Graciela, La Libertadora

At the La Conga nightclub in 1945, Graciela Perez broke the restraints of propriety and virtuousness the night she sang “Sí Sí No No.” The band fell silent, the waiters froze, the dancing stopped, and the bartender turned to witness her daring performance.

Beginning off to the side, she slowly edged center-stage under brighter lighting. She personified womankind facing an eternal seductive, copulative proposition. Her agile voice nursed a suspenseful scenario that gradually submitted to normal desire. Within this framework, Graciela reached a melodic dénouement, an artful pseudo-orgasmic celebration ending in an ecstatic climactic scream. This was music to the ears of every male present.

Her startling melodramatics had no encore. Here was a breakthrough similar to Sally Rand’s very daring fan dance, Josephine Baker’s nudity, and Miguelito Valdez’s “Babalu” number at the uptight, Anglo-centric Waldorf Astoria. She hit us the way Valentino’s tango did, then Isadora Duncan and Madonna, but without their universal celebrity. We had been presented with a revolutionary event, like a morality play vocalized. It was one that lyrically mimicked a Shakespearean dueling scene between rival moral principles. Her act liberated a stale, sexually correct post–WWII America at a time when Club El Morocco denied entry to women wearing sunglasses. Graciela taunted a tight-laced society wherein any indelicate intimacy was taboo, except in crass vaudevillian skits on red-light Forty-Second Street.

The patrons at La Conga’s rumba matinees were dancers and their “pupils,” garment-center “cloak-and-suiters” with their models, and gigolettes. The dance floor was a smoldering tinderbox of erotic performances, with groins riveted to groins. This was reminiscent of the old Park Plaza where, during slow, grinding selections such as “El Negro Simón,” the lyrics described a girl becoming arrebata, or sexually uncontrollable. With Yoruba language working, i.e., arrullendole caguá, lusty interpretations were left to the inflamed imaginations of the dancers. These odd, throaty sounds seemed to imply foreplay. Since the messages in these unintelligible lyrics were decoded by each dancer according to his or her level of arousal, there was sufficient amplitude for each individual to respond physically, blaming the Afro music for their suggestive behavior on the floor. The musicians, as well as the outnumbered Latino dance couples, encouraged the Anglos to interpolate the feral sensuality surrounding them, while clownish antics of frustrated beginners were perceived with good humor by everyone.

When a Latino danced with an Anglo girl, she would perform with exaggerated responses in dances that glorified femininity and the macho man. The result was a greater abandonment with newfound freedom of movement. The male Anglo, his heretofore secure role threatened, eschewed the Afro-Cuban dance world, whereas his partner now saw it as part of her overall liberation—and would again during the 1970s, when disco dancing meant less male control. The Stonewall historical event is a good example of a revolution beginning on the dance floor.

Graciela’s substantial voice that night in 1944 ignited an overheated environment. Unless you had witnessed her, you would not have realized what it all meant. Her coquettish, beguiling, pantomime with needless lyrics nevertheless left us with a climactic, playful portrayal of a female’s victory over a manipulated male, despite their mutually responsive libidos. She gracefully and cleverly flaunted her newly liberalized instinct, using “Si Si No No” as a musical vehicle for freedom of greater expression without vulgarity.

Graciela came from a background where a 1930s rumba, “El Plato Roto,” spoke of a broken hymen. It was one of many risqué numbers that, like spice, were welcome ingredients in Cuba’s everyday life and torrid musical climate. It recalls a more restrained, delightful combination of feminine musical beauty, the eleven-piece Retunda All-Girl Orchestra, whose redolence infused Havana in the forties, as did that of Orquesta Anacaona, which of course featured Graciela.

In an alley behind one Havana nightclub, El Pasaje, a well-worn upright piano was stored during the day, available to anyone who might wish to play it. It was known by everyone and was often found encircled by Habaneros, like fraternity boys singing their alma mater. At night it was rolled out on wheels to the narrow sidewalk in front of the brightly lit club. Passersby clustered there, enjoying free concerts under the open sky. That piano seemed to belong to everyone, like the remarkable music that one heard throughout the city. The people of Havana, like those in Washington Heights, fell asleep with late-night radios playing sexy love songs.

