Eddie Palmieri on Cuban music
“There is no other rhythm on the planet that excites me like the structures that came out of Cuba. I learned them intuitively and then I learned them scientifically.”
– Eddie Palmieri
Abakuá
Recommended resource: Ivor Miller’s Youtube channel
At the root of Cuban music is the culture Africans created to adapt, survive and thrive in the brutal circumstances they found themselves in the New World.
One of these Afro-Cuban spiritual systems is Abakuá.
Like everything African and Afro-Cuban, it’s not just music, it’s not just dance, it’s not just a religious service.
This event was filmed in 2008 on Epiphany which is twelve days after Christmas and marks the start of Carnival season. Traditionally, it’s the day the Three Kings paid a visit on newborn Jesus.
On this day, enslaved Africans were permitted to openly celebrate and parade.
Needless to say, their celebration had and has nothing to do with the Christian church.
What is Abakuá?
First, of all it is a living tradition. Though it is sometimes referred to and treated as “folkloric” this designation is a great understatement.
Abakuá is a men’s secret society founded in the port districts of Havana and Matanzas and found nowhere else in the Americas.
It has a direct connection to the Egbo (or Ekpe) leopard society that operated as a form of government in the area now in western Cameroon and southeastern Nigeria.
We went into this history in some detail here previously.
In Cuba, Abakuá has a elaborate and abundant repertoire of stories, songs, costumes, and drums and even its own pictographic writing system and language understood only by initiated members.
Abakuá’s existence was first recorded in 1836 as the importation of kidnapped Africans was accelerating to accommodate the exploding needs of the rapacious sugar industry.
Ivor Miller, who you can learn more about at the link above and appears in the last video below, estimated in the year 2000 that there were 117 Abakuá societies active in Cuba with approximately 20,000 initiated members total.
Militant, defiant, proud and taking no s*** from anybody, in Cuba the Abakuá were about self-preservation via mutual aid and protected their operations and culture with a secrecy that is still impenetrable to outsiders
Not unlike the Sicilian Mafia, the Abakuá controlled one of the roughest places in Cuba (or any country): the docks and as we mentioned in a previous post Cuba’s docks gave birth to rumba.
Quoting New Sublette from “Cuba and Its Music”:
“In those same warehouses worked many rumberos, dancers, drummers, and singers.
Most of the hardest-core rumberos of Matanazas, Havana, and Cádenas were and are Abakuá…
Abakuá-themed material has always been part of the repertoire of rumba. Certain Abakuá dance moves show up in rumba dancing, like the shimmy the male dancer does, reminiscent of the diablito shaking his hips to rattle his string of bells.”
Here’s a short film of an Abakuá performance staged for documentation made in 1962 by Bernabé Hernández and presented by El Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematografico.
Here’s a short video made in Havana in 2016 documenting an Abakuá event hosted by Reinaldo Brito del Valle of the Uriabón Efí lodge of Havana.
Brito, born in 1930, is the composer of many rumbas, including “El Niño Rey” and “Protesta Carabalí”. The video was directed by Mayckell Pedrero and includes an appearance by the scholar Ivor Miller.
Recommended resource: Ivor Miller’s Youtube channel
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.
Los Muñequitos De Matanzas
We’ve been focusing on the golden age of Cuban big bands which means we’ve looked at Cuban musicians who left Cuba and “colonized” places like Mexico City and New York City in the 1940s and 1950s.
It makes sense because, after all, Jazz on the Tube is a jazz site.
Also, as for every subject, there are certain foundational musicians you just have to know.
In a world as rich as Cuban music, we haven’t cover them all, but we’ve made a start.
But now we’re going to focus on Cuba and Cuba today.
Introducing Los Muñequitos de Matanzas…
This video introduces us to a number of important topics:
Rumba – Not to be confused with the popular American dance rhumba
Matanzas – An historically important cultural center of Cuba, sixty-three miles east of Havana by car. It’s been called “The Athens of Cuba.”
