This is a clip from the film “El Milagro de Candeal” (The Miracle of Candeal), part documentary, part cinematic parable by Spanish director Fernando Trueba, the maker of “Calle 54.”
The film is about how music and social action transformed a notorious slum in the Brazilian in Bahia (a state on the northeastern into a thriving thriving community socially and economically under the leadership of singer, songwriter and instrumentalist Carlinhos Brown.
Bebo works out on the Cuban classic “El Mansiero”, the 1930 that helped kickstart the US passion for Cuban music.
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
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The story of Cuban music is also the story of the Havana-New York connection.
And look, you can’t talk about New York without talking about the beautiful Bronx.
And you can’t talk about the Bronx without talking about the beautiful Puerto Rican community and its incalculable contribution to American music.
Today we leave the bandstand and visit the workshop of a great artisan of Latin musical instruments Jorge Calixto Rivera.
We borrowed this from a 2006 article about Don Cali.
A native of Puerto Rico, Mr. Rivera was a musician “when I was born,” he said. His father was a carpenter and a guitar maker.
“Everybody in my house was playing guitars,” he added. “I made my own drums with pieces of wood I stole from my father.”
Arriving in Highbridge (Bronx) in 1958, he began working as an auto mechanic and performing as a percussionist. “My first bells, I made them in my apartment,” he said.
Mr. Rivera opened the shop soon after, when he was kicked out of his apartment because of the noise late at night. “A jigsaw and brrrm-brrrm, metal tools,” Mr. Rivera said, laughing. “The neighbors, they called the police at least three times on me.”
Before retiring from performing last year (2005), Mr. Rivera had toured the United States and Europe and played in places all over New York, including Carnegie Hall, and had played off and on for more than 40 years with the guitar virtuoso Yomo Toro. He speaks in musical onomatopoeia, replacing nouns, verbs and adjectives with “Bang!” “Boom!” and “A bangiddy-boom!”
This archetypal Cuban instrument was developed in Oriente, eastern Cuba.
Understanding a little about it will explode your appreciation of Cuban music exponentially.
Want more?
Of course, you do!
– 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
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Last week we dropped in on a Changüí party in Oriente (eastern Cuba.)
We witnessed a friendly and sincere dispute between a young rapper from Havana and a Changüisero.
Today we go back to the music and learn how Changüí lyrics are improvised and why there’s more to it than meets the eye.
– 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
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If you don’t speak Spanish and the subtitles aren’t working and you’d like to see what they are singing, you can click on the upper left hand corner of the video and be taken to YouTube to see a subtitled version. (But remember to come back!)
Seventy-six-year-old Cuban street musician Miguel Del Morales, known as El Gallo (The Rooster), travels around Cuba with his guitar, making music in the homes of friends, in bars, and on street corners, in courtyards and stairwells. His rich voice, colored by a lifetime of cigarettes and rum, weathered by the sun and rain, bespeaks the joys and sufferings of his countrymen. An urban troubadour, Del Morales has been called “a living memory of Cuban bolero.”
At one point, he visits a Changüí party.
Here’s some info from wikipedia about Changüí:
Changüí is a style of Cuban music which originated in the early 19th century in the eastern region of Guantánamo Province, specifically Baracoa. It arose in the sugar cane refineries and in the rural communities populated by slaves. Changüí combines the structure and elements of Spain’s canción and the Spanish guitar with African rhythms and percussion instruments of Bantu origin. Changüí is considered a predecessor of son montuno (the ancestor of modern salsa), which has enjoyed tremendous popularity in Cuba throughout the 20th century.
Changüí is related to the other regional genres of nengón and kiribá and is descended from nengón. Technically, the changüi ensemble consists of: marímbula, bongos, tres, güiro (or guayo) and one or more singers.[ Changüi does not use the Cuban key pattern (or guide pattern) known as clave.The tres typically plays offbeat guajeos (ostinatos), while the guayo plays on the beat.
– 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
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An excerpt from the documentary “La Herrería de Sirique” about blacksmith shop/performance space that flourished in Havana in the 1960s until it was closed down in 1968.
Born in 1939 in Caibarién, Cuba, the director of “La Herrería de Sirique” Héctor Veitía graduated from the University of Havana in Cuban studies and began his film career as an assistant director in 1961, directing his first documentary in 1963.
After years of documentary filmmaking, in 1990 Veitía became head of the International Workshops of the International School of Cinema and Television of San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba.
From the series shot at Sirique’s blacksmith workshop, January 1967, by Ernesto Fernández Courtesy Ernesto Fernández
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We found this photo with annotations on the outstanding 
Thelonious Monk