Press and Publicity
Friday, August 01, 2008
Mambo Diablo, Playthell Benjamin
Mambo Diablo!
El Chocolate Caliente
Photo by: Kwame Braithwaite
Homage to the Conga Gods on the Morning of the Carnival
My Ordeal at the Puerto Rican Day Parade
Circa 2008
“Although the temperature neared 100 degrees, the rhythms of Zon Del Barrio so inspired me I had to dance or die! I would soon discover, as they hauled me away in an ambulance to the emergency room at Lennox Hill hospital, that dancing non-stop to the ass kicking polyrhythms of Zon, a band of funky Puerto Rican Salcereos, can be hazardous to your health!”
Photo: Playthell “El Chocolate” Benjamin
The question of which is the nation’s largest ethnic bacchanal – the Puerto Rican Day Parade down Fifth Avenue, or the West Indian Day parade, in which immigrants from the British West Indies and their children strut their stuff and play Mas on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn dressed in elaborate costumes grooving to the infectious rhythms of Calypso music, Trinidad’s gift to the artistic heritage of the world. The playing of “pans,” which is a signature of the English speaking Caribbean, has also found acolytes in the Spanish speaking Caribbean. And they were in fine form jamming in El Barrio on a day when all the real kids in the Salsa musical community – musicians and dancers – were out “Representin on the Five” as one young Borican described the massive crowd Mamboing down Fifth Avenue in joyous celebration of their Island in the Sun, the land where their ancestors died and their cultural heritage still lives; in spite of a century of Yanqui imperialism, cultural and otherwise.
Aside from the obviously white traditional upper class that descended from the Spanish Conquistadors and Creole slave masters, the majority of Puerto Ricans are like Afro-Americans, a neo-African rainbow people born of the historical tragedy that was the European conquest of the “Indies,” and they have also produced a culture shaped by the struggle to be free. And just as with African Americans the essential spirit and identity of Puerto Ricans, the soul of the community, is kept alive in their marvelous music. The most dramatic differences in Afro-American and Afro-Hispanic music reside in the prominence of percussion instruments and the centrality of dance to musical performance. For most of its history the same thing could be said of Afro-American music. But that changed radically once the be-boppers arrived on the scene. These young musical iconoclasts were so determined to remove all vestiges of the minstrel tradition of “mugging” and “Satchin” associated with “Pops” Armstrong and even the great pianist Dorothy Donnegan that they came to eschew all vestiges of “show business” and “entertainment” in favor of taking a stance as “serious artists.”
The writer Ralph Ellison, one of the most astute literary men regarding musical matters, says they chose to exchange the jovial mask of Louis Armstrong – a bonafide genius who is the true father of both Jazz instrumental improvisation and jazz singing – in favor of the “funereal posturings of the Modern Jazz Quartet.” Ellison had grown up in Oklahoma City and in his youth had danced to the hard swinging city blues of the territory bands that roamed the west and congregated in Kansas City. Although this music had nurtured and honed such giants of American music as Andy Kirk, Count Basie, “Hot Lips” page, Lester Young, Ben Webster,
The late great swing band leader Andy Kirk – whose “Clouds of Joy” performed all over the world for 40 years, used to always complain to me about the egocentric manners of bop and post bop jazz musicians who no longer wanted to play for dancers. He thought it reflected a disdain for the audience, and he pointed to Miles Davis’s famous tendency to turn his back on audiences as he performed. Mr. Kirk, who was 90 years old at the time, pointed out that when musicians play for dancers their critique is quick and brutally honest, and pointed to the time Dizzy – one of the father’s of Bop - was touring the south with his big be-bop band and a joker with one two many drinks pulled a pistol and inquired briskly: “Don’t you suckers know how to play no dance music?”
Mr. Kirk said that he would look out at the audience from the bandstand and see if the heads were bobbing to the beat; that’s how he knew the groove was in the pocket. Well heads were bobbing all over fifth Avenue on Parade day. As one band after another promenaded in lockstep down Fifth Avenue one could hear a variety of music, ranging from Bombas played on traditional barrel drums, to Salsa, Hip Hop, Ragge Thon and Rhythm and Blues. In short, the music reflected all the things that Nuyoricans are. They are at once as American as cherry pie but still rooted in the language and music derived from the Island’s culture. While the Hispanic population in general is exploding into the latest version of hyphenated Americans, Puerto Ricans have had a long intimate relationship with the US, especially New York. But in spite of the different manifestations of contemporary Nuyorican musical culture, the New York Salsa tradition remains the soul of the community. I cannot imagine New York City without it!
Boricans “Representin on the Five!”