Everyone owned Graciela in their hearts, especially in Havana. Alongside Anacaona in popularity was a second all-girl orchestra. At times, both bands played the number-one hit in unison. This all took place opposite El Capitolio, and was a nightly happy spectacle symbolizing and celebrating a country where rumba was Cuba and Cuba was rumba. Music was like a second government.

But it was Graciela who helped make us, here in the States, a bit more liberal.

Bruca Manigua

Vince, Robert Farris Thompson (r), and an admirer.

Note: Last year, Vince met for an interview with Robert Thompson, the distinguished Yale professor who is writing his highly anticipated history of mambo. A lively correspondence has ensued.

Below is an excerpt, discussing Vince’s early passion for Casino de la Playa’s classic “Bruca Manigua.” The first Arsenio Rodriguez tune ever recorded, “Bruca” was “a landmark in the development of Cuban popular music,” as Ned Sublette details in his book, Cuba and Its Music. Xavier Cugat had recorded the track within half a year of the Casino de la Playa original, and Vince was under its enduring spell in his teens.

RF Thompson:

26 December, 2008

One thing that amazes me about your career is how you picked up on “Bruca Manigua” back in 1939 and started playing it on harmonica. What pulled you into this song? Lyrical feel? Afro-Cuban savor? All of the above and more? What I want to know is how the lyrics hit you. They were in an intricate mixture of bozal (slave idiom in creolized Spanish) and creolized Ki-Kongo, flaunting words like fwiri and mundele. Beyond the Afro-Atlantic complexity, did you dig “Bruca” mainly because of the melody?

You had to be one of the hippest men in New York that year simply by virtue of playing that song on a harmonica. Been listening to Noro Morales’ mambo, “110^th Street and Fifth Avenue,” and thinking of you boarding the bus in Washington Square and riding to the end of the line, right at the Park Plaza corner.

Have a brilliant New Year,

Bob

Part One:

“Bruca Manigua”

Indiambo congori, omelenko, la-di-o-de, coro mi yare—where do these sounds come from that they drown out the music and the culture I was born into? They forever forbid my disloyalty to them—they made me a religious person even though I knew nothing of their meaning. How did they capture me so gently, using their very concealed implications to control me?

From early childhood, as a special-education candidate due to lead poisoning that profoundly affected my hearing, my efforts to understand my world led me to become fascinated with the unknown—with what was escaping me in life. I sought shelter in the mysterious shadows that both hid me and comforted me as an adopted outcast. I grew up further and further from the path that others took. This attitude that was part of my formation set me aside from a society that I could handle easily as long as an odd quality and mystery remained a part of me. I neither belonged entirely to Africa or to America in the sense that my hearing evolved on a different level from normal—which in turn placed me astride a larger world that I balanced myself on like a circus bareback rider holding two galloping horses under his control, with one foot on each.

This effective bipolarity assisted rather than hindered my learning in that it demanded twice the effort—not to conform, but to understand, to balance my intellectual equilibrium. Thus, while I could not understand or speak Africa, I went on to conquer six languages of the Western world.

The sounds and vocabulary of Africa were the source eventually of a sweet mystery—the essential ingredient in the formation of an artist. This was even more induced in me since prior to the poisoning, my early teachers, as well as strangers, had used the word “genius” in my presence. There was, it was discovered, a musical genius who had died in childhood, my cousin who played piano sitting on phone books. Geneological investigation showed an above-normal number of family members engaged in the field of music. With no musical ability or training of my own, I had to satisfy myself with only the appreciation of what music was all about. Talented musicians could express it, interpret it, whereas I had to absorb it with no escape valve.

This esoteric burden manifested itself in the release I found in response, in the physical expression encompassed in dancing. Not American-style dancing or classical footwork, but in the dancing that is African. This came about guided by the music that I came in contact with. Initially, my family preferred opera to popular music but for me opera represented a musical establishment that at the same time jived with the everyday music.

When in 1936 and onward I caught bits of African music coming from abroad, from the islands and Cuba, I sensed that there was a jinni in what I was now hearing. New, unfamiliar sounds that sounded familiar to me even though I didn’t know why. The reason, I now understand, was the fact that, like language, they had to be listened to with a different part of me, one that evoked more than passing interest. They spoke to me in a seventh language, literally and figuratively, using the sounds of the drum that compelled me to follow more obediently.

