BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY
Afro-Cuban jazz
| Afro-Cuban jazz | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | Son Cubano - son montuno -jazz |
| Cultural origins | Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants in New York City |
| Typical instruments | Piano - Congas - Trumpet -Trombone - Bass guitar -Claves - Timbales - Bongos -Saxophone - Clarinet |
Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban jazz first emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauza and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans, based in New York City. In 1947 the collaborations of bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, most notably the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as Dizzy's and Pozo's "Manteca" and Charlie Parker's and Machito's "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop", short for Cuban bebop..[1] During its first decades, the Afro-Cuban jazz movement was stronger in the United States than in Cuba itself.[2] In the early 1970s, the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna and later Irakere brought Afro-Cuban jazz into the Cuban music scene, influencing new styles such as songo.
History
"Spanish tinge"—the Cuban influence in early jazz[edit]
Although true clave-based Afro-Cuban jazz did not appear until the mid-twentieth century, the Cuban influence was present at the birth of jazz. African American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban musical motifs in the nineteenth century, when the habanera gained international popularity. The habanera was the first written music to be rhythmically based on an African motif. The habanera rhythm (also known as congo,[3] tango-congo,[4] or tango.[5]) can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the back beat.
Musicians from Havana and New Orleans would take the twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera quickly took root in the musically fertile Crescent City.John Storm Roberts states that the musical genre habanera, "reached the U.S. 20 years before the first rag was published" (1999: 12).[6] Scott Joplin's "Solace" (1909) is considered a habanera.
For the more than quarter-century in which the cakewalk, ragtime, and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the habanera was a consistent part of African American popular music.[7] Early New Orleans jazz bands had habaneras in their repertoire and the tresillo/habanera figure was a rhythmic staple of jazz at the turn of the 20th century. Comparing the music of New Orleans with the music of Cuba, Wynton Marsalis observes that tresillo is the New Orleans "clave".[8] Although technically, the pattern is only half a clave, Marsalis makes the important point that the single-celled figure is the guide-pattern of New Orleans music.
"St. Louis Blues" (1914) by W.C. Handy has a habanera/tresillo bass line. Handy noted a reaction to the habanera rhythm included in Will H. Tyler's "Maori": "I observed that there was a sudden, proud and graceful reaction to the rhythm...White dancers, as I had observed them, took the number in stride. I began to suspect that there was something Negroid in that beat." After noting a similar reaction to the same rhythm in "La Paloma", Handy included this rhythm in his "St. Louis Blues," the instrumental copy of "Memphis Blues," the chorus of "Beale Street Blues," and other compositions."[9]
Jelly Roll Morton considered the tresillo/habanera (which he called the Spanish tinge) to be an essential ingredient of jazz.[10] The habanera rhythm and tresillo can be heard in his left hand on songs like "The Crave" (1910, recorded 1938).
Although the exact origins of jazz syncopation may never be known, there’s evidence that the habanera/tresillo was there at its conception. Buddy Bolden, the first known jazz musician, is credited with creating the big four, a habanera-based pattern. The big four (below) was the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march.[12] As the example below shows, the second half of the big four pattern is the habanera rhythm.
The Cuban influence is evident in many pre-1940s jazz tunes, but rhythmically, they are all based on single-celled motifs such as tresillo, and do not contain an overt two-celled,clave-based structure. Caravan, written by Juan Tizol and first performed in 1936, is an example of an early pre-Latin jazz composition. It is not clave-based. On the other hand, jazzy renditions of Don Azpiazú's "The Peanut Vendor" ("El manicero") by Louis Armstrong (1930), Duke Ellington (1931), and Stan Kenton (1948), are all firmly in-clave since the 2-3 guajeo provides the primary counterpoint to the melody throughout the entire song.
Mario Bauzá and Machito
The general consensus among musicians and musicologists is that the first original jazz piece to be overtly based in-clave was "Tanga" (1943) composed by Cuban-born Mario Bauza and recorded by Machito and his Afro-Cubans. "Tanga" began humbly, as a spontaneous descarga (Cuban jam session) with jazz solos superimposed on top.