Although there are many similarities between neo-African music in the Americas, the role of percussion is more prominent in the Afro-Latin Orchestra, where musical genres are fundamentally distinguished by rhythm patterns rather than melody or harmonic changes. Even if we look at the two quintessential bands that defined the Cu-Bop jazz period of the late forties – Dizzy Gillespie’s Orchestra and Machito and his Afro-Cubans – the difference in the use of percussion instruments is dramatic. Much has been said about the birth of “Latin Jazz,” most of it wildly speculative wishful thinking, but if I had to point to it’s birthplace I would say the creation of Latin Jazz began when Mario Bauza and Dizzy Gillespie met in Chick Webb’s great band. The seminal event in the birth of the new genre known as “Cu-Bop” was when Mario took Dizzy home to Cuba for a visit and Dizzy got a chance to hear the music of the Afro-Cuban cojunto, the Son Montuno.
It is a music that required an orchestra and singers to perform, and the bands were very close to the people because they were supported by the various Afro-Cuban social clubs that formed because of the segregated society of pre-revolutionary Cuba where it was against law and custom for a black man to dance in public with a white or mulatto Cuban woman. Due to a misguided, albeit well intentioned, cultural policy on the part of the Cuban government – which like all Marxist, has a political line that determines their policy on culture – the social clubs have been dismantled. And this has devastated the Son because its social support has disappeared. The great Buena Vista Social Club Orchestra, featuring the incomparable sonoreo Compay Segundo – who also lately danced and joined the ancestors - is the last of that dying breed. It was in these Afro-Cuban Cojuntos that the standard Latin rhythm section was formed. Aside from technological improvements in the construction of the instruments that has improved the sound, it has remained pretty much the same ever since: Conga, bongos, timbales, cowbell, maracas, piano and bass all playing off the clave rhythm.
I became aware of the beauty of the conga drums and the ecstatic feeling associated with playing them in concert with other musicians when I fell in love with a beautiful Puerto Rican dancer who had been married to a conga drummer of some reputation and skills around Philadelphia. Which, I was to discover, was no mean feat, because some of the greatest conga drummers produced in the US resided in the “City of Brotherly Love” at the time. I have never heard a conga drummer from anywhere, not even the Mecca of congeros Havana Cuba, who impressed me more than Sonny Morgan. An ambidextrous drummer, Sonny could play the same rhythms with either hand at will. His clarity of tone and complex rhythmic imagination made him one of the great masters. Virtually the same thing could be said of Garvin Masseux, George Cannon, Roagie Kenyetta, and Poochie too. Philly was full of great conga drummers back in the day when I first fell under the spell of the clave. The fact that my interest was sparked by a luscious Latina dancer, Kadijah, only served to increase the intensity of my interests.
All of these Philly congeros were great band drummers and rumba drummers in full percussion ensembles too. My favorites among other Afro-American drummers were Stacy Edwards from Newark, who played with Babatunde Olatunji’s Drums of Passion. Stacy was an especially heroic figure to me as a fledgling conga drummer trying to master my basic Afro-Cuban rhythmic repertoire – just as a jazz pianist must learn the basic changes of the standards, the conga drummer must know the basic rhythms that distinguish the different genres of Afro-Cuban music. His heroism derived from the fact that he was in a drum ensemble that included Olatunji playing his massive Yoruba drums, on which he often used a stick to create a thunderous sound, and the magnificent Guinean master of the Jimbe drum Laji Camarra.
The Jimbe, which is all the rage among Afro-Centric drummers today, was introduced into this country by the Camarra clan when they came here to perform in “Le Ballet Africaine in 1966.” When the troupe returned to Guinea the lead drummer and star of the show, Laji Camara, remained behind to perform with Olatunji’s Drums of Passion. Just to watch the way Laji could take over and dominate the rhythm with his powerful drum and awesome technique was frightening! Yet Stacy Edwards held down the conga chair and rocked the house every night on his Cuban rosewood congas. He was always in the pocket and his solos would electrify the room.
Then there was the great Ritchie “Pablo” Landrum. I can still envision the first time I ever saw him play. It was around 1966 in a spot called “Hollywood Al’s” in Harlem. Ritchie was playing with a super hip New York band billed as “Pucho and his Latin Soul Brothers.” They were Afro-American musicians who were devoted to the Son/Salsa sound. Pucho, the leader of the band, played timbales and he was nasty too. Along with Mongo Santa Maria, and Willie Bobo, Pucho was the father of Latin Soul and their sound was funky by both standards. It didn’t take long for me to hone in on the conga drummer; he had that touch that the tutored ear will immediately recognize as the sound of a true artist on the drums. There is, of course, the question of tone.
For those who play the conga acute sensitivity to pitch can enhance the power of the rhythm by creating a song. But since we are talking about skin on skin the matter of touch is critical to the quality of the sound, which determines how your rhythms effect the listener emotionally. Some guys practice for years to get it – guys like me – but others seem to be born with it. The fabulous Carlos “Potato” Valdez was like that, George Cannon was like that too, and that was what Pablo Landrum was like. And since “Pab,” who became a Priest of the Ifa Oracle and was consecrated to play the sacred Bata drums in later years, ” danced and joined the ancestors the reigning master congero among Afro-Americans is the mesmerizing Neil “Scorch” Clarke” from the peoples republic of Brooklyn. Like “Pab,” “Scorch” is a great accompanist playing in the pocket and a magnificent soloist. Recently he turned up at the Max Roach Memorial Produced by Don Sangster of The Andy Kirk Foundation at Max’s old high school, Boy’s High in Brooklyn. There had been several conga drummers on the show. But when word got out that “Scorch” was in the house all the drummers deferred to him and Abdus-Sabor, who was playing at the time, got up from his drums and invited Scorch to play. Neil sat down and conducted a clinic on the art of playing the conga. In a room full of drummers he was like E F Hutton: When Scorch speaks on the conga everybody listens!
