Bobby Sanabria explains what’s in store for the audience this Monday, October 23 at Poisson Rouge in New York City: an unprecedented meeting of Jazz and Latin superstars to benefit Puerto Rico.
David La Mole Ortiz, Puerto Rican conga master, filmed at his home in Puerto Rico. His students include Giovanni Hidalgo, Anthony Carillo, Richie Flores, and Jimmy Morales.
Puerto Rico is part of the United States and all Puerto Ricans are American citizens.
As of this writing only 18 of the island’s 60 hospitals are operating and only 9 of its 52 waste water facilities are. Food, water, and medical services are in short supply for over 3,000,000 people.
From reports I am reading, help has been very slow in coming and many towns and villages have yet to receive any help at all of over 10 days out.
Jazz on the Tube will be contributing 100% of its subscription fees for the month of October to Pregones Theater/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater to provide emergency survival grants to artists and their families in Puerto Rico.
We encourage you to make a generous contribution as well.
The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater was founded in 1967. Pregones Theater was founded in 1979. Both groups have collaborated closely with artists in Puerto Rico for decades and are staffed by serious, reliable people who we trust without reservation.
100% of your contribution will be sent to Puerto Rico to aid an artist (musicians, actors, visual artists etc.) Contributions of any size, large or small, are welcome.
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.
The strongest storm to strike Cuba in more than 80 years ravaged infrastructure throughout the country, collapsing the power grid and damaging crops after it slammed ashore late Friday. In the keys along the northern coast, it battered beach resorts popular with foreign tourists and knocked out the airport they use.
A tourism boom in Cuba over the past few years sparked by warming relations with the West has helped sustain the economy. Cuba is still labouring under a 57-year U.S. trade embargo and suffering from a steep decline in subsidized oil from its crisis-stricken Socialist ally Venezuela.
Official data – which gives heavy weighting to Cuba’s universal free healthcare and education – shows hotels and restaurants account for just 4.4 percent of the roughly $90 billion-a-year economy, but they are a vital earner of hard currency.
A 23 percent rise in foreign visitors to Cuba helped the economy return to growth in the first half of 2017, the government said, after it tipped into recession in 2016.
The outlook has darkened in the second half of the year.
First U.S. President Donald Trump said he was tightening restrictions on Americans travelling to Cuba. Then the Cuban government said last month it would not hand out new licenses for much of the private sector until it had “perfected” its functioning.
Then Irma arrived, grazing along the island’s coast from east to west. Packing sustained winds of more than 157 miles (253 km) per hour, it pummelled the northern keys, though it left the biggest beach resort area of Varadero mostly intact.
The keys – whose pristine beaches are home to around a quarter of Cuba’s four- and five-star hotels – are now littered with felled trees and lamp posts, animal corpses and shredded furniture, according to state-run media.
Damage in the agricultural sector will both weigh on state finances as well as tighten food supply in the short term. Fuller reservoirs due to Irma’s torrential rains could in the long run prove advantageous after a severe drought.
Some 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) of sugarcane – an area roughly twice the size of Houston – were affected to different degrees, the state sugar monopoly said.
Forty percent of mills were damaged in the industry that remains one of Cuba’s most important in terms of employment and export earnings.
Even though Cuba had rushed to harvest what it could before Irma hit, other crops such as platano and rice had also reportedly been affected, said Laura Melo, the Cuba representative for the United Nations’ World Food Programme.
“Some of these areas were already seriously affected by drought so this is an accumulation of shocks to Cuba’s capacity to produce food, both in terms of income and availability of food,” said Melo.
Looking ahead, Cuba will need to repair tens of thousands of houses as well as roads, bridges, public buildings and the power grid. Irma also damaged a thermoelectric plant that provides a fifth of the country’s electricity.
“If this year, the budget deficit was estimated at around 12 percent,” said Cuban economist Omar Everleny. “That will undoubtedly have increased with these enormous losses.”
Reporting by Marc Frank, Sarah Marsh and Nelson Acosta; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Andrew Hay
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
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There are four major African cultural and spiritual influences alive and thriving in Cuba today: Palo (Congo), Abakuá (from the Carabalí), Arará (from Dahomey, now Benin), and Regla de Ocaha, also called La Regla de Ifá or Lucumi, most widely known as Santeria (Oyo Empire, now Nigeria.)
First, a highly relavent quote which I’ve heard on tape, but have never seen in text on the Internet. Here it is for the first time in print:
“Playing a musical instrument is a form of worship – and I’ve been worshipping all my life.”
– John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie
This quote explains more about the African approach to music than any hundred volumes can (though I think Johan Sebastian Bach would be in agreement with it too.)
Santeria
Santeria is a serious subject that deserves serious consideration. A book that many hold in high regard and was written by an Oba (an experienced Santeria priest) is “Walking with the Night” by Raul Canizares. The book comes with a brief glossary and bibliography.
Santeria originated in what is now Nigeria and is the most widespread of the African cultural and spiritual traditions in Cuba.
The name of this performance is “Osain del Monte.” It’s named after one of the orishas of Santeria in Cuba, Osain (in Africa “Osayin”), the orisha of healing herbs and all plants and vegetation.
Orishas are deities, spirits, gods, saints who mediate between human beings and God Almighty.
There are many. Here are just a few of the ones that made it from Africa to Cuba:
Eleguá, Lord of the Crossroads (and a playful trickster). Red and black.
