El Rey del Timbal: Tito Puente

One matinee at La Conga, a short, good-looking 17-year-old was seen cutting his way through the tables. He was carrying something half hidden on his way to the rear of the bandstand. He did this without disturbing the moment, which happened to be a romantic “precioso bolero.” No doubt he had come, not to sit in with the band, but to practice his bongos with Noro’s approval. He sat off the bandstand in a corner. It was the first time I heard someone say, “Tito Puente.”

The next time I saw him was at the Papagallo Bar at the Avila Hotel in Caracas. He played the carnival every year. We spoke of the Billo Boys and Venezuela’s growing musical influence. The third time was at the St. Regis Hotel bar. He was kind enough to greet me and my lady friend. Having Tito Puente embrace you in front of your date is indeed a cool occurrence, a fortuitous happenstance. The fourth time was at the Boys Harbor in El Barrio. He was on his way to give percussion lessons to the neighborhood kids with his manager, Joe Conzo. I complained to them that contributions to the Tito Puente Scholarship Fund were not going exclusively to Puerto Rican youngsters as I had been led to believe would be the case.

Last time I saw him, he was lying in state. He had risen to join the family of music’s historic nobility. From the silent, darkened chapel, I walked out into the sunshine. Looking up at the sky, there he was with his sticks, jamming “Ran Kan Kan,” segueing into “Mambo Diablo.”

I went to a bar across the street, where I ordered two añejos, one for Tito and one for myself.

Julio Andino, 1914–1983: A Latin Music Visionary

In the winter of 1938, shortly after Machito arrived from Cuba, I met the bassist Julio Andino at the Park Plaza ballroom on 110^th Street in Harlem. He stood out physically with broad shoulders, like a young Abe Lincoln, gentle-spoken in good English and carefully dressed considering that he was a poor mulatto. It was during the Great Depression and while the rest of New York was emerging, Harlem was still deep in despair. The Park Plaza was a refuge from the sadness of the time, offering melodies and memories of the islands that the locals had left behind but not forgotten. He had not come to the Park Plaza to dance but to listen and learn from the Happy Boys, the house band, with Doroteo Santiago singing. Pagani, the leader, invited Julio to sit in, as Noro Morales used to do with the then young Tito Puente.

When I spoke to Julio we saw that we shared a similar ambition, namely, to bring Latin music from Harlem to Broadway. But to come down the three short miles from 110^th Street to 52^nd Street meant conquering more than distance. An invisible shield kept the two worlds apart. Julio idealized a cultural crossover employing the magic of music as the means. He had ventured downtown and could foresee working beyond the confines of the black community where employment might be found. In doing so, his overlooked contribution was to become the uniting and strengthening of cultural/musical interests in the Anglo/Latino world. Without Julio’s vision and ambition for self and society’s betterment, Latin music might still be restricted to niches, jibaros and campesinos rather than the universal music it has become.

Cuba became a true nation when the Spanish military bands of Santiago blended with the Afro-influenced rumbas of the sophisticated nineteenth century Havana, a crossover opposed by aristocratic gentry of the time. This resembled the union of the West and East coasts thanks to the railroad that made us a proper nation. Julio’s ambitious dream was to hitch his music to the American dream, joining two worlds like Columbus. He had inherited a disrespectful musical world, one in which the phenomenal “Peanut Vendor” was to be a fluke, a melodic freak. He championed a lost cause, all the while knowing that buried treasure existed in the souls of all nations, waiting to manifest itself. “La rumba no hay frontera.” His dream was not primarily to lead an orchestra like Cachao and Oscar D’León, bass players, but to bring cultures in synchronization, not to join the country club of the pantheon of Puerto Rican all-stars for self-glorification, but to benefit all people; like an outcast prophet, he labored unrewarded, insufficiently acknowledged, where even Nicola Tesla and the scientist Fleming eventually received their high honors. He died leading his orchestra when actually it was the whole world he wanted to see, bounded in harmony, as Tito Puente has since done.