The drum began to be something I needed biologically, it seemed. It filled the empty quality of deafness the way the gigantic Wurlitzer organ at the Paramount Theater filled the house. To the rafters.

Part Two:

“Bruca Manigua” and Mother

“El Manisero”… What is this manisero, this repetitious melody that is heard everywhere and where did it come from, everyone wondered back in 1937? “…un cucuruchu de mani…” What is a “cucuruchu”? By the time I learned that the song was what we today call a singing commercial, the “Peanut Vendor” passed on, only to be replaced by “La Cucaracha.” “Ya no puede caminar…,” another odd “Spanish” song, this one about a roach. When “La Cucaracha” crawled away, we were ready for a Latin tune called “Siboney” whose more sublime lyrics spoke plaintively of a black slave’s ordeal. Its melodic beauty was like a schoolgirl’s lament, lacking the basic ugliness of the horrors of slavery.

As “Spanish music” became more popular, we heard, for example, “El Plato Roto.” “Pancho tuvo que pagar / lo que rompio Rafael”…songs with sexual implications like double-entendre meanings wherein Pancho pays for what Rafael broke. El plato (plate, dish) and roto (broken) being a girl’s hymen. “El Bastidor” was another sly device, that sang of the hardness of a mattress as well as the durability of the male organ.

But these playful or sugary reflections did not have the blood and guts power of a song that spoke out the truth, loud and clear. They seemed to conceal, to hesitate or only hint at the slaves’ oppression. Just as the iron chains that restricted movement to just the four steps of la conga, there was no room in the lyrics to encourage rebellion, that is, until “Bruca Manigua. “Sin la libertad no puedo vivir / siempre tan maltrata”! This song touched and alerted a sensitive nerve that lay dormant in me, even having heard the sadness in the impoverished peanut vendor’s cry.

“Bruca” had sounded the key note and was followed soon by other brazen messages: “Yo Soy Karabali,” “Negro Nananboro,” Chano Pozo’s “Guaguina Yerabo,” Piniero’s “Yambo,” “Yambu” and “Lamento Borincano”… The ponderous quality of “Bruca” and the others, with all the drama that they exposed, still had more to follow even while holding me in vicarious empathy. Instead of doing my math, I played and replayed those records on my old phonograph, chained to it.

The full result of my original exposure and consequent entrancement with Afro-Latin music did not hit me until “Juan Fue Pa’ La Guerra,” with Daniel Santos singing “Quehago si vuelvo / y no encuentro a mi mama?” The composer was Pedro Flores. Here was a demoralizing song that ran counter to the US Army’s policy of allowing only militarized motivation for the sake of patriotic encouragement. This very touching song ended with the sad words, “What will I do should I return (from the war) and not find my mother (alive)?”

Since I was about to leave for the army, these sharp words were suddenly pertinent, more personal even those Miguelito Valdes sang in Arsenio Rodriguez’s “Bruca.” These words that included one’s mother hit home in two ways: the universal and the personal…the love that Latin sons in particular have for their mothers, and the son speaking not of his likely death in the army, but of his mother’s pain in not seeing her son again…his mother’s own dolorous ending…not his own pain over her death.

Such gut-wrenching lyrics exposed the quality of the culture that was behind the music. It being a sentimental blessing that produced such love, whether black or not.

This all surfaced and came together as a conscious awareness that I correlate with whenever I am in the physical presence of the people and their Afro-Latin music, or when alone with my conscience.

What Music Is About

Among the ten top artistic directors and orchestral conductors is Daniel Barenboim, earning two million dollars a year, or should we say a season. In fact, these ten lucky individuals take in over ten million dollars in salaries! Not bad for a clique of sophisticated elitists in the symphonic and operatic establishments. Fundraising gala performances could use some housecleaning. Charity begins at home and should end in the street, where it will do the most good. To the people!

Are the complexities of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony any more challenging than a salsa montuno performed by Rene Lopez’s twelve-piece orchestra, where a close listener can catch experimental, classical, serial, modern and postmodern influences?

Music should serve to spread the maximum good the greatest audience. It should best be out of Lincoln Center’s grasp and out in the street for the people, by the people and of the people…a birthright. For every black tie fan attending the annual Mostly Mozart festival, a thousand Latinos are enjoying Marc Anthony’s latest hit.