The right hand of the "Tanga" piano guajeo is in the style known as ponchando, a type of non-arpeggiated guajeo using block chords. The sequence of attack-points is emphasized, rather than a sequence of different pitches. As a form of accompaniment it can be played in a strictly repetitive fashion or as a varied motif akin to jazz comping.[16]The following example is in the style of a 1949 recording by Machito, with René Hernández on piano.[17]
Mario Bauzá developed the 3-2 / 2-3 clave concept and terminology. A chord progression can begin on either side of clave. When the progression begins on the three-side, the song or song section is said to be in 3-2 clave. When the chord progression begins on the two-side, it is in 2-3 clave.[20] In North America, salsa and Latin jazz charts commonly represent clave in two measures of cut-time (2/2); this is most likely the influence of jazz conventions.[21] When clave is written in two measures (above) changing from one clave sequence to the other is a matter of reversing the order of the measures. Bauzá consciously maintained a balance of Latino and jazz musicians in Machito's band, in order to realize his vision of Afro-Cuban jazz. Bauzá had the unique experience of mastering both types of music, but it took time for him to teach the jazz musicians in Machito's band about clave. The first time jazz trumpeter Doc Cheatham joined the band, Machito had to fire him after just two nights because he couldn't cope with clave.[22]
Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo
Mario Bauzá introduced bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie to the Cuban conga drummer, dancer, composer, and choreographer Chano Pozo. The brief collaboration of Gillespie and Pozo produced some of the most enduring Afro-Cuban jazz standards. "Manteca" (1947), co-written by Gillespie and Pozo, is the first jazz standard to be rhythmically based on clave. According to Gillespie, Pozo composed the layered, contrapuntalguajeos (Afro-Cuban ostinatos) of the A section and the introduction, while Gillespie wrote the bridge. Gillespie recounted: "If I'd let it go like [Chano] wanted it, it would have been strickly Afro-Cuban all the way. There wouldn't have been a bridge. I thought I was writing an eight-bar bridge, but after eight bars I hadn't resolved back to B-flat, so I had to keep going and ended up writing a sixteen-bar bridge."[24] It was the bridge that gave "Manteca" a typical jazz harmonic structure, setting the piece apart from Bauzá's modal "Tanga" of a few years earlier. Arrangements with a "Latin" A section and a swung B section, with all choruses swung during solos, became common practice with many "Latin tunes" of the jazz standard repertoire. This approach can be heard on pre-1980 recordings of "Manteca", "A Night in Tunisia", "Tin Tin Deo," and "On Green Dolphin Street."
Gillespie's collaboration with Pozo brought African-based rhythms into bebop, a post-modernist artform. While pushing the boundaries of harmonic improvisation, cu-bop as it was called, also drew more directly from Africa, rhythmically.
Early performances of "Manteca" reveal that despite their enthusiasm for collaborating, Gillespie and Pozo were not very familiar with each other's music. The members of Gillespie's band were unaccustomed to guajeos, overly swinging and accenting them in an atypical fashion. Thomas Owens observes: "Once the theme ends and the improvisation begins, . . . Gillespie and the full band continue the bebop mood, using swing eighths in spite of Pozo's continuing even eighths, until the final A section of the theme returns. Complete assimilation of Afro-Cuban rhythms and improvisations on a harmonic ostinato was still a few years away for the beboppers in 1947."[25]On a live 1948 recording of "Manteca," someone is heard playing the 3-2 son clave pattern on claves throughout a good portion of this 2-3 song.[26]
Other notables
In early 1947 Stan Kenton recorded "Machito," written by his collaborator / arranger Pete Rugolo.[27] Some consider the piece to be the first Afro-Cuban jazz recording by American jazz musicians. John Storm Roberts observes that the piece "has no Latino instrumentalists on it, a lack of that is obvious; the crisp, fast montuno with which the piece opens is weighed down by not-so-adept drumming from Shelly Mann."[27] Later, on December 6 of the same year, Kenton recorded an arrangement of the son "The Peanut Vendor" with members of Machito's rhythm section. Kenton continued to work with Afro-Cuban rhythms and musicians for another decade; the 1956 Kenton album Cuban Fire!was written as an Afro-Cuban suite by Johnny Richards.
Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaría first recorded his composition "Afro Blue" in 1959.[28] "Afro Blue" was the first jazz standard built upon a typical African three-against-two (3:2) cross-rhythm, or hemiola.[29] The song begins with the bass repeatedly playing 6 cross-beats per each measure of 12/8, or 6 cross-beats per 4 main beats—6:4 (two cells of 3:2). The following example shows the original ostinato "Afro Blue" bass line. The slashed noteheads indicate the main beats (not bass notes), where you would normally tap your foot to "keep time."
In the mid-1940s the mambo craze originated with the recordings of Perez Prado, who included jazz elements, and ideas from Stravinsky in his arrangements.[30] The giants of this era in New York were Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez, and Machito and his Afro-Cubans. Also important was the great double-bass player Cachao (Israel López), who organized a number of descargas (jam sessions) in Havana (1950s) and New York (1970s). One of the most respected Afro-Cuban jazz combos was led by vibraphonist Cal Tjader. Tjader had Mongo Santamaría, Armando Peraza, and Willie Bobo on his early recording dates. In 1975 Tjader hired a young Poncho Sanchez to fill the conga chair. Sanchez went on to become one of the most successful Latin jazz artists.