At the Park Plaza, the dance floor resembled a rush hour A train, except that the dancers were not stepping on toes. They were the very best dancers in that winter of 1938–39. Rene and Estela had just ended the routine that they had performed in Hollywood’s Thin Man movie, this time for the enjoyment of Lo Nuestro.

The dancers Electrico, Midnight and Chino (even a mulata was dancing on crutches) were competing during continuous applause—nonstop encouragement. The sweet scent of the tobacco of the tropics came up from the basement lounges, blending with the cologne in vogue, called Tabu. Most of the dancers were from the area around 116^th Street (the main street before 125^th Street became known as such) and from 114^th Street, the most dangerous street in Harlem, perhaps in the whole city. They were frenetic but with wholesome Latin exuberance under the spell of a band that brought them “home,” to the islands of their enchantment, unlike the latter day sick Studio 54 that set dancers adrift, lost somewhere “far out” in space. The young girls, so shapely in their homemade, well-fitted dresses; the sharp guys with their black and white shoes, the mark of an accomplished rumbero. Slickened hair managed to overcome the huge overhead fans that were intended to cool off overheated dancers. In a musical orgy, like a feeding frenzy in a steam bath, they possessed the stamina of prizefighters. When the seemingly inexhaustible band gave signs of taking a break, the dancers were seen to prostrate themselves, pounding their fists in mock protest! Using silence as a clever device, the beat continued pounding there, like claves. All this punishing trickery would be skillfully and mercifully ended by the piano ever so casually, softly resuming the melody followed by the full band, released like wild horses. (During four days of Carnival in Rio, samba is nonstop.) Some dancers fell to their knees, pleading and supplicating the exhausted band. The entire company, dancers and musicians, ended in a joyful victory that defeated the gloom of the world outside.

There was no set closing time. It ended when the last couple went for their coats. Once outside, they crossed the street into Central Park to play out their deep arousals. The rowboats lining the lake soon served to cradle the partners under a cold grey sky. Here, far from palm trees, they shared mankind’s most heavenly encore. For the few who walked home alone, they could still hear Doroteo singing “Tu no comprendes” like a surrogate lover. Quite soon, they were in the arms of Morfeo. Tomorrow, Sunday, there would be another dance, bigger and better.

This then was the scene at the Park Plaza, where Doroteo’s untrained voice would sprinkle lyrical kisses over the heads of the dancers who sang along with him. Like an angelical conspiracy, it evoked a sweet tenderness that replaced the hopelessness of 1938 Harlem. Julio spoke with me during breaks. I couldn’t speak the language and couldn’t dance or play an instrument; still he viewed me as a way to help him defeat the dark pit of Harlem. Was he mad like most visionaries? To attempt to bring this Latin phenomenon to the lights of Broadway—into the big time in the Big Town!

“Forming the orchestra would be simple,” he said. There was an overabundance of unemployed talent. Placing a non-union band in “off limits” territory only needed some show-biz luck and a San Lazaro—or St. Jude.

First we needed a group photo to show us as already existing, at least on paper. Julio picked up a pianist (perhaps it was Ruben Berrios), two brothers playing great guitarras, and a young kid named José Mangual. I was to be the clavero, campanero, maraquero and manager.

Placing the “band” became the problem. I brazenly called the Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour located in today’s Ed Sullivan Theater, where several music publishing businesses had offices, including Sunshine Music Publishing Company that printed sheet music in Spanish and English.

A date for an audition was set. Minus our bongocero, José Mangual, most unfortunately, and inadequately rehearsed, this band with no name that resembled some hungry subway musicians, set up in the radio studio. With two songs only heard in Harlem, featured in the Cancionero Picot (a songbook distributed to bodega customers free of charge), we began. Toward the end of “Letrago,” we went into the montuno. The two judges mistook this totally unfamiliar change of tempo to be some sort of sloppy befuddlement on the part of the band. When we encored with “Tabu,” we realized we'd failed, but at least we had “played on Broadway”!