Los Muñequitos De Matanzas – One of the great rumba groups of Cuba which has been recording continuously since 1956.
The group is actually a full blown cultural institution as this video shows. It not only performs and records, it also has an active education and training program for young people.
Congahead – This particular video came from the YouTube channel of Latin Percussion, the world’s leading maker of Latin percussion instruments. It is a treasure trove of content.
The roots of rumba
It’s often said that “rumba” means “party.” Robert Farris Thompson says it comes from a verb meaning to “to work it.” I think Thompson’s definition is much closer to the mark.
Rumba is singing, drumming and dancing. It has absolutely nothing to do with the “rhumba” style of ballroom dancing that was invented to cash in on the Cuban music craze of the 1920 and 30s.
Rumba was developed by the dock workers of Havana and Matanzas.
In our age of container shipping, forklifts and modern cranes, it’s easy to forget that until fairly recently everything shipped had to be personally hauled by a human being. This created a huge work force of dockworkers all over the world (now massively reduced by the modern technology.)
In the long slavery era, this work was done in Cuba by enslaved people from Africa. As best as we understand, the rumba was created in the mid 19th century when Cuba was experiencing a particularly virulent form of slavery built around the brutal sugar trade. Mantazas was one of the main centers of this trade.
Who are Los Muñequitos De Matanzas?
Like all great art, you’ll get far more from Los Muñequitos by experiencing them than from hearing someone talk about them, but they do have a fascinating history.
Muñequitos means “little dolls” but it can also mean comic book superheroes and that’s the meaning behind the group’s name .
We pinched this from wikipedia because it tells the story of the groups origins so well.
On October 9, 1952 in the barrio of La Marina, city of Matanzas, Cuba, a group of young rumberos stopped off at their local tavern El Gallo after work. While unwinding over drinks, a song by Arsenio Rodríguez came on the bar’s record player. The drummers began accompanying the song by playing on the counter, on glasses and bottles, using whatever items were at hand. Their performance so impressed the other customers, as well as passers-by, that the men received applause when the song and their accompaniment concluded. It was at that moment when one of the men suggested they form a rumba group to perform at local venues. It was agreed and the rumberos walked over to the house of singer and composer Florencio Calle “Catalino” to enlist his help. After hearing the men’s proposition Catalino told them to return the next day to discuss the matter.
At the meeting the following day, Grupo Guaguancó Matancero was formed. The men agreed that the group would perform rumba and each member would be responsible for bringing his own respective instrument. The original members of Guaguancó Matancero were Florencio Calle “Catalino” (director, guagua), Esteban Lantri “Saldiguera” (vocalist), Juan Bosco (vocalist, claves), Hortensio Alfonso “Virulilla” (vocalist, maraca), Gregorio Díaz “Goyo” (tumba or salidor), Pablo Mesa “Papi” (segundo or tres dos) and Angel Pellado “Pelladito” (quinto). Later that year the great batalero (‘batá drummer’) and quintero (‘quinto drummer’) Esteban Vega “Chachá” joined the group.
Although the members were all genuine “street” rumberos, they began performing on stage from the group’s inception. Saldiguera and Virulilla who had sung in son septetos (‘septets’), brought that genre’s style of harmony singing to the group. The percussion was of a very high quality, with the drums carrying on “conversations” of unprecedented inventiveness and virtuosity. The drums were tuned much lower back then, sounding like funky bass lines, with the rhythmically elusive singing “floating” on top. Initially, the group only performed guaguancó, but in ensuing years they interpreted yambú, columbia and abakuá as well.
If you’re curious about the little girl – and who wouldn’t be? – she was four years old at the time of this filming and is a family member of one of the group’s founding members.
Will Afro-Cuban culture will survive in Cuba? She is a partial answer.
When touring western Cuba with Ned Sublette in March of 2016, we got to see Los Muñequitos perform in their home town, on their home street, right in front of their school.
It was pure magic and if that had been the only thing that happened on the trip, the whole trip would have been worthwhile.
