soundscape in November and December, we come up with 84 performances for a rate of one every four days. In addition to Soundscape, the venues that supplemented the Gate as a home for Latin jazz were the Alley, Blue Hawaii, the Bottom Line, Bradleys, Eric, Grand Finale, Greene Street, Ipanema, the Jazz Forum, Jazzmania Society, the Jazz Penthouse, Salt Peanuts, Seventh Avenue South, Sweet Basil, and The Other End. The Beacon Theatre and NYU’s Loeb Center, at 566 La Guardia Place, provided ad hoc venues for some artists.

Clubs and restaurants supported regulars from the Salsa Meets Jazz series like Ray Barretto and Dave Valentín as well as non-participants such as Gato Barbieri, the group Bakateo, Jorge Dalto, Alfredo de la Fe, Paquito D’Rivera, Andy and Jerry González, Ray Mantilla, Hilton Ruiz, Mario Rivera, Steve Turre, and Papo Vázquez. In one odd instance in June, Conjunto Libre played at The 80's, a club that claimed to present “all the rock that fits.” Libre’s performance was dubbed “Conjunto Libre Goes New Wave.” Mongo Santamaría played twice in January at The Other End. In May, Santamaría was also featured in the second edition of the Festival of Drums sponsored by the Theatre of Latin America in association with Verna Gillis and held at the Klitgord Center on 285 Jay Street, Brooklyn. Two refugees from the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, a migratory wave that brought over 100,000 Cuban exiles to Miami virtually overnight, were incorporated into this alternative scene: Daniel Ponce and Ignacio Berroa, both percussionists, quickly became fixtures at Soundscape’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Masters series.

Not once in 1980 did the Village Vanguard feature a major Latin jazz artist. In October, Eddie Gómez made it there for a one-week engagement but as part of Hank Jones’s trio. Sweet Basil welcomed Mario Rivera for one night in August and The Bottom Line teamed up Mongo Santamaría with Stan Getz for two nights in November. And that was it for the mainstream clubs. During the New Music Series at the Public Theatre on Lafayette Street, jazz enthusiasts and connoisseurs were able to enjoy the work of greats such as Don Pullen, Steve Lacy, and Cecil Taylor but not a peep of Latin jazz was heard.

A cursory review of El Diario-La Prensa in 1980 reveals a very strong salsa scene throughout the city, beginning with “Bronx Week,” held from May 9 to 18, which featured Machito and his Orchestra offering its brand of Caribbean-American fusion to Puerto Ricans and other Latinos. In addition, there were numerous shows in a variety of clubs and restaurants as well as three major events: the selection, on June 7, of the El Diario-Budweiser Queen for 1980 at the Roosevelt Hotel, on 45th and Madison Avenue, featuring José Fajardo y Sus Estrellas; a Fania All-Stars concert at Madison Square Garden on June 21, featuring Celia Cruz; and a salsa festival in El Barrio on June 27 dedicated to Tito Puente and Machito. Latin jazz, however, remained marginal, even in the Bronx. When in September the Lehman College Center for the Performing Arts opened some of its facilities, the only sounds coming out of the concert hall were those of Bach, Mozart, and Vivaldi, played by the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. This was nothing to sneeze at but, was classical the only music deserving to be heard? It would be worth exploring further what clubs and other venues did for Latin jazz throughout the 1980s.

In June, Tito Puente’s mother, Doña Ercilia Puente, passed away at the age of 79. Near the end of the year another death shook the world of jazz when Bill Evans was taken away by double pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver. What could anyone do but keep keeping on? The various Latin jazz performances held throughout the city between June and December were the best tribute Latin jazz artists could offer. The release in 1980 of Jerry Gonzalez’ Ya Yo Me Curé was not intended as a tribute but it was a grand way of keeping the tradition while creating something exciting and different. This was the seed for the Fort Apache Band, which made its official debut two years later in Berlin. The capstone of the year for Latin jazz outside the Gate was Verna Gillis’s Afro-Cuban Jazz program on December 30 at Soundscape.

In 1980 there were at least five radio stations broadcasting jazz in the city: WRVR, WEVD, WYRS, WBAI, and WBGO, based in New Jersey. At WEVD Marty Wilson offered jazz in the wee hours of the morning, from 12 am to 5 am and from 10 pm to 5 am on Fridays. WBAI broadcast the show at Salt Peanuts, on 399 Greenwich Street, live every Monday from 10-11 pm. WYRS played only jazz from 6 am to 1 am and its ads in the Voice read “Jazz is Alive on WYRS.” WBGO placed ads in the Voice professing to play “All Jazz in all the right places.”

The only commercial jazz station in the city and the one with the widest audience was WRVR. On September 8, at 10 am, the station announced that it would switch from jazz to country at noon. Without any previous warning, listeners who turned on the radio just before noon, began their lunch to the sound of Charles Mingus’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and took their last bite to the voice of Waylon Jennings’s “Would You Like to Hear Country.”

Using the switch as its cue, WBGO announced a 24-hour jazz policy. But this did not compensate for the loss of Roger Dawson’s six-hour Sunday salsa show on WRVR. By the end of September Dawson had moved to WJIT but the loss of WRVR for jazz and salsa was still significant. “Viacom [WRVR’s corporate owner] has betrayed the jazz community in New York,” wrote Gary Giddins in the Village Voice, “depriving it of an outlet to promote new records and advertise concerts.” For his part, Tony Sabournin noted with irony that Dawson’s program was being axed even though it “had an audience of 250,000, and was responsible for 20 percent of the station’s revenue while occupying 4 percent of its airtime.”

On October 18, an organizing meeting sponsored by Citizens for Jazz on WRVR was held at the Village Gate to chart a course of action. On October 25th a concert dubbed “Bring Back Jazz on WRVR” was held at the Beacon Theatre, on Broadway and 74th Street, to benefit the group. The concert included Michael Brecker, Hubert Laws, David Sanborn, Eddie Daniels, Jon Faddis, Carol Steele, and Dave Valentín, among others.

In sum, in New York City, Salsa Meets Jazz was not the only outlet for Latin jazz. In fact, four years before the series began, Salsa and Jazz were meeting quite successfully in Loisaida at the New Rican Village, under the musical direction of Andy Gonzalez. At the New Rican Village the cultural mix was arguably spicier and perhaps more creative than at the Gate. As one performer put it:

There is so much room here, and the audience is so responsive and open. I can do Varese 21.5 here, as well as Afro-Cuban music and jazz. The New Rican Village fulfills our need to play what we want to play, a place for developing ourselves. We experiment here.

Yet, the series at the Gate offered the largest number of shows at a single venue while providing systematic opportunities for the continuation of the affair begun by Mario Bauzá, Machito, Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo in the 1940s. At the most basic level, the Gate allowed participants to listen as well as to dance. The Salsa Meets Jazz series provided a space that allowed Puerto Rican migrants to maintain their homeland roots while also exploring the meaning of their identity as Puerto Ricans in New York. I have no doubt that this is true for other Latinos as well.

Salsa Meets Jazz was also an arena of democracy and equality. Musicians played for their peers without losing track of the audience. Listeners freely approached the musicians with their opinions, questions, and judgements about the music and musicians took the input from listeners seriously. As Symphony Sid put it during his introduction of Mongo Santamaría’s band in 1963, “At the Village Gate, with audience participation we feel that the musician is even more inspired. And so ladies and gentlemen, you become part of the scene.” I will never forget the night when, after taking a terrific trumpet solo with the Tito Puente orchestra, Piro Rodríguez sat down next to me and asked: “How was that? Was that OK?” I was floored by this display of humility coming from a musician who had stood his ground before the great Arturo Sandoval in a trumpet duel that according to Peter Watrous grew “tougher and more vicious with each phrase. By the end,” Watrous concluded, “ there was no winner except for the audience, which had seen both joy and competition on the same stage.”