Back in the day when I first aspired to virtuosity on the conga drums my heroes in performance were the great masters of the Afro-Cuban tradition, not athletes. Coming from Florida I had been a football freak like every other Gator, but my fascination with the game began only after I noticed that the football players got the prettiest, and the most, girls. Hence for me the game represented something of a mating ritual. It was sexy to be a football player. But playing the conga drum had become a similar experience for me. Watching the Afro-Cuban masters mesmerize the ladies with their drums, added to the special joys of playing, and watching dancers move their beautiful bodies to my rhythms, I fell under the spell of the clave.
Of the great Afro-Cuban masters who introduced the art of the conga to the US – Mongo, Potato, Jolito Colazzo, Amando Peraza, Francisco Aquabella, Camera Candido, et al - Mongo and I became fast and best friends. And I learned much about playing the conga from him. I have purposely omitted Chano Pozo from this list. Although he was the drummer that introduced the conga drums to jazz as the featured congero in Dizzy’s band, he was more important as a composer, having written standards of the CuBop era such as Manteca and Cubano Be. Cubano Bop, but he does not belong in the pantheon of master drummers listed here. And while the great TA Ta Guiness influenced us too, it was via his recordings with the seminal Afro-Cuban bassist Israel “Cachao” Lopez; especially on the Decargas, or Cuban Jam Session records. It is only with the advent of You Tube, forty years after I first heard him, did I get a chance to actually see Ta Ta perform. If you want to see how the grand master make his musical alchemy just check him out on the tube. Check out Mongo, Potato and Ray Baretto too. Thank the Gods and the ancestors for You Tube!
One of the highpoints of my life was the evening that I got to sit in Mongo’s chair and play his drums as a substitute with the band because his hands were paining him – another was when I got to sit in for Potato with Willie Bobo – an original voice on the timbales - at Count Basies club in Harlem on a night when the great master failed to show for the gig. Mongo’s band at the time was the classic group with the magnificent Dominican timbalist and master showman Carmello Garcia, and the Mexican bassist Victor Venago. The versatile Rogers Grant was the pianist and Hubert Laws, Bobby Capers and Marty Sheller made up the horn line. Hubert played flute, Piccolo and tenor sax in the band, and when he became a Seventh Day Adventist and decided to leave the band with its constant traveling he held down the first flute chair with the New York Philharmonic; a seat he won over 150 wannabes who auditioned for the gig.
While the misguided cultural chauvinists tend to be dismissive of this music as a kind of “folk art,” some of the greatest musicians in the world by any standard perform in the Son/Salsa tradition. Paquito Rivera, an Afro-Cuban, is one of the world’s greatest musicians – bar none. Like Hubert Laws Paquito is the absolute master of three musical languages. If they were actors they would be able to perform Shakespeare’s Macbeth on one day in Elizabethan English, the next day Molier’s The Misanthrope in French – whose dialogue is composed in rhyme – and The Cherry Orchard in Russian the day after that!
When the band struck up the tune “Pati Ti,” “For You” in translation, I felt as if I was flying and I never came down until the music stopped. I got to play that night because Mongo was having problems with his hands. He had a serious problem with bursting his calluses. Again this is the matter of touch, because Patato, who was much thinner than Mongo, struck the drum so perfectly that his hands were evenly calloused and I never saw them break. Potato, who recently joined the ancestors, was a little man with little hands but he got a big lush sound out of the drum that few drummers could match.
As far as Afro-American congeros go, Neal “Scorch” Clarke is the heir to Pablo Landrum. And like Pab he is clearly the equal, if not the superior, of any drummer of his generation. Once a musician reaches a certain level of virtuosity through natural gifts and serious study their nationality i.e. whether they are native to the musical tradition in which they perform, becomes irrelevant. A classic case in point is the Tchaikovsky piano competitions in Moscow; although the music is Russian pianist from all over the world have won the grand prize. We need look no further than my buddy the late great Hilton Ruiz, a gifted artist and one of the most generous souls the Gods ever blew breath in – like the great athlete/humanitarian Roberto Clemente he died while on a mission of mercy helping the victims of a natural disaster - to find an example of a Puerto Rican musician who had risen to the top ranks of jazz pianists. And he is just one of many. The fabulous Afro-Cuban contra bassist Carlos Del Pino, is a top virtuoso in three musical languages also – the Son, Classical European music and jazz. I have argued in a published essay, Jubileo del Contrabago: A Cuban Star Rises over New York, which is my account of a concert a beautiful ornate catholic cathedral on the edge of El Barrio, that Carlos Del Pino is the greatest bassist in the world!