We left the studio defeated, but upbeat. The bright lights of Broadway in ’38 hardly reached up from 42^nd Street to where we were on 53^rd. Julio suggested a drink, not in celebration but rather to cheer things up. He mentioned the Half Moon on 81^st off Broadway. Walking over a mile in thin clothing was impossible with the instruments. We entered the five-cent subway at 50^th Street, where on a bench we found a pocketbook with fourteen dollars! Dividing this small fortune, we began to understand the whimsicality and capriciousness of show biz.

...to be continued

Buyú’s Harmonic Finale

When I was a year old, Mrs. William Randolph Hearst awarded me a medal. Her husband was running for president. The medal was a political gimmick. In order to attract new immigrant voters, Hearst opened “baby milk stations” in poor neighborhoods. So as to win the medal, I was fed high-fat milk until I was morbidly overweight. Since my eyes became slits, I was called “chink,” a derogatory label applied to the Chinese in the twenties. I was a pawn fattened for the slaughter but as I grew older, I accepted it philosophically.

In the mid-forties, the streets of Greenwich Village were empty. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” said Alexander Hamilton, years earlier. Wonderful things could have happened to our society with just a lucky shove from destiny. We already possessed a spirit of bohemian rebellion. There existed an attitude of refined curiosity and sly humor. Not having read sufficient history, we lacked wisdom. There was no Chopin or Verdi to compose an anthem, or a Dvorak to lend us more militancy. Our literature was not Jeffersonian. Kafka still amused us, Brave New World was still too upsetting and Orwell was far off. Soon we assembled in Washington Square Park to lay on the grass like self-centered cows. If the forties were at best, witty, then this silly century is a bad joke. We are all obliged to accept its artful, fanciful plastic philosophy, including the counter culturists.

“The last thing we possess is our philosophy,” Anatole Broyard once told me. One day I visited Mother Cabrini Hospital to be with my old friend José “Buyú” Mangual Sr. I casually asked his nurse if she knew who her patient was. She did not. “He is the world’s greatest bongo player,” I said. Buyú’s eyes had been closed all the while I was in his room. He suddenly opened them and with a beatific smile on his face, he closed them for the last time.

In the end, when all is said and done, with music in the air, I want to possess Buyú’s self-confident contentment. His homophonic “philosophy.” Like the masons who built the gothic cathedrals, José spent his life unknowingly building a monument to his own musical genius. His was an enviable finale without the benefit of philosophy.

—Amico sed magis amicus veritas, Plato

Musical Missionary

At the beginning of the last century, many Anglicans left New England bound for Hawaii, the islands of the Pacific, and China. They were missionaries trained in medicine who were seeking to save souls by distributing Bibles and healing the sick. Often among hostile populations, they were not always welcomed. Like the early Jesuits who spread out in Southeast Asia and Japan, they were hoping for converts. In Honolulu, someone told me, “We exchanged our land for their Bibles.”

Ever since a santero, Juan Besson, told me that I would “carry this music around the world,” I have distributed cassettes instead of Bibles to everyone who would listen to my message. I even left them in hotel rooms, like the Gideon Society leaves the New Testament. The message, or as it is called, the “good news,” that I preach through Latin music is something that goes like this: “God love music.” If God is love then music is love in its most harmonious form. Where harmony is absent, love is absent. St. Paul, the fisher of men, sent Epistles all around the Mediterranean world, obeying the command of a higher power. When you hear Latin music, it is like a command to rise up and dance. For me, the music turned me into a professional dancer. But it was the command of the santero that was a religious experience that turned me into a “musical missionary.”

