Double Shot of The Sun of Latin Music

I had the good fortune of two recent interactions with the legendary Eddie Palmieri. The salsa and Latin jazz genius who is an NEA Jazz Master came to Chicago last week for a pair of concerts at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I reached out to him in advance with an interview request that he graciously accepted. I went to the show and was able to meet him afterward. If I had a bucket list, I could now remove "Meet Eddie Palmieri" from it. Hell, after this, I could just throw the list away.

Anyway, it is my additional good fortune to write for Agúzate, a Chicago-based journal of Afro-Latin music & culture. Both the interview with El Maestro and subsequent concert review are reprinted here.

There are also a few photos from my friend Charlie Billups, who tirelessly documents the experience Afro-Latin community of Chicago with his work. You can check more of that here.
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Eddie Palmieri: 80 Years and Growing (the interview)

Chicago is a fortunate city in that The Sun of Latin Music, El Maestro Eddie Palmieri, has visited us with various bands in tow four times in as many years. Despite the enormous expense of taking a big band on the road, the good folks at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events have dug deep into their pockets not once, but twice, to bring the Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra to Millennium Park. Interspersed with those huge events were a show at the deeply missed Mayne Stage with trumpeter and Simpático album collaborator Brian Lynch and a Latin Jazz Septet performance at Symphony Center.

Chicago’s hot streak continues this Friday when the intimate Old Town School of Folk Music presents the Eddie Palmieri Latin Jazz Band for two shows. The visit follows up the April release of Sabiduria, a richly textured and rhythmically exciting album featuring Eddie’s core band and a diverse cast of guest musicians ranging from Cuban violinist Alfredo de la Fé to New Orleans saxophonist (and Mardi Gras Indian Chief) Donald Harrison and the king of funky drumming himself, Bernard Purdie, who first played with Eddie on the 1971 landmark album Harlem River Drive.

Sabiduria expertly covers everything from Afro-Cuban roots music to New Orleans second line funk, all under the wide umbrella of Latin Jazz. When salsa took a turn into slick corporate vapidity in the early 90’s, Palmieri refused to go along for the ride, instead concentrating his formidable talents as a composer, arranger and pianist into jazz and producing the frankly amazing Palmas in 1994. La Perfecta II in 2002 was something of a return to classic salsa, charanga, and mambo in honor of the 4oth anniversary of his groundbreaking debut as a bandleader, but it, too, was graced with tremendous jazz improvisers given plenty of room to do their thing. Simpático won a much deserved Grammy for best Latin Jazz Album in 2007.

That was followed by a long period of studio silence until filmmaker Bobbito Garcia asked him to contribute music to Doin’ It In the Park, his documentary on New York street basketball, in 2012. Three tunes from those sessions made it to Sabiduria. We have the visionaries at Ropeadope Records to thank for adding nine more and making them all widely available.

Core musicians from these sessions (Vicente “Little Johnny” Rivero congas, Camilo Molina timbales, Louis Fouche alto sax) will be joined by trumpeter Alex Norris and bassist Rubén Rodriguez at the Old Town School shows.

Eddie Palmieri was kind enough to answer a few of my questions when I reached out to him last week.

Don Macica (DM) – I’ve read that you turned to jazz because it’s hard to land salsa gigs, but I also know that you studied the jazz greats along with the Cuban greats when you were coming up in the 50s. Do you have a preference? What do you consider yourself as an artist?

Eddie Palmieri (EP) – I have always been a leader of Orchestra Dance Bands. The writing was on the wall in the early 90’s when the (salsa) genre changed regarding true dance music. The structures were changed to emphasize the vocalist and the tension and resistance needed in the arrangement were abolished. Salsa Romantica or Salsa Sensual became the popular sound and personally I will never succumb to musical mediocrity. So, Latin Jazz was the mission. In 1994 I became a Governor in the New York Chapter of NARAS and I was able to become a driving force for the Academy to recognize and open up a category. I consider myself a sincere musical student. The playback of my discography does not lie.