Another feature of the series that also played on this democratic note was its inclusiveness. Unlike jazz performances, which draw fairly homogenous groups of people, Salsa Meets Jazz events brought together individuals from all walks of life and no one was required to know anything about the music to enjoy it. This is how one patron remembers the series during the 1980s:

      What most struck me about Salsa meets Jazz, given my limited knowledge of the music, was the diversity of the crowd. A cross section of race, age, and class, coming from all New York's neighborhoods. I also recall that Bill Cosby was a regular—my friend Marcia, who was a CUNY sociology student who was not at all shy would make a point of chatting with him.

Salsa Meets Jazz was the place to see and be seen—a meeting ground for old and new friends, an arena for the recognition and validation of emerging artists, a school where the old nurtured the young. Once you played the Gate you got leverage; it completed your resume. As timbalero Ralph Irizarry put it, when Rubén Blades went around marketing Seis del Solar to club owners in the cuchifrito circuit, they all rejected his overtures because he was “asking for too much money for only six guys.” And then the group played the Gate with Paquito D’Rivera as jazz soloist. About this performance Jon Pareles wrote:

Placed at the end of the set, material from Mr. Blades's new album, ''Antecedente,'' came as a slight letdown. The songs, about Panama, look back to the music Mr. Blades sang as a member of Willie Colon's band; they use a pair of trombones where Seis del Solar had synthesizers, and the tempos are more relaxed. Although the band easily handled the new songs, the transition was like stepping off a Metroliner onto a bus.

Despite the mixed review, the performance kindled the interest of reluctant club owners and, according to Irizarry, money became no object. Is there a club in New York City today that gives performers that kind of clout?

Bobby Sanabria argues that the coincidence of Salsa Meets Jazz with the Mariel boatlift of 1980 added energy to the musical scene in the city. The passage below is worth quoting at length because it tells us something important about the post-1980 musical scene of which Salsa Meets Jazz was both incubator and component.

The Mariel boatlift, oddly enough, rejuvenated Afro-Cuban based music in NYC. This time period was responsible for the birth of bands like Fort Apache, Jorge Dalto's Inter-American Band, Paquito's [D’ Rivera] working quintet and yes my own ensemble Ascensión as well as many others. You have to understand that the Village Gate Monday night "Salsa Meets Jazz" series at Bleecker and Thompson streets was also in full effect. Across the way at Houston and Varick there was SOB’s, where Ana Araiz was also having a Monday night competing series. The difference was that at SOB's it was geared more toward dancing and folklore. Many times the crowd couldn't decide where to go. Many people would run back and forth between the clubs. (...) There was also a small club down from the Blue Note, called Visiones, where Ascensión would play. In fact, we were the first to perform Afro-Cuban based jazz there. Later Charlie Sepúlveda would perform there as well as a host of other Brazilian and Afro-Cuban-based jazz groups. Again the programming was for Monday night!!!(...) Mario Bauzá had come out of retirement and was finally getting some recognition from the jazz community. Paquito, Ignacio Berroa and Daniel Ponce as well as Jorge Dalto and Jerry Gonzalez were really coming into their own. Tito Puente was experiencing a renaissance. (...) Everyone was coming to check out the scene. I can't tell you how many times I would bump into Robert Duvall, Christopher Walken, Robert DeNiro, Bill Cosby, Al Lewis (the cat that played "Granpa" on the Munsters) and many other Hollywood celebrities at performances at the Gate. People like Mick Jagger, Peter Gabriel, Joe Jackson (in Joe's case he started to copy what was happening which eventually led to his "Night and Day" album and his tune "Everything Gives You Cancer") and others were showing up at Soundscape and the Gate.

When John Storm Roberts wrote that Michelle Rosenwomen’s work with Bakateo represented the “first purely jazz playing I’ve ever heard that meshed with Latin rhythms instead of riding above them,” he had not witnessed the symbiosis that went on at Salsa Meets Jazz. Of course, over time, lapses in creativity were inevitable. In 1992, a disappointed Watrous wrote that “the Salsa Meets Jazz shows at the Village Gate are fairly ritualized, usually starting out with some salsa, then collapsing into some lackluster jazz.” But in 1980, when Stanley Crouch complained about western musicians who used instruments and techniques from classical ethnic sources by saying they were like “50's liberals [who] would self-righteously take a Negro to lunch to combat racism,” he was not and could not have been referring to those who blended Latin and jazz at the Gate. “Aesthetic integration,” he wrote, “is still one of the most difficult challenges in contemporary art.” Of course, the challenge of aesthetic integration goes beyond the boundaries of art. And the Village Gate during the Salsa Meets Jazz series was one important place to go to witness first-hand the many possible ways of meeting this challenge.

Author’s Note: Detailed information about performers, dates, and venues as well as sources are available from the author.

Spanish Harlem’s Musical Legacy: 1930–1980

By Silvio H. Alava

Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2007

128 pages; $19.95 [paper]

Reviewer: José E. Cruz, The State University of New York—University at Albany. Reprinted from Centro, Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 20:2 (2008): 258-261

To those who know and love the Afro-Caribbean musical contribution to United States culture, the images in Silvio H. Alava’s book Spanish Harlem’s Musical Legacy, 1930-1980, will be a delight. The majority of the photographs in this book capture exciting moments featuring immensely creative, innovative, and substantial musical characters. With some exceptions, the images portray figures that have played seminal roles in the development of American music. Many readers will experience the thrill of recognition and evocation. Some pictures will trigger memories of personal experiences and historical events in the minds of those who had the fortune of seeing these musicians perform live. I’m certain that followers of Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Mongo Santamaría, and Ray Barretto are even likely to recall the music that was played at the time the pictures were taken.

The quality of the photos is uneven but the reader must remember that Alava was not a professional photographer. This book is not about the pictures anyway, but about the musicians it portrays. Pictures freeze a moment in time but in this book it is possible to see time passing as one looks at a photo of a young musician next to his image 20 or 30 years later. The fascinating thing about these juxtapositions is that they show no sign of diminished vitality by the subjects. Tito Puente, for example, looks as dynamic in 1959 doing coro next to Santitos Colón and Chickie Pérez as he does in 1985 playing the timbales next to Cachao. In another example, a young Johnny Pacheco can be seen using almost the exact same fingering on his flute as Eddie Zervigón is in a picture taken 20 years later. Two different flutists, two different moments in time, perhaps two different songs being played. In that particular moment they were either playing the same note, about to play the same note, or about to hit a different one after playing the same note. It is impossible to know for sure but the symmetry of the juxtaposition is gratifying and provocative.

The book is organized into four sections, each representing a different category. One key problem with the first section, “The Immortals,” is that it includes pictures of only four artists—Celia Cruz, Noro Morales, Benny Moré, and Arsenio Rodríguez. In one picture Cruz is portrayed with Yolanda Montes, aka Tongolele, and in another she is next to the actor Andy García. Reading the captions one would think that Tongolele and García are the subjects of the photographs, which would put them, inappropriately, in the category of “immortals.” This problem could have been easily avoided by limiting the selection of Celia Cruz photos to those that clearly feature her as the main subject of the image. But in any event, it is odd that she is the headliner of the book. Not only is she featured first, but this is done with a photo from 1959 in a book whose starting point is supposed to be 1930. Alava’s collection includes pictures of Tito Puente, Machito, Mongo Santamaría, Willie Bobo, and Ray Barretto but none of these artists is featured in this first section. Are they not also “immortals”?