I first heard Carlos when the venerable Afro-Puerto broadcaster Malin Falu – who is popularly know as “The Latin Oprah” because she hosts a nationally televised show on Spanish language television “Dialogo Coast to Coast” – brought him on a radio show that I was hosting on WBAI. Since Carlos speaks only Spanish Malin served as our interpreter. All she had told me about him was the he was “a great musician but he is very humble. He is not good at self-promotion.” The night Carlos came on the show he had just returned from making a recording with the Puerto Rican Symphony Orchestra where he played the lead violin part on Felix Mendelssohn’s b-flat Concerto for Violin and orchestra note for note. What’s more, the violinist is bowing and Carlos is playing Pizzicato! It was one of the most impressive musical feats I have ever heard. I knew right away I was witnessing a genius at work.
Right away I thought that Carlos was the best bassist in the world; he had followed in the footsteps of the giants of the genre – his father was a principal bassist in a Cuban symphony orchestra and he is a serious student of Ray Brown, Paul Chambers and Ron Carter – and surpassed them. When I said on air that it was the greatest performance that I had ever heard on the double bass violin, the great Bob Cunningham, himself a grand master on the instrument, was driving home from a gig and heard the broadcast. He stopped his car, called into the studio, and he said on air “that was the greatest performance on bass that I have ever heard too!” Among the fans I spied sitting on the first row marveling at Carlos’ amazing technique at the cathedral concert was the peerless Ron Carter. I saw Carlos as a counterpart of the musically ambidextrous trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis, and made it my mission to introduce them. When I introduced Carlos to Wynton I said simply: “This brother is to the bass what you are to the trumpet.”
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Quite by chance, out at the parade; I heard a young sensation on the congas who will be a standard bearer for the next generation of Conga virtuosi. And So long as I listened to him play I couldn’t stop dancing, which would lead to disaster before the day was done. While the conga is a Cuban drum, their Spanish speaking neighbors adopted the instrument early on. For instance, when Chano Pozo was shot and killed in a fight outside a Harlem nightclub, it was the Puerto Rican congero Sabu Martinez who replaced him in the great Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra. And Puerto Rican drummers like Ray Baretto and Milton Cardona, both great virtuosos on the conga, have extended and enriched the tradition bequeathed to us by the Afro-Cuban masters.
Photo: Mongo and “El Chocolate” after a gig at Manhattan Center
It must have been my lucky day. As I soon emerged from the park I saw Aurora Flores standing on the stage adjusting her mike and I knew that Zon Del Barrio was about to get down. A couple of weeks earlier I ran into the vivacious Aurora and her husband David Fernandez – virtuoso pianist/composer/arranger/record producer - at the Harlem School of the Arts, where we all attended a concert by Arturo O’Farrell, the conductor of the Lincoln Center Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra and a fine pianist/composer like his legendary Irish-Cuban father Chico O’Farrell – who wrote and arranged music for the top Latin and Jazz orchestras alike. And like the great Panamanian Salcero and Harvard law grad Rubin Blades, Chico O’Farrell had also gone to law school. Although Arturo was playing with a quartet on this occasion, which requires good improvisational chops, he was great. He can play straight ahead or around exotic corners; anyway you like it – just like the great Afro-Cuban “Chucho” Valdez, who is for my money the greatest pianist in the world!
After the show Aurora gave me a copy of their new CD: Zon Del Barrio, Cortijo’s Tribe. Right off I was excited by the name, because it told me something important about the level of cultural awareness of the musicians on this album. To choose the late Afro-Puerto Rican Timbalist, Cortijo, as a musical role model told this writer that here were artists who have not forgotten to pay homage to the ancestors, the master musicians whose consummate artistry enriches the tradition. My first thought however was how they made such a difficult decision, given the fact that Puerto Rican musicians have produced an embarrassment of riches when it comes to timbalists. “El Rey,” Tito Puente and Willie Bobo immediately come to mind. Since these artists are of equal stature with Cortijo, I figured the band had its reasons and I couldn’t wait to interrogate them. Whatever their reason was, I thought, they had produced an album that is a fitting tribute to the great Puerto Rican band leader. It has everything that is beautiful about Afro-Cuban and Afro-Puerto Rican music. It is lively, melodic, a synthesis of the best traditions past and present in the music of the Son/Salsa tradition.