DM – Sabiduria feels a little bit like a career summation, albeit a very adventurous one. There’s great jazz, but also some very pure Afro-Cuban stuff and the title track is a fat slice of jazz-funk that recalls Harlem River Drive. Is there any separation between these genres in your approach?

EP – Sabiduria, in my opinion, is the greatest “Latin Jazz” recording ever! The personnel that my son Eddie Palmieri II put together and produced was outstanding. Like I said earlier I have always loved musical extensions throughout my career.

DM – What was the inspiration that brought Donald Harrison to Sabiduria?

EP – Donald Harrison has always been a part of this family since Palmas in 1994. We love him dearly and not only is he a great musician but a great human being.

DM – At the age of 80, where do you get your energy and creativity? What does the future hold for Eddie Palmieri?

EP – Getting stronger every day! Chocolate Armenteros, the great Cuban trumpet player, said “When you get to the age of 50 you start counting by ones”, so I am only 30 years old with 60 years of musical and bandstand experience!
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Concert Review: The Eddie Palmieri Latin Jazz Band (the review)

Eddie Palmieri brought what was, for the celebrated salsa orchestra leader and NEA Jazz Master, a smallish ensemble with him to the Old Town School of Folk Music on Friday night, but the joyful noise that they made together was a testament to the power of Eddie’s playing, composing and arranging skills. When you add in the charm and personality that El Maestro carries with him always, you have the recipe for a truly special night. Mixing references to both family and his beloved Puerto Rico into the between songs commentary, Eddie engaged the audience emotionally as well as musically.

The evening opened with a solo piano meditation on Palmieri’s late wife, weaving together two compositions, Mi Novia and Life, together in her honor. From there on, though, it was time for el ritmo.

As Eddie said in last week’s Agúzate interview, the man absolutely refuses to indulge in mediocrity. He reiterated this at the show, noting that the harmonic complexities of jazz wed to the African derived rhythms of Cuban drumming are pretty much everything that’s worth doing musically. And, of course, he had a band with him that was spectacular at both.

The all-Puerto Rico rhythm section of bassist Rubén Rodriguez, timbalero Camilo Molina, conguero Vicente “Little Johnny” Rivero and El Rumbero del Piano himself absolutely killed it all night long. Meanwhile, Alex Norris’ trumpet and Louis Fouché’s alto sax burned with fire and grace.

In addition to selections from his latest album Sabiduria, the group went back to the 70s several times for recasts of classic Palmieri tunes like La Libertad Logico, Puerto Rico and Chocolate Ice Cream (written with the great Cuban trumpeter Chocolate Armenteros). Each was introduced with an anecdote from Palmieri’s life about the origins of the song. Some were humorous. Others addressed the tragic situation of Puerto Rico’s slow recovery from Hurricane Maria but also the strength, resilience and pride of the Puerto Rican people, even suggesting that it was time for the island to resume its pre-conquest name of Borikén.

All in all, it was an extraordinary night. Today, as I go back and listen to classic records like Vamanos Pa’l Monte and Sentido, I’ll also have photographer Charlie Billups‘ images from the concert to remind me of just how extraordinary it was. 

 

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.

How I became an expert on Latin music.

If you are chuckling at the audacity of that title, trust me: I am laughing out loud.

That said, it's a claim that, were I of the mind to do so, I could make with some justification. After all, I have been writing features on artists, concerts, recordings and other música latina topics for Arte y Vida Chicago for over three years. Just two weeks ago, I agreed to be a regular contributor to Agúzate, an Afro-Latin cultural organization. I've been approached by a couple of other Latino-focused publications about doing some writing for them as well. And, of course, this blog largely covers that very topic.

But an expert? I'm still more of an apprentice. And that, dear reader, is the beauty of it.

The question, as David Byrne might put it, is "How did I get here?"