One would think that the second section, titled “The Big Three,” would feature only pictures of Machito, Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez. Yet, a picture of, of all people, La Lupe is included. This photo is from 1975, which is long after the era of the Big Three at the Palladium was over. Presumably Alava included it because in the photo La Lupe was singing with Tito Puente, but we know this only from the caption, not from the image. There are seven pictures of Tito Puente but only one of Tito Rodríguez. The picture of Rodríguez, it turns out, is from a gig in California rather than at the Palladium and was not taken by Alava. Obviously, “The Big Three” would have been a misnomer for the section without a picture of Tito Rodríguez. But I find it discomfiting for Alava to claim authorship of the book while including pictures he did not take. Did he really not have one single picture of his own of Tito Rodríguez? The section has no photos of Machito with his orchestra. Instead, in two of the three pictures Alava included, Machito is surrounded by groupies. Is this a reflection of what was available to Alava or of an arbitrary selection process? Whatever the reason, the section is thin and disappointing.

The third and fourth sections, “The Successors” and “The Sidemen” respectively, are no less arbitrary. Barretto is included here along with El Gran Combo, Manny Oquendo, and even Mongo Santamaría. These are strange placements. Is Mongo Santamaría a successor to Celia Cruz? Who did Manny Oquendo succeed? Other than in a chronological sense, how is El Gran Combo a successor to Noro Morales? More importantly, how is this band a part of Spanish Harlem’s musical legacy? Here, Rubén Blades is put on the same level as Willie Bobo and obscure figures such as George Maysonet are equated to masters like Eddie Palmieri. Anyone reading the caption for Ray Barretto’s picture on page 29 will agree that he really belongs in the “immortals” section; the same can be said about others dubbed “successors” such as Charlie Palmieri and Santamaría.

The “Sidemen” section opens with a photo of Francisco Aguabella. For those who know little about him the categorization may feel right; beyond a relatively small circle of connoisseurs it is not well-known that Aquabella has several recordings under his belt as a leader. But then there are pictures in this section of Giovanni Hidalgo, Willie Bobo, José Fajardo, Luis “Perico” Ortíz, and Jimmy Sabater. Are these really sidemen? Bobo, Hidalgo, Ortíz and Sabater have been, but they are better known as leaders in their own right. Even when Sabater was with Joe Cuba, he was in many ways as prominent as Cuba himself. High profile band leaders and singers like Jerry González, Andy Montañez, and Ismael Miranda are reduced to this category. The category is problematic and in some cases it must have been difficult to decide who should be included because some musicians have played overlapping roles throughout their careers. But was it right in 2007 to categorize someone as Willie Rosario as a sideman? The most significant incongruence in this section is the picture of dancers Augie and Margo Rodríguez on page 84 right above a photo of the great bass player Bobby Rodríguez talking to pianist Sonny Bravo. How do these pairs fit together?

To really enjoy this book the knowledgeable reader has to get past these deficiencies. The organizing principle of the volume seems to have been, “have pictures, will publish them.” Alava has given posterity a selection of exciting images, but they are poorly assembled. Aside from the problem with the categories and a lack of balance in the inclusion of pictures for each section, the images are grouped without any regard for periodization, context, or even chronology. Given the title of the book, it would have been appropriate to explain how the images reflect a legacy that is tied to a particular place. This explanation should have provided the reader with a sense of the role the featured musicians played in U.S. musical history. In his less-than-two-pages-long introduction, Alava does not even begin to scratch beneath the surface provided by the images. We are told that salsa has roots in the Caribbean, Africa and Spain. Beyond that, there is not much else by way of analysis or interpretation. Alava apologizes for not providing biographical profiles and for not being a musicologist. “[T]he Internet and Google can do a better [biographical] job than I. I am writing from the viewpoint of an aficionado who followed some of these pioneers around in clubs and concerts with my camera,” he writes on page 9. But he doesn’t observe his own disclaimer. Instead, sometimes he provides biographical information and/or musicological commentary and sometimes he does not.

In the absence of an essay, a chronological placement of the images would have been useful. Those who know the history of Latin music in the United States could have seen it unfolding before their eyes; those who do not, would have at least obtained a better sense of the historical flow of characters. Despite the period noted in the title, this book begins with images from the 1950s and it includes photos from as late as 2004. Dancers, singers, radio personalities, and groupies are mixed together within some categories and there are too many images of some artists and not enough of others. Some captions have errors of attribution or are confusing. On page 43, tresero Nelson González is confused with Charlie Rodríguez; if you don’t know who Giovanni Hidalgo is, from the caption on page 64 you may think he is Bill Summers; Yomo Toro is described as playing a tres on page 96 even though he is playing a Puerto Rican cuatro, and the picture on page 78 of Willie Bobo and John Palomo, which the caption says was taken at Torrance, California, is also on page 122, twice as large and noted as taken in Los Angeles. In my view, the most significant error in the book is the dating of the photo on page 103 of Orquesta Aragón playing at the Village Gate to 1979. Had Alava been right, the photo would have corrected two claims: that the Salsa Meets Jazz series was dormant during the 1970s and that it officially began in 1980. I have thoroughly researched this matter and there is no documentary evidence confirming Alava’s dating. The only reference to an Aragón performance at the Gate is dated July 1983 and can be found in Héctor Ulloque German’s book about the band (Orquesta Aragón. La Habana: Pablo de la Torriente, Editorial Unión de Periodistas de Cuba, 2004.) I asked pianist Sonny Bravo to look at Alava’s photo and this solved the dating mystery. In the photo, the first violinist from the left is Rafael Lay, Jr. If Alava’s photo had been taken in 1979, that should have been his father, Rafael Lay. But Lay, Sr. died in a car accident in 1982 so the photograph has to be from the 1983 gig mentioned in Ulloque German’s book.

The book ends with two pictures, taken in 2000, of the graves of Puerto Rican musicians Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera. This is the crowning oddity of the book. Cortijo and Rivera were both island-born and their musical legacy is intimately tied to Puerto Rico’s musical tradition. Yes, they had an impact on the music that developed in Spanish Harlem, but it is a stretch to suggest that they are part of Spanish Harlem’s legacy. It is not only peculiar that they would be featured in this book, but also that the author would choose to use pictures of their graves. The symbolism may have been unintended but it is hard to ignore. Are we to believe that Spanish Harlem’s legacy is at this point only documentary in nature?

Is the cultural symbiosis of Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean traditions that took place in Spanish Harlem during the first half of the twentieth century over? I doubt Alava believed this. The images of Cortijo’s and Rivera’s tombstones are nevertheless jarring. At best, they reflect Alava’s arbitrary selection criteria.

In sum, many of the pictures in this book are fantastic but its conceptualization is poor and its organization is a mess. Where the responsibility for this lies is beside the point. To the knowledgeable reader the flaws of the book will be annoying. Cultural outsiders, if they even bother to buy it, which is doubtful, will have a hard time understanding what this book is ultimately about. Ironically, the flaws of the book will mean nothing to them because they will have no frame of reference. Whether Yomo Toro is playing a tres, a cuatro, or whatever will be of no importance to someone who has never heard of Yomo Toro or a cuatro or a tres before. Hopefully, these readers will enjoy the images, learn something from the captions, and come away with a greater appreciation of the richness and diversity of American musical history. But, how many copies is this book likely to sell? Well, if you are reading this review I encourage you to buy it because, despite its flaws, it has tremendous documentary value. If you know about Puente, Bobo, and Machito only through their recordings you’ll enjoy seeing them in action, as it were. Maybe you are old enough to have seen them live. If that’s the case, this book is for you as well. Alava’s contribution needs to be supported; the musicians he portrays must be remembered. This book is not the best of its kind but its value outweighs its imperfections.