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Cortijo and his cohunto with Singer Ishmael Rivera at the Palladium Circa 1956
This Band featured Arsenio Rodriguez, the blind Afro-Cuban master of the Tres
When I asked Aurora why they chose Cortijo as the band’s musical icon, she was getting ready to perform so she referred me to an essay she had written on the great Afro-Puerto Rican musician. Titled Witinlla…Uye, Uye: Breaking Cultural Chains, it is an elegantly written learned treatise on Afro-Puerto Rican history and Musicology written for Billboard magazine. She tells us “Cortijo once said he took the rhythm of Boricua blood and dressed her up in her Sunday best and paraded her around the world for everyone to see. He loved her and you could feel it.” She goes on to explain that Cortijo, an innovator in Puerto Rican music, “recorded his beloved Bombas and Plenas first” after he got a recording contract. Thus he was the major force in developing and popularizing the indigenous music of Puerto Rico. Before Cortijo’s recordings “Bomba and Plena were seen as an exclusive, insular rhythmic mystery steeped in an unmentionable black religious ritual of song and dance, protected by folklorists and academics.”
Aurora points out that these people were purists who wanted to freeze the music in time and confine it to a certain traditional style of performance, concerned as they were about “the loss of authenticity.” But she persuasively argues that this is against the nature of things: “Yet music, like people, evolves and changes with time and Cortijos vision went beyond banal criticism to encompass global acceptance of a form of music inherited through his slave ancestors. The music was capable of retaining its power of resistance while entertaining audiences on the highest level of professional acumen.” After an astute analysis of the unique features of the Afro-Cuban conga drums she explains why Cortijo replaced the Puerto Rican Barrilles with the Conga. She then describes how Cortijo expanded his repertoire to include Cuban genres such as Cha Cha, Bolero, Mozambique, and Mambo, the Trinidadian Calypso, the Dominican Merengue and even the Brazilian Samba.
To this musicological analysis Aurora adds the dimension of socio/political analysis that enables us to see the deeper cultural significance of this music for Puerto Rican society. “The Bomba was now needed for a newer insurrection, a cultural one inclusive of both black pride and Boricua identity unifying the lighter skinned Jibaro with his black costal cousin. They hit the bull’s eye.” Cortijo’s conjunto became the most popular black band in the Spanish speaking Caribbean because they were the house band for a popular television show in Puerto Rico at a time when white Cuban and Dominican bands were performing in black face and parodying the music much as the white blackface minstrel had done in the USA.
The popularity of Cortijo’s conjunto was dramatically amplified when he hired Ishmael Rivera to front the band as its singer. Although several decades have passed I can still clearly remember the first time I heard Ishmael, who was respectfully known as “El Sonero Mayor” – The Master Singer - to his fellow Latin musicians. “Ishmael Rivera was a natural” says Aurora in a thoughtful and highly revealing essay on this great singer titled Ecua Jei, Ishmael Rivera, El Sonero Mayor. Affectionately known as “Maelo” to his Puerto Rican friends and fans Aurora tells us “Maelo began to sing as soon as he reached ‘the age of reason’ and reason made his voice fly dodging in and around the clave with a facility that could only have been a gift from God.” While this may sound like hyperbole to those untutored in music, it is a concept well understood by singers. Once when I asked a friend of mine who was an excellent singer and a perceptive and talented choir master, about a beautiful young singer with a degree in vocal performance from Julliard who was singing in his church choir; why was she not on the great concert stages of the world? He simply said: “Yes she is very well trained…but she just doesn’t have that gift from God that separates the great singers from the merely good singers.”
When I first saw Ishmael Rivera with Cortijo’s conjunto in the Early Seventies I had the same kind of visceral reaction that I had the first time I saw James Brown at the Royal Palm Café in Jacksonville Florida around 1956, the same year that Cortijo opened at the Palladium with his unique sound. I wasn’t even old enough to legitimately get in the club but it was a special Sunday afternoon matinee that also hosted a talent show. I had come there to sing bass with a Rhythm and Blues group, The Honey Drippers, and JB was the main attraction. He was enjoying his first big hit “Please, Please, Please” and the emotional power of his singing caused my skin to break out in goose pimples – and I was around great singers in all genres all the time! I could feel it throughout my body and I just wanted to grab the nearest girl and rub bellies in a slow drag grind. Ebony black with features like a Yoruba ceremonial mask, James was decked out in a white tuxedo with tails, and when the music turned up tempo he not only sang his heart out but danced his ass off too!
Ishmael performed with such energy he seemed as if he was about to explode. The nickname given to the great Central American prize fighter El Grand Champion Alexis Aguello, “El Flavivo Explosivo” – The Explosive Thin Man! - could well have been given to Ishmael, since he could create so much emotional energy he always seemed about to explode. When you watched him sing it was like watching an evangelist proclaiming the word of the lord and showing the way to salvation. It was the gospel according to Ishmael. There was a deeply spiritual dimension to his art because he was a deeply religious man, just as James Brown’s art was forged in the crucible of the African American church – a venerable institution whose roots go back to the American Revolution and has produced more great musicians in every field than Julliard.
