A time, a scene, an identity

Sometimes, things converge on me in a small frame of time that make light bulbs switch on, illuminating the continuity of culture through time. In this case, it was a combination of becoming aware of an emerging scene in Cali, Colombia and my finally getting around to downloading a collection of songs from 1960s New York. Let me explain.

I had something in my 'save for later' bin for years. It's a collection called Nu Yorica Roots: The Rise of Latin Music in New York City in the 1960s. It just sort of sat there tempting me, but never quite enough, as I already had a handful of the songs elsewhere in my library.  Money's always tight, right? I finally broke down about a month ago, and boy am I glad I did.

Taken together, the songs form an amazing document of a critical time in the history of Latin music. It was a scene caught between the fading popularity of the mambo and the coalescence of a thing that would come to be called salsa. Young New York born musicians who would later become salsa and Latin jazz legends, like Eddie Palmieri and Ray Baretto, were overlapping with those who arrived from the islands: Arsenio Rodriguez, Machito, Mongo Santamaria, Tito Rodriguez and others. The hip sound of the time was Latin Boogaloo, so the younger generation, kids who had grown up in the barrio absorbing the music of white rockers and black R&B bands along with the stuff their elders played, were finding their way through all of it.

The collection almost sounds schizophrenic at first. There are very rock-like distorted electric guitars on Eddie Palmieri's My Spiritual Indian and soulful English vocals and funky vamping on Ray Baretto's Together, where his plea for racial harmony is embodied in his very identity: "I know a beautiful truth.. I'm black and I'm white and I'm red.. the blood of mankind flows in me." There are oddities like future Fania All-Stars leader and arranger Larry Harlow's Horsin' Up, which is practically a note for note Latinized version of Archie Bell & the Drells Tighten Up, apparently meant to cash in a dance craze called The Horse. The hits are there too: Joe Cuba's El Pito and Tito Puente's Oye Como Va, plus some invigorating Latin jazz from Sabu Martinez and a Beatles cover by Harvey Averne, another future Fania arranger/producer.

By 1972 it was being codified and labeled into salsa, initially just a marketing umbrella but soon a cultural touchstone and phenomenon. In the 60s, though, it was people with Caribbean roots trying to find their voice in a new, urbanized environment and in the process creating a scene.

A few days after I downloaded Nu Yorica, I read an item on Remezcla.com about a another scene in Cali, Colombia called Salsa Choke. Odd, I thought, until I realized I was reading it in English, and that it's pronounced cho-kay. It's grown out of a style of line dancing known as choque, and if you watched the World Cup last summer, you saw it being danced by the Colombian national team after they scored a goal. Forty-plus years after they started calling Afro-Latin popular music salsa, the term is being revived by the youth of Cali to describe their new style of dance music (right now it mostly seems to be a DJ and singer kind of thing) that pulls from various Afro-Pacific traditions plus a fair amount of dancehall, reggaeton, cumbia and salsa, all of it filtered through a internationalist hip-hop lens. Accompanying the article was a download link for a free compilation, Latino Resiste Presents Salsa Choke. As I write this the link is still live, so you might want to jump on it.

I cannot get this compilation out of my iPod heavy rotation. It's that addictive. As far as I can tell, the percussion is live, but most of the instruments sound sampled from other sources. But, oh, what sources they are! One of my favorite tracks, Wiki Wiki, samples heavily from Missy Elliot's Get Ur Freak On, which if I'm not mistaken benefited itself from Timbaland's inventive sampling of Middle Eastern sounds. Imagine the guitar line from Dr. Dre's Next Episode, but with the straightforward snap of the snare drum replaced with the sinuous push-pull of güiro, cowbell and conga and accompanied by rapid-fire Jamaican-style toasting, and you start to get the idea. Such is the way the musical world turns in the 21st Century.

Every track is suffused with the humidity of a packed Cali dance floor, and in the process of this all night party, the youth of Cali are staking out their own scene and identity that has ties to the past and the rest of the world but one that is, for now, theirs alone. These kids are very respectful of their musical heritage, but aren't afraid to mix it up and make it their own.

Latino New York City of the 1960s and the Cali of today couldn't be more different, yet the music emerging from both is inexorably tied together. Both draw from the African Diaspora, not only Caribbean sources but African-American as well.

The two compilations sound great back to back. Next I'm going to try them on shuffle.

My summer with Sones de México, or why I love Chicago

Chicago, as a major U.S. city, has always been a destination for immigrants. My grandparents on both sides arrived here from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century and settled on the south side. Chicago was an industrial powerhouse in those days, producing steel from the mills and meat from the Stock Yards in equal measure. Industry meant jobs, and jobs (then and now) often mean immigrants in search of a better life. My grandparents were preceded by the Germans and Irish, and followed by Mexicans and African-Americans (not strictly immigrants, but the American south with its Jim Crow laws could have been another country).