Dr. José Cruz, Founder of Jazz/Latino, inc. Introduces Latin Jazz to the Capital Region

By Tomás Peña

TP: How and why was Jazz/Latino, Inc. created?

The basic motivation for the creation of Jazz/Latino, Inc. was a deep frustration with the music scene in Albany (New York). I have lived in Albany for 14 years and during all of that time I have been dissatisfied with the scarcity of salsa and jazz offerings. In 2006, in a moment of perhaps temporary insanity, I decided that I was going to create an organization to remedy the situation. At the time I had a small personal windfall as a result of a consultancy so I decided to invest some of that money in creating Jazz/Latino, Inc, so I met with a lawyer and registered the corporation as a non-profit organization. That was in the summer of 2006. By October, Jazz/Latino was all set as a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. The whole process of making the decision to establish the organization and presenting the first series of concerts in 2007 took nine months, so it was like getting pregnant and delivering a baby (laughs)! But it was essentially a yearning for more variety in terms of the music scene in Albany and the capital region, which is very strong in terms of rock n' roll and blues, weak in terms of jazz and much, much weaker in terms of Latin music.

TP: Tell me about the demographics in the capital region.

The capital region, which is basically Albany, Troy and Schenectady, has a population of a little over 10,000 Latinos. The city of Albany has fewer than 100,000 people so it's a small market and that tends to explain a lot about the music scene. On the other hand, 10,000 people are 10,000 people and it's a good number to start up a vital music scene. The problem is that the Latino population is dispersed. There is a bigger community about half an hour Northwest of Albany in Amsterdam, but that community is mostly interested in salsa, not Latin jazz, so it's much harder to engage them, unless you are doing public festivals subsidized by corporate funding and the concerts are free of charge. There is a non-profit organization in Amsterdam called Centro Cívico, every summer they have a Latin festival and a lot of people show up but the event is free. So that's the basic challenge. Thus far, the majority of the people who participate in Jazz/Latino activities are white, middle-class and middle-aged.

TP: What specifically is Jazz/Latino Inc.'s mission statement?

To promote the enjoyment and appreciation of Latin jazz, to educate the public in terms of the manner in which Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American musical traditions have come together in the United States, and to recognize the contributions that Latinos have made to jazz. We want to promote concerts that feature Latinos playing jazz, Latinos playing Latin jazz and non-Latinos playing Latin jazz. In addition to the concerts, we do that through the use of lectures, forums and clinics.

TP: How's it going thus far?

The 2007 Ahora Latin jazz Series was a smashing critical success. It consisted of three concerts, which took place in May and featured (flutist) Andrea Brachfeld, (percussionist) Chembo Corniel and the Beyond Standards Ensemble with invited guest (trombone player) Steve Turre as well as (tres player/vocalist) Ben Lapidus and Sonido Isleno. Of the bunch, Sonido Isleño was the best in terms of combining performance and education. Finally, we closed the series with a volcanic performance by (percussionist/educator) Bobby Sanabria and Quarteto Aché.

TP: Bobby is the hardest working man in show business …

And a consummate showman. He had the audience practically jumping out of their seats. So that was the inaugural series, which we dedicated to the memory of Ray Barretto and Hilton Ruiz. In November of 2007 (Professor/trombone player) Chris Washburne conducted a lecture on Latin jazz and I conducted a talk on Mario Bauzá. I also featured a local Latin jazz group.

TP: So there is at least one local Latin jazz group …

Well, I asked one of my board members who is a drummer, to put together a trio and they performed standards with some montunos thrown in for good measure. The chair of my board, who plays the conga drums, sat in and I joined them on bongó. In February and March I did two showings of the documentary film, From Mambo to Hip-Hop, not jazz or Latin jazz exactly but it was an opportunity to talk about Latinos and music in the United States more broadly.

For the 2008 series Bobby Sanabria returned for a lecture titled Clave-the Key: A Rhythmic Journey from Africa to the New World and I conducted my lecture on Mario Bauzá. In addition, pianist Nicky Denner performed with her Latin jazz trio. We closed the series, as we say in Puerto Rico, con broche de oro, with Brian Lynch and Spheres of Influence. Brian brought along (percussionist) Pedrito Martínez and a phenomenal young drummer named Justin Brown. We also had Zaccai and Luques Curtis on piano and bass. It was an amazing performance.

TP: What kind of feedback has the series received thus far?

The organization has filled a vacuum and the response has been very, very enthusiastic and very supportive. It's a small market but very intense. I am making sure to bring top-of-the-line performers and thus far the audiences have been blown away. What I am trying to do is have two well-known groups bracketing a lesser known group that deserves a wider audience. But the irony in the capital region context is that everybody is unknown! For example, I mentioned to someone that I was bringing Steve Turre, because I figured he was the best known, and the reaction I received was, "Steve who?" I mean, if they don't know who Steve is, forget it!

TP: Obviously you have your work cut out for you.

There were drummers who didn't know who Bobby Sanabria was and they were blown away by his performance. There was a trumpet player who came to my lecture on Mario Bauzá and he had no idea who Mario Bauzá or Machito and the Afro Cubans were. There were people who came to the Brian Lynch concert who didn't know who he was either.

TP: That's the beauty and the irony … nevertheless it must be a good feeling to know that you are exposing new audiences to Latin jazz. 

But it's tough going. I am still building an audience. The highest attendance I have had thus far is 127 people.

TP: What's the ticket price? Or, put another way, how much are you able to charge?

When Robert Cray comes to Albany the promoters charge 40 dollars and his fans pay it. Not that he's not worth it, but the point is that when I bring someone like Steve Turre I can't charge more than 20 dollars. For the Brian Lynch concert I was trumpeting, no pun intended, the fact that he is a Grammy Award winning musician everywhere but I still had to practically give tickets away to get 127 people to show up. Once he was heard he sold a lot of CDs.

TP: Have you applied for, or received any grants or donations?

For the first series I invested a lot of my own money. As a result I took a huge loss which I am still recovering from. This year I received some individual (tax deductible) contributions, a couple of sponsorships from commercial establishments, and two small grants but no big bucks. In April, I got another small grant and I'm using it to do a concert in November with Hilary Noble and Rebecca Cline and their Enclave ensemble.

TP: What's in the works for the 2009 season?

At this point I have a preliminary commitment from Don Byron to open the series pro bono. I'd like him to play the repertoire of (the recording) Music for Six Musicians but we'll see. I would also like to bring Chris Washburne and the Syotos band because I like Chris' work a great deal and he has been very supportive. The lecture he conducted last November was pro bono. I am not sure about the third group, it all depends on whether I am able to work things out with Don and I receive the necessary funding from donations, grants, and sponsorships because ticket sales alone are just not going to do it. Fundraising is the challenge.

TP: Have you received any support from the local radio stations?

I have total support at the University's radio station because one of my board members hosts a weekly jazz program, but the station's signal is very weak. There is a major public station that does absolutely nothing for Latin jazz. There is a jazz program that airs on Saturday evenings at 10pm. The person who hosts the show has been very sympathetic and supportive but I recently proposed a Latin jazz segment and he wasn't willing to do it.

TP: Perhaps he is locked in to a particular format or is under pressure from the powers that be at the radio station.