Ogún, The Lord of Metals. Green and black.
Yemaya, The Owner of the Seas. Blue and white.
Ochún, The Queen of the Rivers. Gold.
Changó, Lord of Fire and Lightning (and music and drumming). Red and white.
Orula, Master Diviner. Yellow and green.
Babalú-Ayé, Disease and healing. Walks with a crutch.
Obatalá, Creator of the world and all humans. White.
Oyá, The Owner of the Wind. Rainbow.
Each orisha has its own costume and array of elaborate rhythms and songs and movements and dance. In Africa, they even had their own drums, but in Cuba all the orishas use Changó’s drum.
Based on the color hints in the short list of orishas above, see how many you can identify in this performance.
The Oyo Empire
Santeria originated in the Oyo Empire (Yorubaland), now within the boundaries of Nigeria.
What was this kingdom like before it was destroyed?
First, it was the most urban of traditional African cultures.
Here’s what the remnants looked like to the American missionary, R.H. Stone who visited the Yorubaland city of Abeokuta in the middle of the 19th century:
What I saw disabused my mind of many errors in regard to Africa.
The city extends along the bank of the Ogun for nearly six miles and has a population of approximately 200,000…
They were well dressed and industrious providing everything their physical comfort required.
The men are builders, blacksmiths, iron-smelters, carpenters, calabash-carvers, weavers, basket-makers, hat-makers, traders, barbers, tanners, tailors, farmers and workers in leather and morocco…they make razors, swords, knives, hoes, bill-hooks, axes, arrow-heads, stirrups…
…Women…spin, weave trade, cook, and dye cotton fabrics. They also make soap, dyes, palm oil, nut-oil, all the native earthenware, and many other things used in the country.
Vast looting and destruction by Europeans removed much of the evidence of this civilization (much like the Roman’s calculated eradication of Carthage), but the statuary that survives shows that this was a very sophisticated society indeed – as does its singing, drumming and dance which lives today.
Bronze sculpture of 14th century Yoruba ruler, City of Ife (Nigeria)
Terracotta head 12-14th century City of Ife (Nigeria)
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
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Thanks.
August 2017, Jazz on the Tube brought Havana jazz educator Camilo Moreira to New York City and the Bronx to experience US jazz and meet his Latin jazz “uncles” and “cousins” in the U.S. first hand for the first time. (Camilo has been up before but always with heavy work loads that didn’t permit him to do any of his own explorations.)
Bobby Sanabria kindly took us around the Bronx to learn about the mostly unknown history of this most important and under-appreciated hotbed for musical innovation in America. We also hit the clubs and other resources like the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, the Bronx Music Heritage Center and the Schomburg Center in Harlem.
The Bronx: One of the most innovative music communities on earth.
Coltrane, Monk, Miles, Dizzy, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, and others all found audiences in the borough’s vast network of live music venues as did Machito, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, Celia Cruz, Mongo Santamaria, and many others.
Bobby Sanabria, Mike Amadeo, and Camilo at Casa Amadeo. Amadeo, proprietor of the oldest Latin music store in the Bronx, is the author of over 300 songs written for and performed by the likes of Celia Cruz, Danny Rivera and Cheito Gonzalez.
An original mint condition disk of the super hit of 1930, “El Manisero” (The Peanut Vendor), the first million seller in Latin music history.
The remaining facade of one of over one hundred live theaters, concert halls and night clubs that used to dot the Bronx.
The South Bronx in 1976 when presidential Jimmy Carter candidate visited for a photo op. Devastated by highways built through the community, bank redlining, the heroin epidemic launched by the Vietnam War and calculated government neglect, this immigrant and working class community was plunged into social and economic chaos. The sense of unease felt by the outsiders, including New York City’s mayor at the time, is palpable in this photo.
The Puerto Rican community fought back against long odds on many fronts. The “Three Sisters” (Las Tres Hermanas) Evelina Lopez Antonetty, Lillian Lopez, and Elba Cabrera took leadership roles in the arts, libraries and the public school system demanding and winning equal treatment for the Bronx.
Bobby shares some details of the history of the Bronx’s Puerto Rican community at the Bronx Music Heritage Center where he is Co-Artistic Director.
Camilo stands with Las Tres Hermanas in front of the Casita Maria Community Center.
Here’s the text of the plaque Camilo is standing in front of in the first picture:
This neighborhood has been the incubator to more different styles of music than any other area in New York City. A home for Jazz, Doo Wop, R&B, and Latin music in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, the area continues to be a home to many of the innovators of Hip Hop.
On any given night from the 1940’s through the 60’s, one could see and hear jazz legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Maxine Sullivan, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, Helen Merrill, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, Nancy Wilson, Henry “Red” Allen and Elmo Hope perform in any one of the area’s many music venues.
These clubs, such as Blue Morocco, Club 845, The Tropicana, The McKinley Theater, Freddie’s, The Embassy Ballroom and The Hunt’s Point Palace also gave rise to Doo-Wop and R&B greats such as the Chantels, The Crickets, The Limelighters, Arthur Crier, The Chords, The Morrisania Revue, The Wrens, Mickey and Sylvia and the Jimmy Castor Bunch. Local Latin Jazz and Salsa stars who could also be heard here included Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, Machito, Celia Cruz and Mongo Santamaria.
These celebrated musicians lived, worked and played here and pioneered new genres of music and dance that continue to inspire future generations.
