American Masters Cachao: Uno Mas

American Masters Cachao: Uno Mas

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CUBA'S TIN PAN ALLEY 1947

Life Magazine reported, "Cuba's Tin Pan Alley: From Havana's shabbiest cabarets and voodoo lodges pours an endless flood of sultry rhythms, which are danced to all over the world, by: Winthrop Sargent 6 October 1947:

In 1930, on the heels of the stock-market crash, a wailing, bombilating Cuban tune called The Peanut Vendor hit Broadway and set America's feet and hips squirming in the intricacies of a new dance-the rumba. The significance of this event in the history of U.S. mores at first seemed slight. Prognosticators noted the trend, attributed it to depression-frayed nerves and gave it a year or so to peter out. But in the course of a decade the rhumba had not only shown that it was here to stay, it had become the basis of a huge American industry. Latin-American dance bands equipped with maracas and bongos elbowed U.S. jazz bands in nightclubs and ballrooms from New York to San Francisco. Rumba specialists like Xavier Cugat made fortunes in Afro-Latin rhythm. In one year (1946) Americans paid Arthur Murray nearly $14 million to teach them the dance. Rumba enthusiasts still account for more than 60% of his enormous business.

The Peanut Vendor, which started it all, was followed by a steady stream of similar Cuban song hits, which began nosing the conventional American fox trots from their top positions on Tin Pan Alley's best-seller lists. Small Cuban farmers neglected sugar cane and tobacco to raise gourds that could be manufactured into maracas. Music began to rival sugar, cigars and rum as one of Cuba's leading exports, and the American man in the street, buying it in vast quantities every time he got near a juke box, became its leading consumer. Of all the popular music played today over the U.S. air waves, on juke boxes and in Hollywood movies, approximately 20% is Latin-American, and nearly all of that 20% comes from the small island of Cuba.

Though Cubans are gratified by this increasing demand, they are quick to point out that there is nothing new about their trade in musical exports. Economically Cuba may be just another so-called banana republic. Politically it may be a hotbed of tropical instability. But musically it has rivaled New York as the popular musical capital of the Western Hemisphere for nearly a hundred years. Little Cuba's amazing influence on the world's popular music started in the early 19th Century when an itinerant Spaniard named Sebastian Yradier settled in Havana, listened to the languid, cajoling tunes of the natives and wrote a tune called El Areglito. El Areglito became the first habanera.

Imported to Spain, the habanera became a standard feature of Spanish folk music, and a generation later Georges Bizet wrote one that would up as the most popular tune in France's most popular opera, Carmen. Yradier followed up El Areglito with the old Cuban favorite La Paloma, which was commissioned by Mexico's Emperor Maximilian and has served as a model for Latin-American tunes for three generations. Somewhere in the 19th Century, according to scholars, Cubans also invented the tango, which they exported to Argentina, giving the Argentinians what has since become their most characteristic form of national folk music. The rumba and the conga came later. But these are merely the most notable of Cuba's recent musical contributions to the world. For home consumption Cubans produce a clattering assortment of sons, guarachas, danzons, puntos and boleros that still keep the hot Havana nights in a continuous uproar of melody. The curious thing about all this Cuban music is that there is nothing generically Cuban about it. Its music is written and played in a hybrid musical language that is part Spanish and part African Negro. Its melodies usually echo the sultry songs that were brought to Cuba from Latin and Moorish Spain. Its rhythms are descended from the tom-tom beats of the African jungle.

Afro-Cuban Pérez Prado: Birth of the Mambo

Mambo Mexicano

In 1947, Prado left Cuba for reasons that are not completely clear. In his unpublished biography of Prado, Michael Mcdonald-Ross quotes Rosendo Ruiz-Quevedo as saying that Prado's incorporation of North American jazz into the mambo was fiercely resisted by certain elements of the Cuban musical establishment. Especially enraged was Fernando Castro, the local agent of the Southern Music Publishing Company and Peer International which had a monopoly of Cuban music publishing at the time. Mcdonald-Ross wrote, "Castro denounced Prado by stating that he was adulterating Cuban music with jazz. As a result, Prado's arranging assignments ended and, unable to continue to work in Cuba, he left, eventually to settle in Mexico." When Prado left Cuba in 1947, he embarking on tours which took him first to Buenos Aires, Argentina, then to Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Mcdonald-Ross called these tours "unrewarding," but other accounts say that he won the adulation of teenage dance fans, causing traffic jams and near riots wherever he played.

