The Sensual Music
The Sensual Music
of Exiles
Around the
San Francisco
Salsa Scene
Willy Lizárraga
but the heat comes from within. The music entices you to
celebrate, forget everything else and dance right on the beat. The feeling
is as if nothing exists beyond the congas' elusive gravity, the relentless
roll of the bongos and the stubborn syncopation of the bass.
The piano keeps it all cool without taking away the heat. The trumpets and
trombones touch the sky of our most secret yearnings. The chorus repeats
something in Spanish, something like usted no puede pasar, compay, la fiesta
no es pa' los feos, a foreign language, though at the same time from here-it
springs from any street-corner in any run-down neighborhood where history
is written in salsa.
Any type of music that comes from down and under and now gets to be played
in flashy, "sophisticated" places, like jazz, like tango or flamenco,
has a mystery beyond words and is alive, not only because people like it,
but because it is a way of life.
The odd thing is that salsa and Latin jazz are also a product of exile.
That is, all of the above plus another unmistakable ingredient called uprootedness-legal
or illegal aliens in a foreign land, in a foreign tongue, probably the most
common experience in the history of the peoples of this country. Salsa evolved
in New York, of course, but also in Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco.
The players are mostly Puerto Ricans and Cubans, but also Dominicans, Panamanians,
and Venezuelans joined by musicians from all over the Americas and Europe,
all of them playing and dancing away their sorrows so the gods know who
they are and what stuff they are made of: Oye mi canto (Listen to my song).
"I cannot hear Tito Puente or Tito Rodríguez or Machito or any
of the great mambo bands of that era without seeing my parents dancing.
They would go downstairs after dinner, down to the basement, half of which
my father had converted into a small but complete ballet studio." While
Russ Hamer talks to me about the privilege of having grown up in New York
with parents that loved to mambo, he shows me photographs of his parents
in the 40's and 50's. In one picture, his mother, a stunningly beautiful
professional dancer, embodies the spirit of mambo with such grace and panache
that you could easily believe that she was born in Havana, Cuba and not
in Warsaw, Poland. What fascinates me about what is now called salsa and
Latin music is its inclusive character. Provided you can feel the beat in
your hips, there is no ethnic or linguistic barrier."
Russ gives salsa classes in his house on Fridays. "The hip thing can
be an insoluble problem, though. I've had students who were simply incapable
of feeling the beat. Most of the time, however, I manage to make them walk
on the beat. Once they can walk to this music, dancing to it comes easier.
I'd say that for the most part I can teach anyone to salsa, which is essentially
like teaching people to skip." Russ then begins to show me how he skips
right on the beat.
"In the early sixties my mother went to the Dominican Republic for
the first time. You know what she told me when she got back? 'Well, do you
know, Russ, that you can get pregnant dancing merengue in Santo Domingo
with your clothes on?'"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. .
When Carlos Federico came to the Bay Area from Panama in 1948, there was
not much salsa going on (the musical term "salsa" was not even
in existence). In the 50's, however, Pérez Prado (a.k.a. Cara de
Foca) lead the mambo explosion all over the Americas. "A few mambo
clubs began to open. Oakland had two or three huge ballrooms to mambo in
and San Francisco opened some very classy dance clubs, especially on Broadway.
Who could forget the great Copacabana Club?"
Carlos Federico recalls the past and the conversation then moves on to his
endless and sometimes chaotic Latin-jazz workshops. Thanks to them, many
local musicians have the opportunity to learn the rudiments of Latin jazz
and then move on to be key figures in the local salsa and Latin-jazz scene,
like pianist Rebeca Mauleón and percusionist Karl Perazzo.
During the 50s while Carlos Federico faithfully played the piano every Sunday
in the Gold Room of Oakland's California Hotel, Benny Velarde (at the time
Cal Tjader's timbal player) played in the Black Oak in North Beach. "Chepito
Areas, Armando Peraza, the Escovedo brothers also go back to those times
when we all were establishing Latin music as an essential part of the Bay
Area's night life," Benny Velarde remembers effortlessly, as if those
times were for him somehow part of the present, and rock or disco or topless
clubs hadn't replaced the Latin music clubs in North Beach.
On KPOO, Chata Gutiérrez hosts the longest living radio salsa show
in the Bay Area. Every saturday afternoon for the last 23 years she's been
on the air, playing, as she likes to say, "salsa de la buena."