Guajeos (Afro-Cuban ostinato melodies), or guajeo fragments are commonly used motifs in Latin jazz melodies. For example, the A section of "Sabor" is a 2-3 onbeat/offbeat guajeo, minus some notes. The following excerpt is from a performance by Cal Tjader.
1980s New York City
Afro-Cuban jazz has been for most of its history, a matter of superimposing jazz phrasing over Cuban rhythms. However, by the early 1980's a generation of New York City musicians had come of age playing both salsa dance music and jazz. The time had come for a new level of integration of jazz and Cuban rhythms. This era of creativity and vitality is best represented by the Gonzalez brothers Jerry and Andy, who in 1967, at the ages of 15 and 13, formed a Latin jazz quintet inspired by Cal Tjader's group.[31] Jerry plays congas and trumpet and Andy plays bass. During 1974–1976 they were members of one of Eddie Palmieri's most experimental salsa groups. Andy Gonzalez recounts: "We were into improvising. . . doing that thing Miles Davis was doing—playing themes and just improvising on the themes of songs, and we never stopped playing through the whole set."[32] While in Palmieri's band the Gonzalez brothers started showing up in the Down Beat Reader's Poll. In 1974, the Gonzalez brothers and Manny Oquendo founded the progressive salsa band Libre. While in the band, the brothers began experimenting with jazz, using a variety of authentic Afro-Cuban rhythms. Libre recorded Charlie Parker's "Donna Lee" as a danzón, Miles Davis's "Tune Up" as a conga de comparsa, and Freddie Hubbard's "Little Sunflower" as a mambo. In 1979, Jerry Gonzalez released his first album as a leader: Ya yo me curé. His Afro 6/8 rendition of Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti," accompanied by three shekeres and a hoe blade as the only percussion, was a jazz milesone. Soon he formed his best-known band: Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band which included his brother Andy and other members as Kenny Kirkland, Sonny Fortune, Nicky Marrero, Milton Cardona, Papo Vazquez and the late Jorge Dalto. The ensembles first two albums were recorded live at European jazz festivals, The River is Deep(1982) in Berlin and Obatalá (1988) in Zurich. These were followed by their hit album, Rumba Para Monk (1988), earning them recognition from the French Academie du Jazz with the Jazz Record of the Year award. This was the record that caught the ears of the jazz community, and is still considered a stellar project. After that, the 15 member-band was compressed into a sextet: Larry Willis (piano), Andy Gonzalez (bass), Steve Berrios (Drums) and Carter Jefferson (sax) and Joe Ford (sax). The Fort Apache Band had established by this time, a new standard for the integration of jazz and Afro-Cuban music.
In the 1980s Tito Puente began recording and performing Latin jazz on a permanent basis. The Gonzalez brothers worked with Puente, as well as Dizzy Gillespie. Even McCoy Tyner hired the brothers when he tried his hand at this deeper level of Afro-Cuban jazz. The new wave of Latin jazz artists from the Big Apple include Bobby Sanabria, Steve Turre, Conrad Herwig, Hilton Ruiz, Chris Washburn, Ralph Irizarry, David Sánchez, and Dave Valentine.
Global resurgence in Afro-Cuban jazz
The new wave of Afro-Cuban jazz became global. In the San Francisco Bay Area John Santos’ Machete Ensemble featured a stellar line up of artists who have gone on to record in the genre under their own names: Rebeca Mauleón, Wayne Wallace, and John Calloway. Other notable Bay Area musicians include Michael Spiro, Latin jazz veteran Mark Levine, and the Cuban-born Omar Sosa and Orestes Vilato.
Jan L. Hartong’s Nueva Manteca is based in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Cuban branch
"Jazz bands" began forming in Cuba as early as the 1920s. These bands often included both Cuban popular music and popular North American jazz, and show tunes in their repertoires. Despite this musical versatility, the movement of blending Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz was not strong in Cuba itself for decades. As Leonardo Acosta observes: "Afro-Cuban jazz developed simultaneously in New York and Havana, with the difference that in Cuba it was a silent and almost natural process, practically imperceptible" (2003: 59).[33] Cuba's significant contribution to the genre came relatively late. However, when it did come, the Cubans exhibited a level of Cuban-jazz integration that went far beyond most of what had come before. The first Cuban band of this new wave was Irakere.