I couldn’t get enough of Cortijo’s band that Ishmael fronted back in the day, during the 1970’s. To be specific I was a huge fan of the band that featured Carlos “Potato” Valdez on congas and his Cuban homeboy “Totico” on vocals and rhythm instruments. Plus Totico – tall, thin and tan - could dance like a whirling dervish, enhancing the band’s performance with his showmanship. Totico was in constant motion, especially on the Mambo. When I’d go see them – which was every chance I got - I couldn’t stop dancing either. Hence I was a sitting duck for the ritmo caliente of Zon del Barrio on Fifth avenue as they played their heart and soul out in celebration of all things Puerto Rican during the great annual parade.
Zon Del Barrio: Sonic Alchemist!
State of the Art: The Sound of Nuyorican Salsa
The way I happen to catch Zon’s act was quite by accident. Consumed by book deadlines I had actually forgotten it was Puerto Rican Parade Day. When I realized it and began preparing to try and land a good spot to check out the show, my close friend and literary confident, the writer/singer Karen Taylor, told me she could get me a prime spot to view the parade through her girl friend Aurora Flores, who like herself, is a formidable woman. With a varied and impressive resume that includes Puerto Rican female “firsts” in journalism and the corporate world, Aurora is the dynamo that organizes things and manages the affairs of Zon- a name which Aurora tells me is a play on the word Son. Anybody who has ever tried to manage a band, or even watch somebody else do it up close, will recognize what a formidable task it is, especially a salsa band in the age of hip hop.
But on this occasion, a bright Sunday afternoon in June, Aurora bore no resemblance to sharp New York business woman or thoughtful intellectual/writer; rather she looked like a beautiful Puerto Rican country girl dressed in a traditional costume of colorful floral patterns. With a smile that seems bright enough to light up the dark corners of human nature, she is seductively charming on and off the stage in a way that is special with Latinas; either way she is the real deal. As the female voice of Zon Del Barrio, Aurora is a moving singer, an insightful and tuneful songsmith, and a dynamic performer. Singing is a natural with her because she spent years studying classical music as an instrumentalist. Thus she is a well trained musician who became a singer. Her pipes had been tuned and developed singing the catholic mass as the first child to be admitted into the adult choir of her church. But it is only much later in life that she decided to make singing a vocation – of several to be sure.
Since I was equipped with a tape recorder and professional microphone the cops let me get right down in front of the band. That’s when my troubles started because I was standing right in front of the speakers. I was attuned to the rhythm section because I had been listening to their newly released compact disk “Zon Del Barrio: Cortijo’s Tribe,” and playing my drums to the cuts before going to the parade. Hence I was already amped when I got there. Then, Oreste Abrahantes, a brilliant young virtuoso of the Conga drums who is the progeny of both Afro-Cuban and Afro-Puerto Rican parents began to fire up the rhythm. Bouyed and charged by the clave, timbales and cow bell, the Conga drummer rose to the occasion with rhythms that were mui caliente! It didn’t take long before I began to dance the mambo. Once I got started the music became the master and I was a slave to the rhythm!
I had listened to their CD hurriedly but by the second tune on the album I had my congas out and was playing along with the recording. My main man Kwame Braithwaite, who has recorded the second Harlem Renaissance Because my Spanish vocabulary is “mucho poquito” I didn’t really know what the song was about at the time; I hear the voices as if they were instruments, or as if they were scat singing, or just singing syllables. It is the spirit of the music that moves me. As a drummer I am in the same position as a trumpet player in an opera pit orchestra who doesn’t understand a word of the text the singers are singing. It’s all music to me. My job is to make the listeners want to get up off their asses and dance like the devil! However as with any musical composition with lyrics, knowing what the words are expressing provides an additional perspective on the song. And that’s mostly a good thing. I say mostly because sometimes the most passionate music is accompanied by banal or nonsensical lyrics.
In the case of Zon Del Barrio understanding the lyrics is important because it is essential to who they are. Zon’s songs are akin to those of the “Roots Ragee” song poets of Jamaica personified in the late Peter Tosh and Bob Marley, the premier poet of the genre. They are also akin to “knowledge Rappers” like KRS 1, Lakeem Shabazz, Talib Qwali, Mos Def, and Public Enemy. Zon also strikes a rapport with the Calypso song poets of Trinidad, who greatly preceded them all as truth tellers in song - although the calypsonians have long been employing sophisticated poetic techniques like complex allusions, parody, satire, allegory and extended metaphors in free verse. What the lyrics of Zon’s songs have in common with these fabulous fabulists of the spoken word is that they speak truth to power and are not slaves to conventional wisdom, even on matters that their community would rather they remain silent about.
A poignant example of this attitude can be seen in the second cut on the CD, El Negro Bembon, which was actually written by Bobby Capo, and recorded by Cortijo in 1958. It became a smash hit not only in New York, but throughout the Caribbean and South America as well. Before I knew what the lyrics meant I had picked this tune as a favorite off the CD because of the groove. It is just the tempo that I love to play in because it is up tempo and lively. It has the kind of swing that singers love and a congero can make the drums sing if they have the imagination and technique. And the congero on this record, Jose “Cheo” Makambila, makes the most of it; he is always right in the pocket. But neither the infectious rhythm, nor the lovely acoustic guitar solo, or the perfect dancibility of the tune gives any hint of the grotesqueness of its theme. For El Negro Bembon is a song is about the racist murder of a black man because his lips were too big!