The very first short segment of this “highlights reel” clip shows members of the dance school performing that evening.
Archival footage of Los Muñequitos
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.
A night at the Palladium Ballroom
The clip starts out with the recollections of two Palladium Ballroom dancers. Then we go into a short film made about the place in 1955.
Some perspective for younger people:
1. Film was still an expensive and unwieldy technology back in the 1950s so rough as this footage is, it’s great someone made this film of the place in its prime.
2. If everyone looks overly dressed up, this is how people put themselves together in those days when they went out. The jeans and t-shirt, ditch-digger-on-a-break look was still a decade away.
What was the Palladium Ballroom?
Like CBGBs for punk rock and the Birdland for bebop, the Palladium was THE place for Latin music in New York City in the 1950s.
It was a second-floor dance hall at the corner of 53rd Street and it was huge. It could fit one thousand dancing couples.
How it started
Latin orchestras shared the bill with mainstream jazz orchestras throughout New York City in the 40s and 50s, but “Latin” places were all uptown in Spanish Harlem and the Bronx.
In 1948, event promoter Federico Pagani approached the Palladium’s owners Max and Helen Hyman with an idea to bring new energy to the place which at that point was in commercial decline.
The idea was a Sunday matinee featuring Latin music exclusively. At that time, this was the first club to try this “downtown.”
From the opening night, it was a huge success with dancers, but there was an initial glitch. Max Hyman was worried about the number of black and Latino dancers who were showing up.
While New York did not have the same kind of Jim Crow laws of the south, there was an informal segregation especially downtown.
Pagani reportedly said to Hyman words to the effect: “What do you care more about black or green?”
Hyman chose the green and New York City’s (perhaps America’s) fully first integrated dance hall came into being and Latin music took over the Palladium seven days a week.
What it was like
The music was non-stop and off-the-hook starting with the orchestras of the “Big Three”: Machito, Tito Rodríguez, and Tito Puente.
Arsenio Rodríguez performed there as did Celia Cruz, Beny Moré, Pérez Prado, La Lupe, and countless others.
Mass dance classes were given to the crowds that attended.
Jazz cats loved the place and sometimes sat in with the featured bands.
A short list of those seen there: Dizzy Gillespie, George Shearing, Cal Tjader, Buddy Rich, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Krupa, Dave Brubeck. Paul Desmond and Joe Morello.
Celebrities loved it too: Marlon Brando, who occasionally sat in on bongos; Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, George Hamilton and Jerry Lewis.
The only people who didn’t like it were the top brass at the NYPD who, in their role as the scourge of black culture in NYC, harassed the place constantly.
A huge drug raid in 1961 led to the Palladium losing its liquor license, a financially crippling blow. That and cultural shifts brought in by rock and roll led the its closing in 1966.
The feature length film, The Mambo Kings, recreates the Palladium’s golden years Hollywood style.
Bronx-born Orlando Marin, a Palladium orchestra leader still performs regularly in the New York City area. If you get a chance to see him, do not miss it.
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.
“Keep jazz alive?”- Here’s the best way
It’s hard to look at the music “industry” and not conclude that there’s a conspiracy to elevate garbage music to global monopoly status and leave everyone else to fight over the crumbs.
What’s fascinating is that in spite of the multi-billion dollar efforts of the small handful of corporations that control music distribution worldwide, good music like jazz survives.
And what’s really encouraging is that young people, though near-drowned in a barrage of sonic nonsense, are still discovering jazz, embracing it, and making it their own.
The great news is that young cats like the amazing young pianist Joey Alexander are just the tip of the iceberg
All over the US and around the world, there’s a movement to make jazz education and the experience of playing in a jazz orchestra available to young people and the results – when these programs receive support – is electrifying.
You might ask: “Why haven’t I heard about this?”
Well, it goes back to the “commercial” thing.
High school jazz orchestras don’t cut records, they don’t tour and they don’t have the money, or inclination, to promote themselves on jazz radio or in jazz industry magazines.