Born and raised in the Mission District, la Chata personifies salsa in its
most affable, punchy and unassuming quality. Her radio program, Con Clave,
just received the Tom Donahue Award for the best program in California public
radio. When asked about the state of salsa in the Bay Area she's conviced
that it is steadily growing. "You can dance salsa almost every night
of the week. Almost every month there is a new salsa space opening up here
or there. Many don't last, of course. But there is plenty of activity."
Besides doing radio, Chata DJs at Kimball's San Francisco on Fridays, Sundays
at Bahia and Wednesdays at Kimball's East. "I don't play the same salsa
on the radio as in the clubs. There are alternative salsa spaces as well
as mainstream ones. I play accordingly. And I don't play salsa monga."
Here we run into a puzzling irony: romantic salsa (or monga, as they call
it in Puerto Rico) has made the genre more mainstream than ever, particularly
in the Spanish-speaking world; at the same time it has made salsa bubble-gummy
and predictable to the bone, with a combination of sappy lyrics, decaffeinated
percussion and formulaic arrangements.
"Fortunately, the romantic wave is going away. Slowly, but surely.
And I'm speaking simply as a musician that likes to have fun playing."
So, what's next? I ask Paul Lyons, trombone player, prolific salsa arranger
and transcriber.
"Who knows, but it seems that we are going back to a more traditional,
hot salsa, certainly a lot more fun for those of us who play out three times
a week."
Ramón Estévez, aka Monchi, born and raised in Cuba, engineer
by profession and sonero at heart, (a sonero is a singer who can improvise
on the beat as he sings along, a true poet in the rhapsodic tradition of
the word), also agrees with Paul Lyons. "But let me point out, regardless
of what is fashionable, that in the Bay Area there are problems that have
to be addressed: no record companies and very limited originality."
Edgardo Gambón, singer, percussionist, composer and bandleader, comes
from an unusual place in the salsa planet. He was born in Uruguay. Not much
salsa going on there. Despite his roots, or maybe because of them, he happens
to lead one of the few salsa bands that plays original themes in the Bay
Area.
"The business as we know it is cut-throat. You play with three or four
bands in order to survive. Consequently, the level of musicianship is high,
but the bands all tend to sound the same. Furthermore, most of them are
top-40 bands. They don't take many chances. The absence of record companies
furthers even more the lack of originality. The problem is universal anyway:
how to find the balance between what the market says will sell and your
creativity."
Nowadays Edgardo Gambón y su Nueva Candela are working on an original
repertoire. Three musicians have been added to the band and-the big change-instead
of playing congas and singing, Edgardo Gambón leaves the percussion
aside to focus on singing.
"For me the challenge is to do music that is danceable and at the same
time has something to say, music that is hot and lyrics that appeal to the
imagination, to the soul and make you think." Guillermo Céspedes
speaks softly, slowly, unusual for a Cuban. Piano player, tresista, arranger,
composer, he leads the only Bay Area band playing traditional Afro-Cuban
folk music "with a contemporary, jazzy twist," and perhaps the
only salsa group from the Bay Area that has a niche in the record industry.
Their latest record, Vivito y coleando, has been praised for its musicianship,
originality and soulful sound.
"Within the Bay Area we are a very different band. We fit more into
the World Music category. Our repertoire is derived from an Afro-Cuban tradition
and we don't care much about the commercial stuff. Fortunately, we have
a faithful audience in the Bay Area. Last year we toured Europe for the
first time. This summer we'll do even a bigger European tour."
Guillermo Céspedes then points to what he believes to be a crucial
point for all musicians doing Latin music here: "We are all doing music
out of context. The son comes from Cuba as jazz comes from here. There is
a big distance to bridge. I try to teach all I know to young musicians.
We have organized several workshops in Tijuana with top Cuban musicians.
The point is to keep the connection with the Cuban roots alive. The rest
comes from the heart."
The orgasmic montuno, after having reached its paroxysm (horns, piano, congas,
bass, timbal, clave, campana, sonero and dancers meshed into a massive outburst
of sensual joy) repeats itself one more time and you know the song is ending.
The ritual celebration of our capacity to celebrate has been placed at the
center of our experience, yet, that too has to end. Life awaits us with
all its pettiness and banality at the end of the last song of the night,
just around the corner. Se acabó la fiesta. Well, until next time.
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