In 1948, Prado settled in Mexico City which, along with Vera Cruz, was a popular destination for expatriate Cubans. There he formed his own band and established himself as a regular performer at the Club 1-2-3, reputedly a hang-out for the idle rich, becoming known as the "Glenn Miller of Mexico." [A couple of years later, during his first tour of the United States, he would be retitled the "Stan Kenton of Mexico."] Prado soon became a popular choice as musical director for many Mexican films and also became a movie actor (often playing himself), where he mugged and cavorted across the set in a zoot-suit.

Between 1947 and 1949, Prado recorded at least 24 songs in with vocalist and fellow Cuban Beny Moré (1919-1963) which were released as 78 rpm singles.[3] Moré arrived from Cuba with the Matamoros Trio and when the Trio returned home, he opted to stay in Mexico City to sing with Prado's orchestra. The songs that the orchestra recorded on RCA's Mexicana label proved to be so popular that in 1949 Prado signed a recording contract with RCA Victor, proper, for international release. His first recording for them was cut in Mexico City on December 12, 1949, and resulted in "Qué rico el mambo" and "Mambo No. 5" being released on two sides of a 78. This record, with its scorching brass and persuasive percussion, took the Americas by storm and the mambo craze was formally launched.[4]

In Dance Magazine, Robert Farris Thompson, Jr., wrote, "Mambo was soon the toast of Mexico City. To group after group, rich and poor, illiterate and collegiate, special Mambos were dedicated. One wave was for the working class: the 'Fireman Mambo,' the 'Filling Station Mambo,' the 'Newsboy Mambo,' etc. Another covered the educational scene: the 'Normal School Mambo,' the 'Mexico University Mambo,' and the 'Polytechnical Institute Mambo.' The sports world was saluted: ('[Mambo] del Futbol'); rich girls were whistled at ('La Nina Popoff'); the GIs of the 65th USA Infantry were given tribute ('Mambo del 65'). It was as if Harvard undergraduates, New York garment workers, [and] bank clerks everywhere turned on the radios to hear Sinatra singing jazzy songs about them. The Mexicans' response was sensational."

It was also common for dancers to act out spontaneous pantomimes to the theme of the song being played. For example, while dancing to the "Telephone Operator's Mambo," a woman might mimic working at a switchboard on her partner's chest, while dancers to the "Taxi Drivers Mambo" might imitate driving a cab.

In April, 1951, Newsweek reported that in Peru the dance had driven it's practitioners to such wild exuberance that Cardinal Juan Gualberto Guevara of Lima denied absolution to anyone who danced "al compas del mambo." That year, Perez Prado composed a song entitled "Al compas del mambo" in response.

Mambo Americano

Anglo listeners in New York and Southern California first heard Prado's singles on Latino radio stations. The songs soon crossed-over to mainstream pop broadcasts and in 1950 Prado scored moderate hits in the US with his early sides. While vacationing in Mexico, arranger Sonny Burke heard "Qué rico el mambo" and covered it as a single called "Mambo Jambo." It became a hit and Prado decided to profit from its success by launching his own tour of the US. He had well-disciplined and thoroughly rehearsed musicians and a simple formula - keep the tunes clean and punchy and include plenty of the shrill horns and bright percussion that the public loved.

His arrival was presaged by Barry Ulanov. Writing in the December, 1950, issue of Metronom

e, Ulanov declared, "The swingingest jazz band in this country right now ain't - it's in Mexico. And furthermore it isn't a jazz band; it blows mambo. Five trumpets, one trombone, four saxophones, five rhythm, one of which is the piano played by its leader, Perez Prado, it out jumps anything around..."

Prado's first appearance in the States was an engagement in New York City at the Puerto Rico Theater in the Bronx during April and May, 1951, where he was hired as a singer. Because of a dispute over rules with Musicians Union Local 802, he was required to perform as a solo act without his orchestra. By May, the union problems were resolved and he and the band played a one-night benefit for the Mexican Youth Center at the Ashland Auditorium in Chicago. In August, they played an eight city tour of the West Coast, including stops at the Zenda Ballroom in Los Angeles, Pasadena's Civic Auditorium, and Sweet's Ballroom in Oakland. Despite stiff admissions of (at the time) $1.25 - $1.85, each hall was packed with up to 3,500 "Mambonicks" and hundreds more were turned away. The bands at the shows were made up of American musicians, many of Latin origin, who were quickly recruited and rigorously rehearsed for only a few days beforehand. They all agreed later that Prado's musical book, much of it in a scrawled manuscript, gave them a tough time.

The tour continued back across the country to New York and then looped through the South on its return to Los Angeles. On the night of October 26, tragedy struck when the bus Prado and his band were riding in overturned near Ft. Worth, Texas, and Delia Romero, a singer and dancer, was killed. There were other serious injuries among the musicians, including Mongo Santamaria, who had just joined the Prado Orchestra. He suffered a broken hip and almost had to have both of his legs amputated. Prado, who sustained cuts and bruises, performed with the aid of crutches for the next few months.