No, he just doesn't want to do it. He said he would be willing to help me promote the series, and he has, but he does not want to commit to a permanent Latin jazz segment. And then there is the RPI college radio station which has a very strong signal and a wide reach. I did a program there on Jerry González and the Fort Apache Band last year. The host of the jazz show at RPI is very supportive but we haven't worked out a permanent presence on the show.

TP: Have you ever thought of collaborating with the local salsa festivals?

Sure, but that would deviate from the mission of the organization.

TP: Not necessarily. Much of Latin jazz is danceable and there are commonalities between Latin music and other forms of music.

When Bobby Sanabria performed in April he did an excellent job of demonstrating the fact that you can find clave just about anywhere. He started out playing cáscara on the timbales and transitioned to a rock beat and you could see the continuity between Rock n' Roll and Latin. He really opened people's eyes. I'm not sure that the local festivals would go for the kind of educational performance Bobby did, but who knows? It's a possibility. I offered my curatorial services to the Egg, the government-sponsored performing arts center in the Capital Region, however, they were not interested. It's a tough situation because I do not have the operating capital. If I could get a big name group to attract and develop an audience how much would that cost? A lot! As someone suggested, I need a rich little old lady who will endow the organization and allow me to bring some big name musicians who in turn will allow me to develop an audience.

All things considered, I think I have done a pretty good job for a person who started from scratch in a market that is unfamiliar with Latin jazz, even if I say so myself. I had over 300 people total show up in 2007 and this year it was over 300.

TP: You have my vote.

I started in 2007 with a bang but this year I have to tone things down, so I collaborated with the local library and they covered the cost of everything except for the Brian Lynch concert. My strategy now is to make sure that I get grants and corporate sponsorships and to do as many small-to-moderate size events as possible in order to build an audience gradually. Unfortunately, Latinos in the Capital Region are not an attractive market for the big companies, especially if the events are not drawing huge numbers. They sponsor the LatinFest here in Albany which is a big event and they fund major public events.

TP: What are the chances of aligning Jazz/Latino, Inc. self with the Latin Fest and dedicating a small portion of the show to introducing Latin jazz to new audiences?

It's a possibility. I would have to work it out with them because their focus is salsa. There are a lot of avenues that I can pursue. At this point Jazz/Latino, Inc. is a sophomore effort. Next year it will be a junior effort. If I can last for three years my track record will make the organization more palatable to other funders. Three years is the benchmark.

TP: The little old lady with a huge endowment is sounding better all the time.

(Laughter) I am looking around!

TP: I assume that there are other like-minded individuals who are assisting you. No one does anything in a vacuum.

I have a board and some volunteers, but at this point I am doing the lion's share of the work. I'm seeking a volunteer who can focus on development and concentrate on chasing sponsors. I need someone who is a self-starter with a lot of initiative, who can write and who is pushy and has the time to do the footwork.

TP: Let's backtrack for a moment. Music has always been a big part of your life. You grew up in Puerto Rico but it was the music of the Beatles, Motown and early Fania (E Musica) that really grabbed your attention.

Tito Puente, Cortijo y su Combo and Olga Guillot were just background music for me. The music that really grabbed me was Rock n' Roll – Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp, the Rolling Stones. All of that changed when Fania Records and recordings like Johnny Pacheco's Cañonazo and Larry Harlow's Heavy Smokin' came out. I saw Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe perform in Puerto Rico at a time when they were still using the conical loudspeakers that you would see on top of cars during political rallies and I will never forget that show. At the time I was intrigued by a small detail of Willie's performance, he started taking a solo and he was unable to finish it. I remember the second trombone player had to come to his aid. Back then I didn't know anything about Willie Colón or what El Malo actually meant and how people thought that he wasn't a great musician and that Tito Puente thought that his band was a kiddy band. Once I learned the inside story I looked back at that particular moment and I was able to put the moment in its proper context. The bottom line was, Willie Colón wasn't a great player but he really knew how to put out music that grabbed you.

TP: Least we forget he was an innovator.

The music was so powerful but with the benefit of hindsight it was Hector Lavoe that made the band. I'll never forget watching the film where the Fania All Stars played at the Cheetah and thinking that next to Barry Rogers Willie sounded embarrassing. But it was at that moment, when I heard Willie and Héctor that my musical consciousness was completely turned around and I became hooked on the Fania recordings. It was the now familiar from rockero to cocolo scenario. My cornerstone is Latin jazz and salsa but when it comes to my musical tastes I am not afraid to admit that I can enjoy Felipe Rodríguez as much as Steve Earle, Radio Tarifa and Miles Davis.

TP: When did you start taking music lessons?

That came much later. I have been a frustrated musician for all of my life but fundamentally I never had the opportunity to pursue it until I was an adult, there was no tradition of anyone playing music in my family and no resources.

TP: You attended Johnny Colón's East Harlem Music School and studied percussion with the late, great Frankie Malabé.

I moved to New York in 1982. At the time I was a graduate student at Queens College. I bought a saxophone and took music lessons at the East Harlem School of Music. I took the basic theory course with (pianist) Sonny Bravo, studied the sax and took conga lessons with Eddie Montalvo, however, I just couldn't keep up with it so I dropped the sax lessons and I enrolled briefly at the Drummer's Collective, which is where I took conga lessons with Frankie Malabé shortly before he passed away.

TP: Have you ever performed professionally?

I performed professionally for the first time with a local group in 2001. Basically, we performed standards like Cachita, Piel Canela, Soñando con Puerto Rico and Nueva Trova stuff by Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés with a Son beat. I also played occasionally as a sub with local groups but I haven't played systematically since 2004.

TP: Let's talk about your life as an educator.

My real life! When I started taking music lessons I was a graduate student in Latin American and Caribbean studies, then I went for my Ph.D. in Political Science. At the time I wrote a number of articles on music for the college newspaper, simple stuff, not anything that a musicologist would consider particularly enlightening.

TP: I read a number of your articles and found them to be very impressive. You have also authored a number of books.

I have one sole-author book under my belt, it's called Identity and Power and it is published by Temple University Press. I also co-authored a book on the history of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, titled Adiós Borinquen Querida: The Puerto Rican Diapora, Its History and Contributions, published by CELAC, a research center at the University at Albany. If you Google it on the web it will come up as authored by Edna Acosta-Belén, et al. I am one of the "others."

TP: Are your books readily available?

Yes they are, to see all my academic publications, Google "Jose E. Cruz." I have articles and book chapters all over the place. The co-authored book will come up if you Google the title (above).

TP: Have you ever consider writing a book on music?

I have considered it, but it's not going to happen anytime soon. I don't have the training to approach the subject matter from a musicological perspective. The stuff that I have written is mostly from the perspective of a listener and an enthusiast rather than a formally trained musician. I can't write as a musicologist. Someone recently asked, "Why don't you write about music and politics?" I have dreamed about writing musical biographies but I don't think it's meant to be.

TP: You are currently an associate professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

I have a joint appointment in the Political Science and the Latin American, U.S. Latino, and Caribbean Studies Departments.

TP: Before we close is there anything else that you would like to add?

I would like to encourage the readers of Latin Jazz Network to consider supporting Jazz/Latino, Inc. with a tax deductible contribution. Perhaps they cannot attend our concerts but they can get the vicarious pleasure of knowing that Latin jazz is being heard, enjoyed, and appreciated more broadly in part because of their support.

TP: Your mission is similar to our mission at Latin Jazz Network. I hope this conversation gets your message out and that our readers will show their support for Jazz/Latino, Inc. by making a tax-deductible donation. Congratulations on a job well done!