There is a Cuban song that says, por vivir en quinto patio / desprecias mis besos. Basically, “You disrespect me because I am poor.” Referring to the eighteen-hour documentary called Jazz, it is obvious to the thirty million Latinos in the USA that they are not only ignored by are used to benefit jazz. Latinos have been (ever since Mario Bauzá composed “Tanga,” a piece rarely heard and one that jazz influenced to its detriment) “Los Amigos Invisibles” of the jazzistas. Things are changing it seems and the complacent invisible friends are emerging from the shadow that jazz cast upon them unjustifiably. The January 28 issue of Variety says that “The Business Now Loves the Latins.” Jennifer Lopez just beat out the number one Beatles and she, like Ricky Martin, is not a true Latina. Another tune called “Cuando Llegará” can be answered now: “Ya Llegó.”

To close this sermon, let me quote from Luis Pales-Matos: “Ahi vienen los tambores! Ten Cuidado hombre blanco, que a ti llegan para clavarte su aguijón de música…te picará un tambor de danz o Guerra.”

“El son es lo mas sublime para el alma divertir quien pro bueno no lo estime, debe de morir.”

Some Stories Behind the Music

Most Anglos' knowledge of la musica Latina begins with Desi Arnaz and ends with Tito Puente, with little in between. Yes, perhaps Perez Prado, called the Father of Mambo, but how about Papote, Papaito, Perico, Paquito, Patato or Pupi? Anglos know B. B. King and “Jelly Roll Blues,” but how many of them know Miguelito Valdez, or that Cab Calloway imitated Miguelito’s authentic Nañigo ritualistic chanting, turning it into a gibberish called “Heidi, Heidi Ho” that made a mockery of an authentic Afro incantation? It made Calloway a millionaire, with no thanks or acknowledgement to Valdez.

One can learn to dance salsa easily enough, but where does one acquire the ability to discuss the merits of Manny Oquendo y Libre versus Larry Harlow, as Nashville does with their numerous Country Western stars, or talk about Marc Anthony and José José or the greatness of Celia Cruz?

To fully feel the music, one must know the players. Imagine enjoying your rock and roll and never knowing anything about Elvis. That is the sorry state of the Latin music scene as it concerns the Anglo adherents. Information gained concerning the music you are listening to or dancing to makes one a skilled player in the conversation setting as well as on the dance floor. Max Salazar’s Mambo Kingdom is an excellent source book along with The Latin Tinge, but more of the same is needed, especially in the popular press, on the Internet or in the living room.

The following encounters with the music and the individuals involved as experienced by an outsider, an Anglo like yourself, can bring this remarkable music into your life and give you el alma creola.

Anglos might know the “Watermelon Man,” Ramon “Mongo” Santamaria, but how many have heard of Candido (Julian Cabrera), who at age 87 is still beating conga around the world?

I first heard Candido at the Kursal club in Old Havana. It was sixty years ago while I attended the University of Havana and steered tourists around the many hot spots for pocket money. We took them to the Teatro Shanghai to see the stage show that openly featured the big star (porno), Superman, a household name.

We had mojitos at La Zaragozana for lunch, rum añejo before dinner at Sloppy Joe’s, Scotch and sexy super-spectaculars at La Tropicana and a late morning dip in the pool at the Hotel Nacional. When the Tropicana show began, gamblers returned to their tables, a problem for the house, that has since been remedied in Las Vegas by separating both activities into “rooms” that share charge admissions

Spanish names like Rodriguez make for a blended, extended “family” made more confusing by the tendency to add somewhat of a clarification in the form of “pet names.” For example, Candido Cabrera is not to be confused with Candido, the timbale player named José Rodriguez, or bongoceros using “bongo” as a middle appellation such as Bobby Romero and Harry (Bongo) Rodriguez. The greatest in my opinion and in that of many others was the extraordinary bongocero José Mangual Sr., who adopted Buyú as his stage name.

I first met Buyú in 1937 at the Café Latino on Grove Street in the Village, and was at his bedside toward the end at Mother Cabrini Hospital seventy years later. Until that meeting, the only “Spanish Music” I knew was “La Cucaracha” and “Alla en el Rancho Grande.” When Buyú beat on what some people called bongos (“tom toms”) and maracas (“rattlers”), I went searching for the real thing. I traveled from Fort Hamilton across Manhattan and up into the Bronx to the Cabarojeño Workers Circle to hear it. Closer to home was the Park Palace on 110^th and Fifth Avenue. It was there that I met Julio Andino in 1937.