The story is at once bizarre and ironic, because the policemen who comes to investigate the unprovoked murder has “big lips too.” But the policeman attempts to hide his lips when he finds out the reason for the murder, and expresses puzzlement that big lips could provoke a man to commit bloody murder. This song pulls the covers off the Latino claim that there is no racial discrimination in their society, that social divisions such as exist is based on class not color. And the intrepid interrogator will soon discover that lips are sealed in the Hispanic community when you try to discuss the color question among Latinos. Yet anyone who watches Spanish language television can see that white supremacy is alive and well in Latin America, the representations of black people is a century behind the images of African Americans in English language television.
The way El Negro Bembon is arranged features a repeating chorus line sung by the back up singers that says: ‘They killed the big lipped Negro and everyone’s crying day and night because that Negro Bembon was loved by everybody. It is a strange song to be performed in such an upbeat manner, but it must be jarring when listened to by Spanish speakers as the repeating chorus shouts out the horror and absurdity of the act -which was inspired by widely held beliefs in the Hispanic community. The fact is that this attitude is so pervasive among Latinos that even a black Hispanic as prominent as Malin Falu has terrible tales of racial discrimination that she personally experienced in her professional life in the Spanish speaking media.
So long as she was on radio her superb command of Spanish won her the love of audiences and advertisers alike. But when she attempted to move into television advertisers and network executives who were never concerned about her color before began to back away. Sometimes this happened when she met with these people who had just assumed that she was white because of her highly cultivated voice and all the silly racist notions they hold about the intelligence of black people. I got an indication of the depth of white supremacist feeling and the contempt for blackness among Dominicans, who now live all around me having migrated into this neighborhood by the hundreds of thousands since I move here thirty years ago, when I studied the rhetoric employed by Jaun Balinguer, a white Dominican who ran against Dr. Pena Gomez, a black Dominican for the presidency of the Dominican Republic. Balinguer called Dr. Gomez and “African Savage” and “a cannibal;” and yet he won!!
Even David Duke, an unreconstructed Nazi, claimed that race had no part in his campaign for the Louisiana governor. This is a measure of how far or Afro-Latin brothers have to go to catch up with where African Americans are. Blacks in Latin American have no counterpart to the over 100 black colleges in the US, or the many newspapers, magazines and radio stations owned or managed by African Americans, no counterparts to Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell or black corporate CEO’s, or the size of the African American middle class. And I could go on. Hence although this disturbing though lively song was written a half century ago is still all too relevant – especiall as there is a shout out to Amadou Diallo in the – an innocent black man who was murdered by NY police in a hail of over seventy bullets. It is intended to call attention to the persistence of this problem of the slaughter of innocent black men.
Another song that deals with a subject many in the Hispanic community – especially the unreconstructed machos – would rather dance around, or just let that sleeping lie. Revolu, cut 15 on the CD, literally means “chaos” and was written by Aurora Flores. It deals with the rampant domestic violence in the Hispanic community, especially among recent immigrants like Dominicans. This phenomenon is agitated by the fact that Hispanic cultures are very male oriented, and the influence of the Catholic Church with its puritanical attitudes toward sex has created a mindset in Latin men which views women as either whores or Madonnas. It is only when viewed in this light that the truly radical stance of the pop singer who calls herself Madonna – a bleached blond working class Italian Catholic girl from the mid-west - yet flaunts the pieties of the Catholic Church, can be fully understood. The result of this whore/madonna syndrome is that women are beaten or even murdered when men feel that their woman has disrespected them. Aurora stands firmly with those Hispanic women who are speaking out in public demonstrations; this is her personal statement on the question.
Aurora purposely chose the Bomba form to render her message because historically Bomba was a music of resistance developed by enslaved Africans in Puerto Rico. However her husband and partner David Fernandez, a highly talented arranger who provide the band’s musical voice was eclectic in the way he combines musical ingredients in the score. The are elements of Reggeton and one can hear jazz licks in David’s piano playing too. There are also elements of Bomba Yuba, which is a more heavily African version of Bomba than the bands traditionally play. And on top of all this there are avant garde synthesizer embellishments. Aurora has cleverly written the lyrics in Spanish and English. They are clearly trying to get this message out to everybody, regardless of age or the limitations of language. And you can feel the anguish in he voice as she sings about the trials and tribulations of abused and murdered women.
Not all of the songs on this CD deal with the grim realities of life. There are novelty songs of comic relief such as Chivo and Tuntuneco. Songs celebrating the beauty of Puerto Rico and the Nuyorican flag like Ay Que Vey and Mi Bandera. And there are songs that mock human vanity and folly, a song about swinging music, and the ballad of Cortijo telling his life story written by Sammy Ayala – who performed with Cortijo – in collaboration with Aurora. All in All this CD is wonderful, just like the band. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be the Album of the Year at the Grammies. In any case I can’t stop dancing as I listen to it; even as I write I am moving to the groove.