Willie Martinez – La Familia Sextet

The Whisperdome, Schenectady, NY, April 24, 2009

By Tom Pierce

Reprinted from www.albanyjazz.com

Dr. José Cruz, visionary founder and tireless President of Jazz/Latino, inc. proudly opened the concert by announcing this as the third anniversary of this culturally enriching organization, dedicated to the promotion of jazz and Latin jazz in the Capitol District.

As he introduced each individual of La Familia, one could extrapolate from the diverse international origins of the six members, that the band’s name referred not only to the reverence the leader, drummer/vocalist Willie Martinez has for his own family (as later shown in a number of his compositions) and for the closeness of the Band as a family; but also the universal family of man. Mr. Martinez’ origins are Puerto Rico and New York City; pianist Misha Tsiganov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia; Jennifer Vincent on bass hails from Oregon; Percussionist Renato Thoms calls Colon, Panama home; Weiz, Austria was the birthplace of saxophonist Max Schweiger; and J. Walter Hawkes, the trombonist, originated in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

The sextet wasted no time, with their uptempo opener (their latest CD’s title track, “After Winter, Spring”), composed by Mr. Martinez, in demonstrating that a percolating groove was the powerful bond that held this musical family together. Strong solo turns on baritone sax, trombone and piano with effective accents and sparkling interplay by the rhythm section with the frontline made it clear that the audience was in for and uplifting evening of prototypical, fiery New York City Afro-Cuban Jazz.

Vocalist Bobby Hebb’s 1966 classic composition “Sunny” that has been covered in numerous genres by hundreds of artists from Frank Sinatra (on a wonderful album with Duke Ellington) to Jose Feliciano and Oscar Peterson was an interesting change of pace. It gave Mr. Martinez an opportunity to show his passionate, but pleasing vocal delivery; and was also highlighted by a moving Flute solo from Max Schweiger. Martinez’ singing was even more poignantly displayed on “Plazos Traicioneros,” a beautiful bolero on their 2005 CD “Family” that reminded this listener of the haunting style of legendary romantic balladeers, such as Beny Moré and Tito Rodriguez.

Two Martinez compositions—the introspective “Helen” (for his Mother) and swinging “Cayey” (dedicated to his grandparents who migrated from Puerto Rico to Brooklyn) emphasized the theme of  “Family,” with stirring statements by all soloists.  The diversified 90 minute concert was also highlighted by an appropriately torridly played composition (“Anthony”) by the very facile pianist, Misha Tsiganov that was dedicated to the late ground-breaking drummer initially with Miles Davis, Tony Williams.

As with all Latin jazz bands, a vital component is the driving, but flexible and supportive rhythm section; and that was certainly the case with the excellent pianist, bassist, drummer, and percussionist (who was exuberantly engaging on both Congas and Bongos) in La Familia. The leader showed his selfless nature by limiting himself to only one extended drum solo, appropriately on “Blues for Willie,” composed by Max Schweiger, in tribute to him. But the consistently strong, thick thrust of the rhythm section was balanced by the unusually bottom-heavy sound of the frontline baritone sax and trombone, who were both exciting improvisers.

The audience was enthusiastically appreciative throughout the evening of the warm, energetic, but melodic approach of the entire band, who demonstrated why each has been employed by a large number of renowned bandleaders in New York City and elsewhere. Dr. Cruz again clearly demonstrated his ability to select exceptional Latin jazz talent.

Una Semana Con Bobby Sanabria (A Week With Bobby Sanabria)

By Dr. José E. Cruz

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend a whole week with someone so intense you’d fear any moment you’d find yourself in the midst of a nuclear explosion? Between April 16 and April 20 I was twice in the presence of Bobby Sanabria. In the two shows that took place in those days, he talked, played cowbells, the drumset, bongos, and timbales; gave a private lesson at my house to a young drummer from Chatham, led an improvised güiro with the Chatham drummer, his music teacher, and myself on the guataca, and conducted the Manhattan School of Music, also playing alongside Candido in a tribute to Machito and Tito Puente; twice I was exposed to the kind of intense energy that I imagine is released by an atomic blast. 

I know April 16 and 20 are just two days but the afterglow of April 16 was such that by April 20 I did feel that I had been in Bobby’s presence for a whole five days. Maybe I should have titled this review Three Weeks with Bobby Sanabria because, as I write this on May 2nd, I am still under the spell of the April 20th show.

Do I exaggerate? Ever so slightly. Sanabria is just like that—pure, relentless energy and drive. When he played for my Ahora,Latin/Jazz! series in 2007 a reviewer referred to his performance thus: “Master drummer Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Aché descended on the Whisperdome of the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady like a musical force of nature, Friday May 25, 2007.” A musical force of nature. Oh yeah. Bobby is a one-man Tsunami.

On April 16, Sanabria came to Albany to present a program on the life and music of Tito Puente. “I don’t need a microphone, you can hear me without it, right? I’m from the South Bronx so I have a big mouth,” he told the standing room audience that packed Campus Center 375 on the UAlbany main campus.  As usual he was articulate, erudite, insightful, and funny.  Once on stage, Sanabria takes control and doesn’t let go for a minute.  The show was running a few minutes late so he just took off without warning. I had to cut him off in mid-sentence so I could do the proper introductions. “I just wanted to get going because I noticed a lady squirming on her seat,” he said. But there was no need to worry. No one was going anywhere and after the one-hour-and-a-half program no one wanted to leave. So Bobby humored them. “Quick, quick, you got a question? ‘Cause we only have a minute,“ he said and the Q & A went for another forty-five minutes. I had to step outside to cancel our 9:30 pm dinner reservation! “Ask me anything, do you want to know where I got these shoes?” That standard line got a big laugh, as usual. None took him on but someone did ask where he had gotten his shirt. Bobby stumbled for a moment: “I don’t remember,” he said with a smile and that got a bigger laugh. “Next! You got a question, what’s your question?” After each answer he threw a pair of complimentary Vic Firth drumsticks to the questioner. “Somebody’s going to get hit in the face,” I thought. But they were all good catchers and everything was alright. (Drum)Stickball (of sorts) in Albany. 

The program on Puente was panoramic yet detailed. Combining photographs and recordings, Sanabria illustrated the trajectory of Puente’s career from beginning to end—images of his childhood home, memorabilia, the sounds of music Puente heard as he grew up, his career in the U.S. Navy, his love of Xavier Cugat, the distinctiveness of his drumming style, and the major accomplishments of his musical career, all were properly explained and represented. When Sanabria told us why Puente did not get his job back with Machito upon return from the service, the audience was amused. “Uba has nine kids!,” said Machito to Puente, “He’ll kill me if I fire him to give you your job back.” What may have happened if Puente’s replacement at the Afro Cubans, Ubaldo (Uba) Nieto, had not had such a large progeny? If Puente had stayed with Machito, would have he become Puente? Para que se abra una puerta, tiene que cerrarse otra?

After the show we struggled to find a place to eat. It was only 11:00 pm but, hey, Albany is not New York.  It was most interesting to me that when I suggested a local jazz club, one of the few places in town that stays open and serves food past midnight, Bobby said: “No, no music. I just want to go to a place that is quiet.”  To me that was like Obama saying: “I hate politics.” But I understood, he just wanted to come down, relax for a bit before heading down to Dutchess County for the night.