A worldwide survey found Puerto Rico to be No. 1, the happiest place on earth. Is it because many poor families harbor at least one musician or more? More than an evening’s gala is present night and day in the Latin music that is in the air one breathes…out in the streets of P.R. It is not in the snooty confines of academic strongholds that are constantly begging for donations to stay alive while attendance dwindles. Is this not a good example of snobbism, where unknown names perform unknown opuses to a restricted, mostly tax-sheltered “select” audience?

When the average music teacher struggles to secure pupils that struggle to afford lessons themselves, this in itself restricts not only the appreciation of music but also its influence. Money should not only go into offering scholarships but also into making musical instruments available like library books to students who cannot afford to buy them, like giving them chances to learn how to fish, instead of giving a handout.

In an alley alongside a nightclub opposite El Capitolo in Havana once stood an old beat-up piano. It was placed there during the day and rolled out front at night where the Anacaona all-girl orchestra played on the sidewalk as people passed by. We could call it, today, a free concert. During the afternoon, anyone who wished to play that piano (while standing) could do so. Strangers would crowd around it and sing along as though they were fraternity boys joining in. They would continue singing as they left to continue their day. This is what music is really all about. It is our global anthem.

Musical Mission of Mercy

At the turn of the century, Asbury Park and Sarasota Springs were the gambling meccas of the northeast. The Depression put an end to their heydays. An attempt was made to place gambling on the Jersey Shore at Long Branch. The Rumba Casino, where I worked with the Tony (Nino) Yacavino troupe, was chosen as an experiment to see if it could offer gamblers what they needed. Jimmy Pellecchia was the owner and Harry Kilby was the front man. Harry booked the shows together with his wife and daughter, who came down from New York. Jimmy was boxing commissioner of New Jersey, and Nino had been a boxer before becoming an accomplished dancer.

Similarly, in Miami Beach, Lou Tendler, a champion boxer from Philadelphia, was part owner of the Carrousel Club, with its revolving bar and air-conditioning in 1940. I caught pneumonia dancing and sweating, due to it, and my colleague Pepito became very ill as well. We were not accustomed to it, and Pepito used to stand with his back to a large fan during rehearsal breaks. I also suffered severe hearing loss partially due to the blasting trumpets just behind me as I performed night after night. We liked our music loud even then, I guess.

Gambling interests figured that Asbury Park would be a more suitable location but that didn’t take off, and of course today you have them at Atlantic City. 1952 found me on a 90-day round-the-world cruise, escorting 17 Brazilian millionaires. One of the passengers on the ship was Filipino who owned the Manila Herald and the Jai Lai Fronton. He persuaded me and my ex-wife to perform after seeing us giving dance lessons during the trip.

For the many years spent on ships, the Champagne Hour was one of my favorite evenings, when I MC’d the show. Passengers could chose their own dance selections and a bottle was awarded in each category. We did the conga line bit to begin each sailing, off with a big happy start to the cruise…and did it at the last night as well. On the S.S. Oceanic, we had four bands which were placed at intervals among the participants (which meant everyone aboard, just about). Going from salon to salon, one would hear different orchestras overlapping, as was the case in Havana at the Palacio Gallego, on different floors of the building.

In 1940, the danzon was the most played style, except at the sidewalk cafes in front of the Capitolio, where bands like Anacaona played mostly rumba. Here again, the music would overlap since the bands were adjacent to each other. In the afternoons, along the Malecon, there were small bars indoors that had 3 or 4 musicians playing on concrete floors for dancers. Rum was cheap and the dancers were poor, but happy, made so by the combination of two sweet forces at work.

Sunday mornings we went to the Bosques de Almendares to drink and dance, and some to swim, later. We also rode horses in the cool of the early morning, at El Encanto. The perfume wafted out into Calle Nettuno (or was it Calle Luna?). Havana was a rare mix, a garden of earthly delights, which was irresistible to all…a conspiracy of seductive temptations. It was as though one had been imprisoned all his life, and suddenly released in a gay and friendly world…so unlike anywhere else on earth. To bring the Cuban spirit to the rest of the world by means of its music is today a mission of mercy to a beset planet.