Invitation to the Dance

For many years, dance hall posters could be seen on corner lampposts around the city. They added a bright note to an otherwise grey concrete world. Some communities were awash in colorful invitations to the dances. Many remained visible long after the event they served, but with the beginning of the Quality of Life policy they were outlawed, along with stale election campaign slogans, eyesores and graffiti. Post No Bills was enforced. Climbing a lamppost to get at one of these disappearing treasures became increasingly risky. The sponsors became aware of a thief and began to secure their posters ever higher and more securely with tape, staples, glue and nails. Soon these cheerful placards became a dying artifact, replaced by handbills distributed at dancehall entrances like throwaway circulars, or leaflets arriving by third-class mail.

During the 1890s, announcements of events took the form of playbills, especially along the 14^th Street’s theatrical district. Unlike Europe where paper was expensive, “towns in America were covered with posters lacking artistic value,” wrote Jules Cheret in The Poster by Alain Weill. Nineteenth century posters advertising many various products such as bicycles or soap were “puns in design,” similar to the 1980s Roseland poster, “Women’s Lib Dance.”

The scope of the exhibit portrays the growth and expansion of Latin music from 1970 to the present. A portion of it displays classic Anglo festivities such as Thanksgiving Day, Memorial Day, Sadie Hawkins Day and the Fourth of July. When the first “Latino Music Festival” opened at Madison Square Garden in the early ’70s, admission was $7 and it featured ten bands. Today, general admission is $45 and may show one band. If ten top celebrities are billed, they will appear on stage only to receive applause but not to perform. Like the baseball fan, loyal to his sport, the Latino is devoted to his joyous music. “Rumba for breakfast, rumba for lunch, rumba for dinner,” as the saying goes.

Historically important is the Corso poster. This dancehall marked the “crossover” from East Harlem’s barrio to the German-American neighborhood of Yorkville. It played top bands from “9pm to 6am.” Latino valentinos came down Lexington Avenue and kept going. It awakened communities to the pleasure of “going dancing” on Saturday night. Beyond the borders of the barrio, Latinos felt free in this Home of Latin Music. Before this, La Conga, China Doll, the Martinique and the Embassy were nightclubs and not dancehalls. They avoided using street corner posters. The venerable Roseland and the theatrical Palladium lacked the intimacy of the darkened ambiance of the Corso, where black and white blended and bonded. The Corso can be said to have begun the disco scene in New York.

In third world countries, where there are no movie houses, people attend dances in a local schoolhouse. Open air makeshift dirt floors serve quite well. In the ’30s and ’40s, along Havana’s Malecon, street floor apartments served as dance “clubs.” An improvised bar on the kitchen table sold shots of rum for cinco kilos (five cents). Usually, the family were the musicians together with neighbors who helped round out the modest conjunto. These spots catered to the average Habenero or to the after-work passerby who would step in for a precisos bolero, to relax or to pursue a romantic interlude.

Latin bands produce beautiful music with powerful basic discipline and synchronous relaxed movement. While sustaining the values of traditional holidays, these dancehalls celebrate life in spite of linguistic separation. Abre paso! (Give way!) is a popular dance floor expression along with Dale aire! (Give me air!…Give me room!…to show my stuff). These words may well symbolize the Latino’s cry for fuller recognition of a melodious culture. Allow Babalu to become Negro de Sociedad.

Thousands of people come to Times Square seeking “something.” Unfortunately, they ignore the colorful posters on the corner lampposts with their odd names: Buyú, Mongo, Corso, Caborojeño.

Although there is much electricity in the air, like the rush you feel as you begin to dance your way onto a crowded dance floor, the crowds should accept the invitations extended by the posters. The Audubon, the Park Plaza, the Broadway Casino…these salones de baile, where musicians give you the very air in their lungs, the nimbleness in their fingers, their sweating talents. They will send you dancing off into space, they will satisfy your wish to fly. Seek no more.