Then came April 20. I went to New York City, to Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola for the Puente/Candido birthday celebration with the Manhattan School of Music’s Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra, conducted by…Bobby Sanabria! At that point it was like, yeah, I have spent a week with him! My cousin Tommy Waters and my colleague Lori Minnite came with me. We sat at the bar because the house was full. I wanted a table but no such luck. The music began and it was déjà vu all over again: the force of nature thing, the feeling that at any moment we were all going to shatter into smithereens from the sheer energy and intensity of the band and its conductor. My colleague Lori looked around and said: “These are all white kids! Where are all the Latinos?” The comment was a mixture of wonder and regret. It is great that non-Latinos are contributing to the maintenance of the Afro Cuban jazz tradition. It would be even better if there were more Latinos studying the tradition in places like the Manhattan School of Music; but let’s just be grateful that the tradition is being kept alive.

“Kenya Revisited will be released May 12 but you can a buy copy here tonight,” said Sanabria to the patrons. “I encourage you to buy it tonight, especially those of you on the guest list! Man, I felt like a drug dealer, so many people asking me to put them on the guest list! ‘Bobby, come on man, hook me up man, hook me up,’” he said in his mocking impression of a pleading patron.  Another big laugh. Sanabria is a force of nature but he could just as well do stand-up and he would be fine.

After opening with a searing cover of Puente’s Elegua Changó Bobby took a moment to tell the audience how the Kenya Revisited project had met with skepticism in some quarters. “There were people who told me, ‘I have the original, why would I want a copy of one the greatest Afro Cuban jazz albums ever made?’And what I say to them is, because it sounds like this.” Tsunami image about here. My memory does not serve me as well as it should right now. I’m not sure what the band proceeded to play. I do know for certain that it was smoking. And when Bobby took a solo on the timbalitos, that’s when I thought the world was going to be sucked into his gravitational pull. The solo was beautiful. Every lick had a purpose: teleological timbales. Bobby began by channeling Manny Oquendo (“That was hard,” he said to me later, “because Manny was all about restraint.”), and then you could hear Puente in the rolls.  A minute later Bobby was Bobby and God saw that it was good.

When Candido took the stage things got emotional. Let’s be honest. There is no comparison between the Candido you hear on the original Kenya and the Candido we heard on April 20th at Dizzy’s. Yet, big deal. Fifty years ago he takes part in a landmark musical project and fifty years later he is part of a project that highlights and enriches the original accomplishment? Who can top that? Besides, he can still play just like many young musicians must dream to be able to play in their lifetime.  After two songs with Candido at the helm, the cake came out. The band segued into Happy Birthday and a slightly bemused Candido stopped playing to listen, as if he had really been taken by surprise. Bobby called his mother, Doña Juanita Sanabria, to the stage to also celebrate her birthday. Boy, is she cute as a button.

The set came to an end and we were all duly kicked out because all seats had been sold out for the second show. Tommy, Lori, and I were not happy we could not stay. We were also starving. Some guy told us to go to Guantanamera, a restaurant down the street where there was live Latin music. “How is it?” we asked. “The food is so-so but the music is good,” he said. He was wrong. The music was so-so, especially in comparison to what we had just seen and heard at Dizzy’s, and the food was great. After a week with Bobby Sanabria I should have held on to the company for a few more hours by going to a place where it was quiet.

Chris Washburne & The SYOTOS Band

Ahora, Latin/Jazz!

The Whisperdome – First Unitarian Society

Schenectady, NY

May 8th, 2009

By J Hunter

Reprinted from www.albanyjazz.com

In 2005, Chris Washburne & the SYOTOS Band were on the Sunday bill at Lake George Jazz Weekend, sandwiched between sets by Greg Osby and Giacomo Gates. There was just one teensy-weensy problem: Osby, the afternoon headliner, never showed up. Both Washburne and Gates graciously agreed to play longer—originally to give Osby more time to make the gig, but eventually it became an effort to give Lake George’s loyal following as close to a full afternoon of music as possible. The extra time gave us a chance to appreciate what great talent and insight Gates and Washburne respectively brought to that day, and to jazz in general. So when I heard Washburne and SYOTOS was going to close the third year of Dr. José Cruz’ excellent musical mini-series Ahora, Latin/Jazz!, I was all over it.

Things started slowly with Washburne and sax player Ole Mathisen playing off each other, and off the ethereal chords and sounds from their band mates as a spiraling tone poem began to take shape. Soon enough, though, Washburne started shaping a melody and the band followed him into a luxurious, romantic take on Pedro Flores’ “Obsesión.” In contrast to the song’s loping beat, Mathisen spit notes out of his tenor in speedy clusters. He got with the groove, and the band’s energy went with Mathisen, though the tempo remained the same. Pianist Barry Olsen’s following solo brought the piece back to a more intimate level, though Diego Lopez’ drumming was almost martial. Conga player Cristian Rivera focused exclusively on accent work, though he would make his presence eminently known later in the evening.

Mathisen’s attack is closer to R&B than Latin—more Maceo Parker than David Sánchez. However, that really worked in the context of this band. For one thing, the Norwegian native’s clipped, focused, “non-traditional” attack made a great contrast to the wide-open tone of Washburne’s trombone. Washburne is a bit of a contradiction himself, in that his lead role is normally “reserved” in a Latin band for trumpeters like Arturo Sandoval. That said, the quality and energy Washburne brings as a player just knocks you flat. His closing solo on “Obsesión” took a marvelously aggressive line as the band threw its weight behind him, and his formation-flying with Mathisen on the head really put a capper on the opening number.

If the music hadn’t won over the crowd, Washburne’s easy stage banter certainly would have: He told us Flores wrote “Obsesión” in the 1930s, “way before it became a fragrance!” He confided that his own composition “Pink” was “inspired by two pink lines on a pregnancy test.” (Olsen played off-kilter cords over the first part of the spicy urban-flavored number, simulating the mindset of a protagonist reeling from the knowledge that his world will be very different in just nine months.) Washburne then introduced the group’s righteous take on “Softly as in A Morning Sunrise” by saying he used to suggest this for a “First Dance” when his band played wedding gigs—that is, until he actually heard the lyrics, which are about infidelity and adultery!

In the same vein, Washburne explained that the lyrics to the Old School Latin set-closer “The Peanut Vendor” were written in 1930s Cuba, where censors ruled the roost and songwriters had to keep their meanings hidden; then again, the post-Janet Jackson FCC wouldn’t have been pleased by this song’s subtext, either, and that’s putting it mildly! It was all good fun, but fun is a major component of this group. And why not? You simply can’t play Latin jazz “by the numbers.” If fun and joy aren’t part of the package—even on slower pieces like “Obsesión” or Mathisen’s original ballad “Non-Spoken”—the music just falls flat.

This is why I grinned like a fool when Washburne called out “Low Rider.” The Cuban-flavored piece was a big hit in the 70s for War, a group that was all about fun. The tune’s cooking groove lent itself perfectly to the jammed-out tone of the evening: Every song clocked in around 15 minutes, though there wasn’t a moment that seemed wasted or unnecessarily stretched, and the crowd got to see why their collective résumé is filled with heavyweight employers like Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, Eddie Palmieri, Hilton Ruiz, and Gato Barbieri. (Local note: Bassist Ricardo Rodriguez backed up Joe Locke when the vibes wizard played A Place for Jazz last fall!)

“This is a cool place,” Washburne declared before his last number. “We’re coming back next week!” If that had been the case, everyone in the audience would have been there, and would probably have brought a friend or twelve. When compared to the more-established concert series like APFJ or Skidmore Jazz Institute, Ahora, Latin/Jazz! is still in its infancy. Nonetheless, Dr. Cruz’ creation looks like it may be establishing good roots, and booking monumentally enjoyable groups like Chris Washburne & the SYOTOS Band makes those roots deeper and stronger.