All of them faced hardships and discrimination upon their arrival, but hung in just the same, over time transforming the city into the multicultural place it is today. Those prejudices, sadly, haven't gone away, especially in the case of those easily identifiable by facial features and skin color. Segregation and poverty remain deep scars in our psychic and physical landscapes. Chicago is nobody's idea of paradise, but its blue collar working class culture still holds out a promise, not always fulfilled, that if you come here and you work hard, you can change your life for the better.

photo: Todd Winters

The members of Sones de México Ensemble all arrived in the early 1990s, as Pilsen, a near south side community with Czech roots that was my grandparent's starting place here, was transforming itself into the cultural and artistic heart of Chicago's Mexican-American community. I've followed the group off and on for years and became personally acquainted with some of its members. Twelve weeks ago, an e-mail arrived out of the blue asking if I'd be willing to assist them with the marketing of an upcoming concert. One of the members was aware that I was struggling a bit financially and knew of my work at the Chicago Sinfonietta, who had done a few collaborations with Sones over the years. I thought about it for about 2 seconds before saying yes.

And so it was that a part-time job quickly turned into an all-consuming endeavor and, as it turns out, one of the most satisfying projects of my professional life. More importantly, though, it was a profoundly moving experience that unexpectedly connected me to my own culture.

The concert was their 20th Anniversary Celebration, and it took place in what is perhaps the loveliest performance facility on the planet, Millennium Park's Pritzker Pavilion. Pritzker is beautiful to be sure, but it's also somewhat intimidating in its vastness, holding upwards of 12,000 people. Believe me, I've been to plenty of concerts there when a mere 3,000 or so show up and it can feel like a ghost town. So that was the challenge - go from zero awareness to a crowd of at least 6 or 7,000 in 11 weeks.

As a city owned venue, Pritzker Pavilion exists as a public service, presenting almost all of it's shows for free. It has been showcasing "world music" since it opened in 2004, mostly because of the efforts of the city's former Cultural Affairs program director. Heck, one of its first ever shows (after the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, of course) was an ad-hoc ensemble dubbed the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra made up of, yes, the city's finest ethnic musicians from its many communities. Those concerts are mostly gone now, and I miss the way the ethnic group represented on stage would show up en masse, joined by world music aficionados like myself, all of us in joyful communion for a couple of hours.

I won't bore you with details of my job but I will say this: Once we got rolling, the support and enthusiasm from the Latino community was a wonder to behold. In the hostile environment of 2014 America, where immigrants are scorned and children are deported back to their murderous homelands,  the prospect of a proudly Mexican-American music ensemble performing downtown on the city's most beautiful showcase (and a tourist magnet to boot) ignited a joy and anticipation that was nearly unquenchable.

photo: Scott Pollard

Some of you may know that I'm a freelance writer specializing in music coverage, and one of the pleasures of that endeavor is researching the artist that I'm writing about to better understand the context of their music. I do the same for my marketing clients. If I know what motivates them, then I can better tell their story. I began my Sones de México work with a series of long interviews with Juan Díes, one of their founders. One of the things I quickly learned was that Chicago was very much chosen on purpose as the place to start the group, not only because of the flourishing Mexican arts community, but also because of Chicago's broader identity as a city built by hard working immigrants. They were soon collaborating with Irish folk, blues, jazz and classical musicians to explore commonalities among cultures.

Unlike my father, I have been lucky to never spend a day on a factory floor or driving a bus. Despite this, though, I proudly self-identify as both blue collar and immigrant. When I taste Mexican food, I'm also tasting the Czech food of my childhood, and my parent's childhood, and their parents before them. When I go back to my old southwest side neighborhood and see that it's mostly Latino, it feels like it hasn't changed at all, still filled with immigrants and the children of immigrants, working hard to build a decent life.

Photo: Omar Torres-Kortright

As Sones de México was nearing the end of their astounding concert before an equally astounding crowd of 10,000 people, mostly Mexican but with a good chunk of other nationalities as well, they played a song I knew they were going to play because I had the set list. That knowledge, however, in no way prepared me for the wave of emotion I was about to feel. Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land has sometimes been called America's second national anthem, and I personally prefer it to the frankly militaristic Star Spangled Banner. "This land is your land..." Juan Díes said in English, pointing to the crowd, "... this land is my land", touching his chest. "Esta tierra es tuya." And then, "Para

todos los inmigrantes", for all the immigrants. And with that, they launched into their rollicking norteño arrangement of this beautiful song. Norteños are polkas, really, the musical result of Czech and German immigrants settling in Mexico and Texas 150 years ago, meeting both the indigenous people and the Spanish immigrants who arrived before them, sharing what they knew, sharing something that I knew from all those Bohemian weddings I attended when my cousins got married.

Photo: Dayna Calderon

For all the immigrants, indeed.