That famous Broadway ballroom, the Palladium, was a barn-like showplace that could hold a dozen Park Plazas. The modest Park Plaza served to compact the dancers. It concentrated the impact of the music that shook the building. Like the famous Cuban sala, the “salon” is where one goes to dance and not to see a show with dancing to follow. The salon is not the elite “room” or the unwholesome disco. It is where in an atmosphere of overlapping perfumes one might hear lyrics like, “Nacieron las flores cuando naciste tu.” Where one can find a more romantic stimulation outside of “la blanda cama” (the soft bed) or the frenzy that makes sensuality a graceful art form?

“You will carry this music around the world,” a Babalao once told me. Was it a command or a prophecy? So I solicit you, who carry this music in your hearts: Go forth, propagate this gift…invite the world to dance!

¡A bailar!

Dirty Dancers: Miami Beach, 1940

When the 1940 winter season ended and the Carousel Club closed, Miami Beach was expected to await the arrival of Thanksgiving 1941, when tourists would return. Instead, a building boom took place beginning with the National Hotel and continuing up Collins Avenue from 16^th to 23^rd Street, with the Rooney Plaza Hotel.

The rumba dancers that performed at the Five O’clock Club, the Beachcomber, Club Bali and Carousel either went north or remained for the summer, out of work. When we learned that the new hotels were installing dance studios to serve guests, and welcoming teachers, we joined the new National Hotel. In return for performing at the pool with free rumba lessons for hotel guests, we had the use of the studio, free of charge. A business was born.

Miami Beach and rumba and conga became synonymous. Bathed in Latin rhythms from nearby Havana. A chain of dance studios—one in every new hotel—would have paid off very handsomely we thought except that there were not enough dance teachers to fill the growing demands. Furthermore, the hotel owners were now asking for a percentage of the take and were thinking of charging for dance studio space. To hire teachers or to work on a percentage basis without contracts was clumsy since they could make deals with the hotels eliminating my partner and me. Things were up for grabs.

Since the National Hotel was number one in 1940, our studio was well known. And considered the pioneer in this dance studio business: in hopes of dealing with more sound (read: honest) establishments, we approached the venerable Tatem Surf Club, and Anglo-Saxon private club for the old guard Floridian “aristocracy.” At the entrance, a sign read Restricted. The management agreed to permit a trial studio seeing that we had run the Conga Nights at the prestigious Coral Gables Country Club. When there were absolutely no customers from the Tatem Surf Club membership, we quit. No doubt the rumba was considered ethnically incorrect: “Jewish.” The Anglos scorned the dance and today they are seen at a loss on the dance floor trying to learn the box step

The Great Noro Morales

The dance floor, like the bandstand at the old La Conga nightclub, was the size of a postage stamp. Performing during the popular rumba matinees of the early forties, Noro Morales had to sit sidesaddle at his piano due to his corpulence and the cramped angle. The patrons came from the nearby fur market, garment center and millenary district. These were Jewish bosses with their Italian models. Four huge “palm trees” dominated the décor. Twenty-four round tables seating four were set so closely that conversations and casual comments overlapped, adding to a close congeniality even among business competitors.

“Rumbambola” had just ended. The perspiring dancers wriggled their way back to their tables like bouncing balls. In spite of the AC on full blast, everyone in the club was wringing wet. With a clever change of pace, Noro went into “Rumba Rumbero,” causing the exhausted couples to gulp down their drinks in order to hurry back onto the floor. One might say this was bad for business in a way. As soon as you sat down, you were up again like puppets on a string, manipulated by the cords of a musical magnetism: You were still jumping in bed that night.