Hilary Noble: Transnational Musician

By: Dr. José E. Cruz

When I introduced him at the Guilderland Public Library on November 2008, during the Capital Region’s debut performance of Enclave, the Latin jazz quartet he co-leads with pianist Rebecca Cline, I called him, “Hilario El Noble,” my Spanish word play on his name; Hilario for Hilary and El Noble for the homograph “Noble,” because he is not just a superb musician but also a genteel soul. Hilary himself used this sort of word play in the title of his first compact disc recording, Noble Savage; this was a clever articulation on his part, an allusion to the concept invented by European thinkers to encapsulate the virtues of human beings in their state of nature. Yet one factor in the “noble savage” or “enlightened primitive” equation is missing in his work, because there’s nothing backward, primitive, or unsophisticated about him or his music. If the concept applies it does only partially; there is plenty in his music of the part of the oxymoron that suggests originality, vigor, creativity, and natural wisdom. Still, even though Noble’s ability springs not from an unspoiled Rousseauian state of nature, he is indeed a “natural,” whether on the congas, the sax, or the flute. And if there is anything “savage” about him it is found in his music, except that, in this case, the word must be understood in the colloquial sense of “amazing,” as when boxing fans admire a fighter’s ability by saying “he is a savage,” or when Puerto Ricans exclaim, in Spanish, “¡Está salvaje!, to signify that something is, as we used to say during the 1960s, “out of sight.”

Even though Noble refers to his cultural and musical perspective as “international,” I would say that he is a transnational musician, one that creates, and, in fact, lives his music on the hyphen; his experience as well as his musical compositions are located in a world of both integration and liminality. This should be clear to the reader in the conversation that follows. But first, let’s supplement the interview by saying that he is based in Boston, where he lives with his wife Jenny Miller and daughter Georgia. He is a composer, arranger, and producer. Like so many high-caliber musicians today, he makes his living as a public school music teacher, a position that allows him to put food on the table and pay the mortgage. Fortunately for us, teaching also makes it possible for him to cultivate his craft, although as he himself recognizes, that particular opportunity context is not without creative risks.

We had this e-mail exchange in September of 2009.

José Cruz (JC) Tell me about your background, you are originally from Geneva, Switzerland, no?

Hilary Noble (HN) Ah, yes, Geneva…affectionately known by some of the natives as Calvingrad (John Calvin had a gig at the local cathedral). I was born in the city of Geneva to an American mother and an Australian father and spent my formative years in Geneva and London. Growing up, I spoke both French and English and I went to the International School of Geneva. My foundation in French definitely helped me to learn Spanish (starting in middle school) and I’d like to think that the École Internationale strengthened my internationalist perspective. There were a number of Latin American musicians in Geneva at the time that were hiding out from dictatorships in their home countries (especially Argentineans and Brazilians) so it wasn’t a bad moment for a budding young Afro-Latin percussionist to be looking for people to play with.

JC Do you come from a musical family?

HN No, not at all. There are times that I wish I did come from a musical family because perhaps some things might have come easier to me. As it is, every musical skill I possess has been acquired at the cost of great work.

JC You play saxophone, flute, percussion. What came first and how?

HN Percussion came first. A big epiphany for me was seeing the Woodstock documentary and watching Santana with Michael Shrieve, José “Chepito” Areas, and Michael Carabello tearing it up on “Soul Sacrifice.” There’s something about a furious bout of drumming that can shake you to your very core. Switzerland in the 1970’s was not exactly overflowing with congas and congueros nor even recordings thereof, so the project of my self-education in percussion was a challenge (I suspect that that very “otherness” of Afro-Latin percussion was a draw for me). My record collection soon came to include Mongo Santamaría, Ray Barretto, Patato Valdés, Tata Güines and many others. Percussion may have been the first family of instruments I was engaged with in a hands-on way, but my first great revelation in listening was John Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things.” I must have been eight or nine at the time and I remember telling my parents that I wanted to play the instrument on that recording. It would be another few years before I would learn that Coltrane was playing a soprano saxophone and not a clarinet! (I told you I didn’t come from a musical family). In the meantime, it turned out to be much easier to persuade my parents to buy me a darabukka (a Moroccan drum that you could find in all Geneva music stores at the time) than a saxophone, so I started fooling around on the darabukka. Strangely, the first time I played a saxophone was after I got to Berklee School of Music in Boston. I went to Berklee as a conga drummer, but since there was no Latin percussion major at Berklee at the time, I had to major in another instrument. I chose the vibraphone, an instrument with which I have no chemistry. Then I listened to Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and it was a little bit like Coltrane and God in tandem telling me to finally pick up the saxophone. Which is what I did. The flute came on the heels of the saxophone since it is such a natural double.

JC What led you to study and play Afro-Cuban music?

HN What grabbed me first about Afro-Cuban music was the complex layering of rhythm coupled with the rich sonority of all those drums. Which is another way of saying: of the two sides of the Afro/Cuban equation, “Afro” pulls me the strongest. The next strongest draw for me in “Afro-Cuban” was the hyphen—and what Swiss-born-Australian-American-conga-playing boy doesn’t love his music with a hyphen?

JC Isn't all music hyphenated? 

HN Good question. It bothers me when people forget the hyphen. The West forgot the hyphen when its musical-theoretical inheritance from the Greeks was preserved and subsequently transformed by Islamic scholars and musicians and reintroduced to the West by Moors in Europe. Jazz purists forgot the hyphen when they didn't acknowledge the Afro-Caribbean "Spanish Tinge" that colored jazz's early beginnings in New Orleans. Very few are the musics of the world that do not evidence what the Afro-Caribbean writer Aimé Césaire called "métissage" (a word which translates very nicely into Spanish as "mestizaje.")

JC Why do you think there's so much resistance among some jazz enthusiasts to the idea of Latin jazz?

HN Perhaps there’s more resistance to the idea of Latin jazz than there is to the thing itself. Jazz has always been a creole/mestizo/gumbo-like admixture of world musics, going back to its African/Creole/Euro-Caribbean origins in New Orleans. What Jelly Roll Morton referred to as the “Spanish tinge” has colored the music since the beginning, and one has a right to wonder what purpose is served by segregating Latin jazz in its own bin, when the Latin element is so integrally woven into the fabric of jazz as a whole.

JC You recently played at the Heineken Jazz Festival in Puerto Rico and I understand Enclave will be featured in the upcoming CD of festival performances. What's in the works musically for Hilary Noble and/or Enclave after that?

HN Enclave is taking a break from touring while its members work on individual projects. I myself am working on composing a piece that ties together many disparate strands of world music while using Afro-Cuban music as “home base,” so to speak. This idea has been emerging out of the Intro to World Music class I’ve been teaching for a couple years, a time during which I’ve fallen more deeply in love with Hindustani, Chinese, Japanese and Native American musics, just to name a few. I hope that I can craft this composition in an organic and personal way, without sounding like I’m teaching a college survey course through music!

The work of Hilary Noble can be heard in Noble Savage (Whaling City Sound, 2002); Enclave (Zoho, 2005); and Enclave Diaspora (Enclave Jazz, 2008). The DVD of the November 2008 performance of Enclave at the Guilderland Public Library is available from Jazz/Latino.

N.B. Last year I reprinted a review of the show Palladium Nights from the Times Union and was told by the newspaper that the reprint was a violation of copyright. I pleaded that the reprint had no commercial motive and that I had credited the source. I was told that this didn’t matter and was ordered to remove the article. I’m hoping that posting a clipping of the review above will be acceptable. But if you come back to the site and it is missing, that means that even posting the clipping was not acceptable to the Times Union.