In New York, his popularity grew over the years and Prado moved progressively downtown, first to the Palladium Ballroom on 53rd Street, then (in 1954) to an extended appearance at the chic Starlight Roof of Park Avenue's Waldof-Astoria Hotel.

(source: http://www.laventure.net/tourist/prez_bio2.htm)

MAMBO DOCUMENTARY - Yves Billon

"Drume negrita"

Víctor Jara, "Drume negrita"

Translated Lyrics:

Sleep, sleep, bold

Your momma ~ is in the field little brown one

It's going to bring quail ~

For you

It's going to bring rich fruit ~

For you

You'll bring a lot ~

For you.

And if the little brown baby does not sleep

Here comes the white devil

And eats duckling forces

Chacap, Chacap, Chacap,

Chacap, Chacap, Chacap,

Lay the Laray Laray of the

Your momma is in the field

Negrito (little brown baby),

Work (s)

Working all day,

Working, s.

Sleep, sleep, bold

Your momma is in the field

Negrito, negrito (little brown baby, little brown baby)

Cuban Rumba's African Slave Roots

This had its origin with the African Negro slaves imported into Cuba, whose dances emphasized the movements of the body rather than the feet. The tune was considered less important than the complex cross rhythms, being provided by a percussion of pots, spoons, bottles, etc. (Raffe, 1964, 431).

It evolved in Havanna in the 19th century by combination with the Contradanza (Sadie, 1980, 5/86). The name 'Rumba' possibly derives from the term 'rumboso orquestra' which was used for a dance band in 1807 (Sadie, 1980, 5/88), although in Spanish, the word 'rumbo' means 'route', 'rumba' means 'heap pile', and 'rhum' is of course an intoxicating liquor popular in the Caribbean (Smith, 1971, 502), any of which might have been used descriptively when the dance was being formed. The name has also been claimed to be derived from the Spanish word for 'Carousel' (Morris, 1969, 1134).

The rural form of the Rumba in Cuba was described as a pantomime of barnyard animals, and was an exhibition rather than a participation dance (Ellfeldt, 1974, 59). The maintenance of steady level shoulders while dancing was possibly derived from the way the slaves moved while carrying heavy burdens (Rust, 1969, 105). The step called the 'Cucaracha' was stomping on cockroaches. The 'Spot Turn' was walking around the rim of a cartwheel (Rust, 1969, 105). The popular Rumba tune 'La Paloma' was known in Cuba in 1866 (Sadie, 1980, 10/530).

The Rumba was introduced into the U.S.A. in the 1930's as a composite of this rural Rumba with the Guaracha, the Son, and the Cuban Bolero (unrelated to the Spanish Bolero) (Ellfeldt, 1974, 59). It was particularly popularised in 1935 by George Raft, who played the part of a suave dancer who wins the heart of an heiress through dance, in the movie 'Rumba', although the male dancing was done mainly by Frank Veloz.

The British dance teacher Pierre Margolie visited Havanna in 1947 and decided that the Rumba was danced with the break step on beat 2 of the bar, rather than on beat 1 as in the American Rumba. This is not entirely true, as the 'beat' of the music is traditionally determined by the rhythm of the Claves (two sticks being hit together). The Claves are hit on half-beats numbers 1,4,7 in the first bar of a two-bar phrase, and half-beats 3,5 of the second bar. Counting full beats, these correspond to beat 1, the half beat before 3, and beat 4 of the first bar, and beats 2 and 3 of the second bar. Ideally one might dance 5 steps over the two bars to match the Clave beats. But instead it was decided to dance only on one of the bars of the Clave sequence. The American Rumba is danced on the first bar Clave beat. Pierre decided to use the second bar, stepping on beats 2 and 3, and he added an extra step on beat 4 for no obvious reason. He brought this back to Britain, together with many steps he learned from Pepe Rivera in Havanna. These steps together with dancing the break on beat 2 rather than beat 1, after many years of heated debate in the 1940's and 1950's, became part of the standard International Cuban Rumba. (Lavelle, 1975, 1).

With only a transfer of weight from one foot to the other on beat 1 of each bar, and the absence of an actual step on this beat, the dance has developed a very sensual character. Beat 1 is a strong beat of the music, but all that moves on that beat are the hips, so the music emphasises the dancing of the hips. This together with the slow tempo of the music (116 beats/minute) makes the dance very romantic. Steps are actually taken on beats 2, 3, and 4. Weight tranfer and turns are performed on the intervening half beats. Again, as in the Samba, the weight is kept forward, with forward steps taken toe-flat, and with minimal movement of the upper torso throughout. (source: History of Latin American Dancing)

Fundamentals of Rumba