The bio summary that accompanies this blog references my studies in sociology, for which I earned a degree from the University of Illinois. And, surely, it is my grounding in that social science that informs my writing and, come to think of it, my life. The story begins a bit earlier, though, with a working class childhood as the grandson of Czech immigrants and the first in my family to go to college. It also includes being an eyewitness to the ugliness of racism and injustice in 1960s America, including my own neighborhood and even family. Identity, I believe, is formed in childhood, and crystallizes as you enter adulthood. That entrance in my case coincides with community college and the aforementioned discovery of sociology.

What does any of this have to do with Latin music? In addition to those sociology courses, I also enrolled in a basic Latin American history course. I really don't remember much about it. Truth be told, there probably wasn't much to remember. After all, this was the mid 70s. Vietnam still dominated foreign policy discourse, and the dirty deeds of the C.I.A. in Latin America really hadn't come to light yet to anyone but the closest observers. I'd love to say I was radicalized by that course, but it wouldn't be true. I do, however, remember the Mexican girl that I had a huge crush on. (There's always a woman, yes?) We talked a lot over coffee in the student lounge and went to a couple of parties where we danced. Eventually she told me about her Puerto Rican boyfriend. The romance that I had constructed in my mind was over, but no matter. I had crossed my Rubicon.

Growing up on the south side of Chicago, I had always liked rhythmic music, and as I've detailed elsewhere on this blog, you can trace most of American popular music like R&B, jazz and rock n' roll back through Cuba and beyond to Africa. So, even though I was listening to Otis Redding, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and Marvin Gaye, I was being subliminally exposed to that Latin tinge. And, of course, there was Santana. The decade following college is a bit of a blur (draw your own conclusions), but somewhere along the way I was exposed to salsa music, yet still didn't know what it was or where it came from. Then Rubén Blades got his big major label crossover push and for the first time I was hearing not only the rhythm, but also the complexity of the songs and, perhaps most importantly, Blades' incredibly incisive lyrics, which the record company thankfully translated for people like me. That was when I began to understand much more than I was told back in community college. By 1988 I was traveling to Guatemala with a human rights delegation and finding common cause between civil rights struggles at home and abroad. Inequality? Check. Racism? Check. Violence and repression? Check. The distance between What's Going On and Buscando America wasn't that great.

I've subsequently discovered, much to my delight, that there's a lot more to Latin music than salsa. Well, duh, you might say, but believe me, that wasn't so obvious a few decades back, where everything 'south of the border' was viewed through the same foggy lens. By and large, I'm indebted to gringos like David Byrne, who used his clout as the face and voice of the Talking Heads to get his record company to issue collections of essential Cuban, Brazilian and Afro-Peruvian music.

Twenty-plus years later, I'm still learning. In an earlier blog post, I talked about my lack of Spanish language comprehension and my feeling of being walled off from certain experiences because of it, but for a long time simply accepting that and merrily going along my way listening to Latin American music without a clue as to its context, just digging the sound. Music is a universal language, right? Sort of.

Last week, I was asked to review a concert by the legendary Cuban ensemble Orquesta Aragón for Agúzate, which you can read here. I own some of their classic music from the 50s as well as a couple of their more recent releases. I even saw them perform live 14 years ago, and since then have learned to discern between various eras and styles of Cuban music.  It was a great show, which I experienced in my typical fashion; smiling, drinking and dancing. The next day, though, I had to write something, which of course required reconstructing the previous evening in my mind. I was missing some details, mainly song titles, so I wrote Agúzate's publisher with a few questions. He told me what he remembered and also translated the gist of a spoken tribute to Cheo Feliciano, who had died suddenly the previous day.

So, here's the really cool thing. The act of writing the review and conducting a little research in order to do it vastly enhanced my understanding of everything that went on that night. Despite everything I've learned about Latin music in the last couple of decades, I know something today that I didn't ten days ago.

Ultimately, I think that's why I write and why I'm thankful that publications like Arte y Vida and Agúzate ask me to do it. I can't just cruise through a concert and fail to understand what I'm hearing if I have to write about it. Similarly, I can't just cruise through life because writing this blog forces me to sift through my memories and assumptions and arrive at a fresh understanding of myself and the world I live in.

Now, that's the real beauty of it.