"Chékere-son" (1976) introduced a style of "Cubanized" bebop-flavored horn lines, that departed from the more "angular" guajeo-based lines typical of Cuban popular music.
The horn line style introduced in "Chékere-son" is heard today in Afro-Cuban jazz, and the contemporary popular dance genre known as timba. Another important Irakere contribution is their use of batá and other Afro-Cuban folkloric drums. "Bacalao con pan" is the first song recorded by Irakere to use batá. The tune combines the folkloric drums, jazzy dance music, and distorted electric guitar with wah-wah pedal.
According to Raúl A. Fernández, the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna members would not have been allowed by the orquesta to record the unconventional song. The musicians travelled to Santiago to record it. "somehow the tune made it from Santiago to radio stations in Havana where it became a hit; Irakere was formally organized a little bit later" (2011: web).[36]
Ironically, several of the founding members did not always appreciate Irakere's fusion of jazz and Afro-Cuban elements. They saw the Cuban folk elements as a type of nationalistic "fig leaf," cover for their true love—jazz. They were obsessed with jazz. Cuba's Ministry of Culture is said to have viewed jazz as the music of "imperialist America." Pablo Menéndez, founder of Mezcla, recalls: "Irakere were jazz musicians who played stuff like 'Bacalao con pan' with a bit of a tongue in cheek attitude—'for the masses.' I remember Paquito d'Rivera thought it was pretty funny stuff (as opposed to 'serious' stuff)" (2011: web).[37] In spite of the ambivalence by some members towards Irakere's Afro-Cuban folkloric/jazz fusion, their experiments forever changed Cuban popular music, Latin jazz, and salsa.
Another important Cuban jazz musician is pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, whose innovative jazz guajeos revolutionized Cuban-style piano in the 1980s. Like the musicians of his generation who founded the timba era, Rubalcaba is a product of the Cuban music education system. Initially he studied both piano and drums. Rubalcaba began his classical musical training at Manuel Saumell Conservatory at age 9, where he had to choose piano; he moved up to “middle-school” at Amadeo Roldan Conservatory, and finally earned his degree in music composition from Havana’s Institute of Fine Arts in 1983. By that time he was already playing in clubs and music halls in Havana.
Egrem Studios of Havana was the first to record his music during the early and mid ‘80’s, and these discs are still being released (recently Inicio, an album of piano solos, andConcierto Negro.) With Orquesta Aragon he toured France and Africa in 1980. He introduced his own Grupo Projecto to the North Sea and Berlin Festivals in 1985. Beginning in 1986 Gonzalo began recording for Messidor of Frandfurt, Germany, and put out three albums for that label with his Cuban Quartet, Mi Gran Pasion, Live in Havana, andGiraldilla.
Today, Afro-Cuban jazz from Cuba is consistently the most rhythmically complex form of Latin jazz. Many outstanding Cuban jazz bands, such as the saxophonist Tony Martinez's group, perform at a level few non-Cubans can match rhythmically. The clave matrix offers infinite possibilities for rhythmic textures in jazz. The Cuban-born drummerDafnis Prieto in particular, has been a trailblazer in expanding the parameters of clave experimentation. See: "Drum Solo with Displaced Clave" (Dafnis Prieto).
Clave license
More than a half century ago, Mario Bauzá developed arranging in-clave to a high art. Another name for clave is guide-pattern, and that is certainly how Bauzá related to it. Bauzá taught Tito Puente, and Puente's arrangers in turn, learned from him.[38] The techniques were passed down from one generation to the next. It's worth noting that many of the highly educated, new generation of Cuban musicians reject the idea of 3-2/2-3 clave. Both the clave genius Dafnis Prieto, and Alain Pérez, an important innovator in timbaand Cuban jazz, reject the concept.[39] Many of the younger musicians even reject the fundamental concept of "clave rules." Pérez states: "I just don't treat the clave as a study or a profound analysis conceived around where it overlaps and where it comes in. I didn't learn it in that way" (2002: web).[40] New York-based Bobby Sanabria laments the pervasiveness of this attitude in Cuba: "The lack of clave consciousness in Cuba is starting to be felt more and more where the rhythmic equilibrium established by the clave direction is being sacrificed due to lack of knowledge in how to work with it from an arranging standpoint by young arrangers especially in the timba movement" (2010: 251).[41]Perhaps Juan Formell, founder of Los Van Van, summed up this contemporary Cuban clave attitude best when he said: "We Cubans like to think we have clave license . . . and we don't feel obsessed about the clave as many others do" (1999: 16).[42] There is currently a "clave schism" between these two schools of thought.
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