That’s the way it was out on Fifth Ave on Parade Day. I was standing in front of the band with the mike to my tape recorder poised near the speakers. And I couldn’t stop dancing. I wasn’t worried about the heat, after all I played football in Florida, and we would began two a day practices August; the hottest month of the year. However while the Florida sun was a killer we were right on the Atlantic ocean so there was always sea breezes to cool your brow once you removed yourself from the direct rays of the sun. Furthermore, I had competed in a Mambo contest sponsored by WBAI on August 16, 2006 which was held outside on Chelsea Piers. I danced with the distinguished Puerto Rican broadcaster Malin Falu, host of “Dialogo Coast to Coast” which is broadcast all over the USA and several Spanish speaking countries abroad. Because she airs at the same time as Oprah Winfrey she is popularly known as “the Spanish Oprah.
The contest can be viewed on You Tube - enter Playthell “El Chocolate” Benjamin in the search engine – and Bernard White, the Program Director at WBAI and my rival in the dance contest, can be seen with the oxygen mask after the first dance. I was unfazed by the heat on that occasion. So I paid no mind to the fact that it was nearly one hundred degrees when the multi-talented pianist/conductor David Fernandez struck up the band and Oreste set the crowd on fire with his red hot conga rhythms. I danced like the devil and didn’t stop until the music stopped. At one point, desperate for a partner in the restricted press area where I stood, I noticed the beautiful vivacious award winning reporter for My 9 and Fox television networks Giovanna Drpic – who is half Hispanic and half German and Croatian, making her the quintessential New Yorker - she was moving and grooving to the music right on the clave.
Giovanna looked like she was dying to bust loose so I grabbed her hand and we got down right there. She was a graceful dancer and an even more gracious lady. We had a ball until her producer reminded her that she was supposed to be covering the bacchanal not reveling in it. But even though they took my beautiful dancing partner away, I just kept right on dancing. The sonic alchemists in Zon Del Barrio had me under their spell and I didn’t stop dancing until they stopped playing.
My 9 Star Gal: Beauty and Brains
Giovanna had all the right Moves!
It was only after the music stopped that I began to crave water. I started walking toward Madison Avenue in the hope of finding a store or café where I could get a drink. The next thing I knew I was being loaded onto an emergency vehicle on my way to the emergency room at Lennox Hill hospital, the police men and women who scraped me up from the pavement said I just collapsed. That’s when I discovered that dancing nonstop to the scintillating rhythms of those ultra-funky Nuyorican Salceros in Zon – which is a play on Son, an acknowledgement of the roots of their music in the Afro-Cuban Son Montuno – can be hazardous to your health!
By: Playthell “El Chocolate” Benjamin
Harlem, June 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Dec. 15, 2007 Interview over NBC's Weekend Today Show
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Related media on Zon del Barrio
The following include press release clips that are features on Zon del Barrio or Aurora Flores.
Aurora Flores writes about Salsa's New Life for The New York's Daily News - Viva Magazine.
Read about Our Beat here on LA Ritmo.com
NY Daily News This link will take you to a profile done on Aurora by the NY Daily News:
Lecture on The Fania All-Stars This is a speech Aurora gave at Mt. Sinai Hospital when they had an exhibit on the Fania All Stars.
Daily News Viva Magazine Aurora Flores continues to write articles and music reviews for the Daily News Viva Magazine. This article is on the Puerto Rican music of BOMBA.
The Village Voice This link will take you to an article Aurora penned on the lack of Latino programming on radio stations published in the Village Voice.
Ecua Jei ! - Ismael Rivera - El Sonero Mayor An Article (a personal recollection) written by Aurora Flores. Read this thorough story about Ismael Rivera (Maelo) and the very interesting times in his life. (Acrobat pdf - 2.6 mb)
Publicity photos and more specific information is available. Please contact us for more specific content.
Aurora & David Fernandez wish to thank the following for their talent, support & contributions to Zon del Barrio:
Sonny Cruz, for his outstanding graphic work and web design
Jerry LaCay for his extraordinary photos that have graced our CD.
Allen Spatz, for his dogged determination in getting the right shot and doing the cover of us for Latin Beat
Luis Osorio who has been coming to our events since we were producing the cultural shows @ Julia de Burgos
Richard Green for his exuberance, joy and passion in his photography of ZDB
Oliver Rios for his photos & graphic arts as well as his heart http://www.oriosdesigns.com/
Raybblan Vargas for her insight, inspiration, brilliance and buoyancy.
Luis Martinez, Mr. White Shoes (zapato blanco) who has been shooting the stars since the beginning of time.
To all of the photographers from Toulouse, France..... ¡Que viva la música!
Please contact Aurora Flores or David Fernandez @ 212.876.1936 or email us at:
aurora@aurora-communications.com