A global dance party

I'll get the 'full disclosure' part out of the way first. I used to work for the Chicago Sinfonietta as their Communications Director, and I still do some research and writing for them for which I am compensated. I have a great deal of respect for what they do, both philosophically and creatively. But I should be clear: This respect flows from an alignment of my values with their activities. I don't say nice things about them because they pay me to do so.

I previewed their most recent concert for Arte y Vida Chicago, and you can read that here. I attended the concert a couple of nights ago and have had some time to think about what I heard and saw. That's what this blog post is about.

A few quick words about the Sinfonietta for those of you who didn't click the Arte y Vida link. They are led by a woman from Taiwan, who inherited that role from the African-American conductor who founded the orchestra 27 years ago. They play a mix of standard repertoire (that's what most people think of when they hear the words 'classical music', leaning heavily on music written by dead white guys) with newer works by living composers who are often the complete opposite of dead white guys. Somehow, they make this work, finding room for both in a single thematic concert. It probably helps that they shy away from dissonance and extremes. There's a populist aesthetic to be sure, but it doesn't cross the line into pandering.

photo by Chris Ocken

Their most recent offering was titled Global Dance Party. Given that the concert was presented at Chicago's Symphony Center, you can rest assured that dancing is generally not encouraged. The orchestra's marketing addressed this contradiction with some gibberish about 'dancing in your seats'. Nonetheless, there was a reason for the title: A focus of the programming was built around Indian-flavored hip-hop dance music of DJ Rekha, whose style makes liberal use of Bollywood and Bhangra sources from her cultural and ethnic background. Hip-hop being what it is, though, lots of other sounds make their way in: dub reggae and dancehall, Latin and Brazilian, and of course fat beats. It's music designed for sweaty dance clubs and street parties, not concert halls. Integrating a live orchestra into that was an audacious and unlikely experiment.

Did it work? For the most part, yes. The centerpiece was a tune called Pyar Baile, a song that was released a few years ago by Rekha and her writing and production partner (and Indian percussionist) Dave Sharma. It's a thick slice of carioca funk seasoned with Bollywood touches and features vocals in both Hindi and Brazilian Portuguese. Unfortunately, technical difficulties with Rekha's deck forced everyone to hit the reset button, and even after they did an uneven sound mix found the orchestral arrangements overpowering the electronics.  The arrangements weren't interesting enough by themselves to encourage any dancing, in the seats or otherwise.

I'll get back to Rekha later, but it's the rest of the evening that provided context for this 'DJ with an orchestra' thing, taking it beyond novelty. There were not one, but two guest conductors leading the orchestra (usually not at the same time). Both are rising young stars gaining a lot of notice, but on the surface have little in common. Alexandra Arrieche was born in Brazil and brought South American works with her from Astor Piazzolla and Hector Villa-Lobos. The 30-something African-American conductor Joseph Young selected works from the equally young African-American composer Jonathan Bailey Holland. The wild card was something from the Hungarian composer Erno Dohnányi.

All the selections shared upbeat tempos and sonic brightness. Piazzolla is the inventor of nuevo tango, of course, and his Fuga y Misterio is a whirlwind of rhythmic strings. Villa-Lobos is a Brazilian national treasure, and the orchestra sounded wonderful on his Bachianas Brasileira No. 2. Holland's work is harmonically and structurally complex, but it's inspiration here on The Party Starter and Motor City Dance Mix were the great disco and soul records of the 1970s, heavily flavored with hi-hat, suspended piano chords and glistening strings. Even the outlier, Dohnányi's Symphonic Minutes, proved a lively choice, based as it is on Hungarian folk dance.

What everything had in common was that all the composers took something popular (in the "of the people" sense) and interpreted it through another musical form. The conductors, clearly relishing the opportunity to lead music that was dear to them, coaxed sustained inspired playing from the orchestra.

photo by Chris Ocken

That brings us back to DJ Rekha. In sourcing her sounds from ethnic traditions, she translates them into dance floor fillers. The Sinfonietta experiment took this one step further, bringing Rehka's mixes into the realm of, quote-unquote, serious music. But it is a party, after all. Rekha returned for the finale, her deck fully functional and sound balance fixed, for a three movement suite comprised of material originally developed for a DJ set in a club. The orchestral arrangements were uncluttered, giving the beats and samples room to breathe and do their intended thing. A crucial extra element was inviting an orchestra violinist who is also a noted jazz musician to grab the spotlight and inject several energetic improvised passages in a sort of duet with Rekha. In a final touch, the Sinfonietta organization had cleverly invited a number of young Indian dance students to flood the aisles and edges of the stage. Turning up the house lights blurred the distinction between stage and audience. Now the party had, finally, started in earnest.

A total success? Um, maybe not quite. Worth doing? Depends on your perspective. Mine is that great things can happen when you mix cultures. I'm not only talking about ethnic culture, but also the increasingly meaningless distinction between high and pop culture. If the unfettered shared joy in the hall at this concert is any indication, this was certainly a welcome achievement.

photo by Chris Ocken