You know the old saying: “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Clearly, these bands are making a sound in their home towns and that’s a very good thing.
But the world would be a better place if they were making a “joyful noise” to a larger audience, wouldn’t you agree?
The history of jazz is the history of great educators…
“Captain” Walter Dyett of DuSable High School in Chicago taught (make sure you’re sitting down):
Gene Ammons, Nat King Cole, Jerome Cooper, Richard Davis, Bo Diddley, Dorothy Donegan, Von Freeman, John Gilmore, Johnny Griffin, Eddie Harris, Johnny Hartman, Milt Hinton, Fred Hopkins, Joseph Jarman, Leroy Jenkins, Clifford Jordan, Julian Priester, Sun Ra, Wilbur Ware, and Dinah Washington.
G.A. Baxter of I.M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth, Texas taught:
Ornette Coleman, John Carter, King Curtis, Prince Lasha, Charles Moffett, Dewey Redman, Julius Hemphill, and Ronald Shannon Jackson.
Peter Davis of New Orleans reached out and provided musical education to countless young people, many who could not afford lessons or instruments and came from troubled homes.
Two of them, Louis Armstrong and Dave Bartholomew, literally changed the world.
As they say in the military: “Once is a happenstance, twice is a coincidence, three times is a conspiracy” – in this case a positive conspiracy.
It’s a simple equation really: No great education, no great musicians, no great music
So who is covering this flowering of jazz education in America and around the world?
With the exception of an occasional short piece in an industry magazine or a documentary here and there, this movement is taking place completely off radar.
In other words, if you don’t already know about it, the chances of you learning about it are slim – even if you’re a passionate jazz fan.
We’d like to do something about that.
Here’s what Jazz on the Tube would like to do – and we need your help to do it:
Priority #1: Become an active dues paying member of the Jazz Educators Network (JEN), the world’s largest organization of jazz educators
Priority #2: Participate in JEN’s annual conference this year January 4 to 7, 2017 so we can meet with the world’s largest concentration of high school music directors, youth jazz orchestras, and the musicians themselves (by lucky coincidence our friends from the youth jazz orchestra will be attending this year.)
Priority #3: Attend this year’s Havana’s “Jo” Jazz Festival Nov 16 to Nov 23, 2016 which is Cuba’s Caribbean-wide jazz education conference and competition. While in Havana we’ll be able to take care of other Jazz on the Tube business including opening up a travel infrastructure of guest houses and guides especially for jazz fans.
All this will make it possible for us to cover this vitally important part of the jazz scene in a serious way.
Jazz on the Tube already provides free to the world:
* the Internet’s largest annotated collection of classic jazz videos
* the only up-to-date online source of information on jazz clubs, jazz festivals and jazz education programs worldwide
* the only place to get the up-to-date weekly jazz listings of Havana’s jazz clubs (you can’t even find this in Havana!)
Unlike some of our other ventures which we’ve been able to fund with “sweat equity”, airlines and hotels cost real money.
Because we’ve already broken the ice in Havana and New Orleans (where JEN is being held this year), we’ve cracked the code on how to travel as cheaply as possible in these places, but to accomplish all these ventures is still going to cost a few thousands of dollars when all the smoke clears.
If you think that creating a news and support service for jazz education is a worthwhile activity, let us know by making a contribution to the effort.
If we can fund all three efforts, it’d be great.
Thanks for any help you can offer.
Click here to contribute:
Support Jazz on the Tube’s Jazz Education reporting efforts
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
PS: If you’re not in a position to support these efforts financially, your spiritual support is appreciated every bit as much.
To quote Duke Ellington: “We love you madly” – and we’re not kidding about that!
Chris Behrens and the Beloit Memorial High School Jazz Orchestra
Interview
Download the mp3 here
Videos
This is the 2014 Essentially Ellington performance of Duke Ellington’s “Black and Tan Fantasy” I referenced in the interview.
Here’s the orchestra’s 2016 performance at Essentially Ellington.
Info about how to support this community’s extraordinary work in jazz education
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