When it became time to clear out for the dinner crowd (who had come to see Carmen Amaya, Diosa Costello, Jose Greco, Pedro Flores or Pedro Ramirez or Tondaleyo), the patrons were slow to leave. It was like emerging from a theater into sunlight. You were a performer! A star! One felt a reluctance, a disbelief like a shocking conclusion. You felt that “I want more” feeling until the rhythm slowly evaporated as you walked distractedly down Broadway. These were the same people who arrived early when the doors opened and while the band had not as yet shown up. The same people who would brave the heaviest rainstorm to dance carrying umbrellas into the club. Once settled, they would watch the musicians come in carrying their instruments over the heads of those at the tables. They would watch the band assemble. Testing, tuning, talking and turning to one another, the musicians were godlike, a congregation of talent. When the bongocero lit his Sterno, you knew you were in for a hot time. Noro, seated calmly at the piano; the dancers hushed at the tables—it was full artistic appreciation to watch things fall into place. This performance reached its climactic moment when Noro would raise his hand as if to say, as they do at the Indy 500: “Gentlemen, start your engines.”

(photo by William Gottlieb, 1947)

Cuba's Cohesive Tumbao

Music is poetry in the air…. J. P. Richter

Nowhere is music more in the air than in Cuba, where the lowliest solo musician is a poet. When combined, these poets produce a weltweisheit…a philosophy of contentment that gives music a high priority in every Cuban’s everyday life. The “Blue Danube,” the waltz that swept Europe, made Vienna that gayest capital of its time. Havana may not be the gayest capital, but its music has no borders. They use their music as medicine to handle their misfortunes the way Neopolitans do…“O Sole Mio” traveled around the world but is mostly forgotten, like Argentina’s tango, “Comparsita.” Parma, the birthplace of Verdi’s twenty-four operas, is called the City of Music, like Strauss’s Salzburg, but one simple melody, “The Peanut Vendor,” put Havana on the map. Paris, famous for la Gaiete Parisienne, produced the cancan, and rests on its laurels like New Orleans after Mardi Gras. The Rio Carnival is incomparable but, seemingly exhausted, retires to prepare for next year. Spanish gypsies provide excitement and merriment like the Russians and Hungarians but are basically tragically oriented with their musical bipolarity. Germany’s music may start you marching but salsa stirs your toes. The Irish, like the Greeks who dance in circles, need a pint to get on the dance floor. Japan’s rock and roll is imitative and in Hong Kong the sound of the cash register is music. When Um Kulsum sang in Cairo, the Muslim world came to a halt, but she is gone. Truly irresistible music is rare and most music is not. In Brazil, samba does not serve to bring sufficient joy into the life of the average Carioca the way salsa has in Cuba and Puerto Rico, where its mystique is well understood.

* * * *

Many cities claim the title of “Paris of the…whatever.” Buenos Aires is called “the Paris of the Latin America,” Beirut was called “Paris of the Middle East,” Saigon was “Paris of Southeast Asia.” This terminology could refer to the architecture as well as to the spirit one found in these cities, but when one called Havana “el Paris del Nuevo Mundo,” they meant the joie de vivre principally…the excellent rum, fine tobacco, the Habaneras or the cool spray along the Malecon that makes you love the place. Is it the constant hum of a silent rhythmic generator, the spicy lyrics or sexy citizens? When these lyrics contain ironic humor, it becomes a Laurel and Hardy world…more bearable and more true to life, unlike the message found in the malingering sophistry of Country or Western music.

At one time, you could sail or fly to Havana for very little. A weekend was sufficient to enroll you as a lifetime supporter of the phenomenon you discovered there. You had tasted the brand of universal happiness that, as an elderly black lady once told me at the end of her cruise to Nassau, “I never knew life could be so sweet.” Had she gone to Havana, she would have known what made it so. She was referring basically to her experience aboard the ship. The truly sweetened life is the one in which dark thoughts are drowned out by a musical antidote…one that can be shared like a bottle of wine with your supportive neighbors. Your woes are spread across a spectrum of understanding sympathizers. Music, they say, is medicine. What is it that makes Cuba rock, swing, jump…that puts poetry in the air? It is called tumbao, the cohesive poetry in the African drum.