AMAZING EXPERIENCE - Week of November 15th to the 21st, 2009
By ULISES BEATO
Last week I went to Cuba on Monday night and had such a great time I went back on Thursday night again. How's that you say? Well, maybe I should be a little more specific. Read on.
Actually, Cuba came to me—Septeto Nacional Ignacio Piñeiro was here all week and I had the extreme pleasure of not only watching them play but I also got to spend time with them, some old mutual friends and some new ones backstage on both nights that I saw them—thanks and a shout-out to "mi consorte", Gabe Romero, who piloted my flight down... stairs that is! It was an experience I will never forget.
Many of my contemporary Latin music colleagues were in attendance as well as a few Latin music stars and celebs including Johnny Pacheco, Ismael Miranda and even that Cuban music fan and record collector, actor Matt Dillon. Hanging out one-on-one with your heroes is always an enlightening experience. This was by no means an exception to the rule.
Later, as I recalled the experience I thought to myself "...wait, here is the band that not only first coined the word ‘Salsa’ in relation to the music, brought us the quintessential tune “Echale Salsita” and also spearheaded many other milestones in traditional Cuban Son.” They are also one of the three or four main bands that re-invented the genre from the ground up. Since Cuban music in turn influenced everything in popular music from North American Jazz to Rock to Reggae and on and on, one can surmise that this original handful of Cuban pioneers influenced virtually all the popular music we hear today in a very profound and long-lasting way.
Septeto Nacional was founded by Ignacio Piñeiro in 1927 on the heels of Septeto Habanero who made the very first recordings of Son in October of the previous year for Victor Records. At this point in time, the early Son ensembles relied merely on the bongo as the main percussion instrument, the claves, güiro, and maracas where also in the mix, but merely as minor percussive accompaniment. The bongosero alone really drove the music with the familiar yet erratic thrust of a powerful locomotive, since at the time, bongo players in Son ensembles had no fixed rhythmic pattern to follow; rather, they would riff independently throughout the entire song.
It was not until after percussionist Agustin Gutierrez, a bricklayer in his day job who in 1929 joined Piñeiro's septet, devised the "martillo" pattern (pronounced mar-tee’-yoh and meaning "hammer") that the bongo had a fixed supporting rhythmic pattern assigned to it. The martillo pattern consists of a steady driving beat or ostinato of eight notes tightly woven around the clave beat with some sporadic riffing here and there as an adornment to the pattern itself. It is at this very point that Son acquires a percussive characteristic different from that of Changüí where the bongo does not adhere to a rigid standardized pattern.
Gutierrez conceived the pattern as a result of the Cuban audiences’ insatiable demand for the new musical genre in the days when their American counterparts indulged in Fox Trot and Ragtime and almost two decades before the addition of the tumbadora (conga drum) to the Son ensemble. The fledgling Son bands of the day still had a small repertoire and started to include Bolero's in their inventory to satisfy the public's unquenchable desire for anything they had to offer. Yet a steady rhythmic pattern on the bongo appeared more appropriate for the slow and sultry Bolero than for the more piquant Son. However, in time, the martillo pattern became permanently associated with Bolero as it eventually did with Son. Today, many years later, the martillo is considered the most fundamental pattern in bongo playing and the basic scheme from which a bongosero's intricate rhythmic vocabulary stems.
Ignacio Piñeiro also composed numerous tunes that are not only considered the most symbolic of the Son genre but familiar to any Cuban or Latin American music fan young and old alike. Besides Echale Salsita Mayeya No Juegues Con Los Santos, El Guanajo Relleno, Suavecito, Esas No Son Cubanas and many in a long list of his compositions have since then become standards of the genre. It is said he wrote over 600 songs in all.
Today, more than 84 years after its inception, the band is in its fourth generation and sounds like it stepped out of a time machine with Eugenio Rodriguez "El Raspa" as the lead singer. Previously, the main singer was none other than Carlos Embale who was, as Juan de Marcos of Afro Cuban All Stars fame once said, “one of the very finest voices to come out of Cuba in the Twentieth Century” and one of my all-time favorite vocalists.
One of the reasons I enjoyed this experience so much was because when you rub elbows with cats like those you receive, as they say in the martial arts world, "secret teachings" that you can't get from a book, record or even a music school for the teachings can only be gained when these cats decide to take you under their wing and share what they know so well. Among so many other things, they told me to keep listening to the old bands and do as they did while just giving it my own flavor when I'm the one playing. "That's how you make this music," they all agreed.
Frank Oropesa "el Matador" who is a friend of my good friend Roman Diaz was especially warm and had much advice to offer me in my musical endeavors. Please check out the blog at a later date for more, as Frank was kind enough to offer me his contact information in Havana and asked me to stay in touch.
See this link for more on this legendary band or look them up on YouTube here.
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