A Gringa’s Guide to the Madison World Music Festival, Chapter 9

  Matuto

by Susan Kepecs

World music isn’t simply a melting pot of dance beats from across the cultural spectrum.  If you’re smart with your senses, it’s also a window through which to witness the ever-shifting global web of political, economic, historical and cultural realities with your eyes, ears, feet, hips and hearts.  For that reason in particular, attending the ninth annual Madison World Music Festival (Fri. Sept. 14 on the Union Terrace, Sat. Sept. 15 at the Willy St. Fair) oughta be required.  You don’t have any excuse not to go, since thanks to the Wisconsin Union Theater, the Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee, the Willy Street Fair, and a host of generous sponsors, it’s free.  

With the Wisconsin Union Theater closed for repairs the 2012 edition is pared down, like the rest of the 2012-13 season. There’s no warmup concert, no Thursday show, no related film screenings, no Dragon Knights puppets.  Madison World Music Festival No. 9 (Fri. Sept. 14 on the Memorial Union Terrace, Sat. Sept. 15 at the Willy St. Fair) consists of seven bands plus a world beat DJ – down from ten live groups last year, plus all the extras.  Still, there’s a lot packed into this two-day fest.

What leaps out about the 2012 lineup has nothing to do with size.  In its previous incarnations the MWMF featured a well-balanced mix of world beat fusions and Europop with traditional performers whose music manifests deep ethnic and cultural roots.  The bands in this last category are the ones I love best.  It would take a whole article just to name my favorites from festivals past, but among them Basque accordionist Kepa Junkera, from the ’04 and ’09 fests; huapangueros veracruzanos Tlen Huicani, plus the classic kidumbak and taarab orchestra, Culture Musical Club of Zanzibar, from ’06; Dominican merenguero / sonero Puerto Plata in 2007; and from 2010 Cimarrón, the glorious joropo band from the Colombia / Venezuela frontier.  Those groups and others like them are still going strong, but over the last couple of years (and more this year than last) the world music circuit in the US Midwest has tilted toward the proliferating global mashups of the multinational, multicultural Millennial Generation – tangled-rooted sounds, often uptempo and laid over an electronic rock, punk or hip-hop base.  The way I see it, at least half of the 2012 Madison roster will appeal more to the college crowd than to boomers.  But these young bands without borders are audacious, and the way their music cross-cuts older patterns of global interaction is intriguing enough to get anybody's attention.  

The biggest surprise is the singer-songwriter duo Zeb and Haniya (Fri., Union Terrace, 7-8 pm; Sat., Willy St., 3:30-5 pm).  These two women (they’re cousins) from Pakistan, never-before represented at the MWMF, come to us via Center Stage Tours, a cultural diplomacy initiative carried out under the auspices of the US State Department.  Of course if Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari and Barack Obama would sit down and play music together the whole world would change.  But Zeb and Haniya – US-educated Pashtuns whose family roots are in Peshawar, at the heart of the Af-Pak war – blow  blow my preconceived perceptions of Pakistan out of the water.  The two grew up on US and British rock, plus the Pashto folksongs in their family repertory.  With their backup (guitar, flute, bass, drums and rabab – a type of spike fiddle that spread across the Middle East and North Africa via Islamic trade routes) Zeb and Haniya melt gentle, meditative rock with the crossroads sounds of ancient South Asia.  (I’m interviewing Zeb and Haniya later this week, so tune in again before you head for the fest). 

If Zeb and Haniya are the best story of MWMF 9, the band that appeals to me most is Matuto (Sat., Willy St., 1:30-3 pm). “Matuto” is the Brazilian equivalent of bumpkin, campesino, or jibaro, and this band serves up a mix of country musics – forró, maracatu and other ritmos brasileros plus North American hillbilly strains, slicked up in a young Big Apple jazz matrix.  Matuto founder and guitarist Clay Ross grew up in South Carolina and spent several years on tour with the master Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista (who played the Union Theater with Luciana Souza in 2009), which explains how this particular fusion emerged. For Matuto, Ross teams up with accordion whiz Rob Curto of Forró for All, a band you might remember from MWMF 3 (2006) and the 2007 Marquette Waterfront Festival.  There’s plenty of foot-stompin’ fiddle playing in most of Matuto’s online PR, but for this tour Ross and Curto are accompanied only by bass and percussion.  That might dampen the hillbilly side of Matuto’s mix, but no matter – these are topnotch players, and however they spice their sound it’s sure to be savory.

Reggae artist Taj Weekes (Sat., Willy St., 5:30 – 7 pm) doesn’t fall into the fusion family that prevails at this year’s fest.  Weekes hails from the island of Santa Lucia, like Jamaica an English-speaking, politically independent island formerly under British rule.  There are differences – sizeable Jamaica’s in the Greater Antilles, while Santa Lucia’s a speck in the Lesser Antilles chain near the Grenadines, Barbados and Trinidad.  Given this location you’d expect some soca in Weekes' sound, but by what I can tell from his online presence, his classic riddims and socially conscious lyrics come straight from the roots reggae tradition Bob Marley started.  In keeping with Marley’s Rastafarian mission, Weekes’ backup band, Adowa, takes its name from the 1896 Battle of Adowa, in which Ethiopan warriors routed an army of invading Italians – the opening salvo in a struggle against European colonialism that finally was won in 1941 under Haile Selassie’s leadership. Weekes doesn’t sound like Marley – his voice is softer, higher-pitched – but the Willy St. crowd will go nuts for his familiar, dance-driving sound. 

The rest of the fest is devoted to young bands forging their fusions on the frontlines of the twenty-first century.  The kickoff act (Fri., Union Terrace, 5–6:30 pm) is Movits! from Sweden.  Three retro-stylish guys in sneakers, suit jackets, Buddy Holly glasses and bowties, with one saxophone and a bunch of DJ gear, play what they call hip hop swing.  And yes, there’s some underlying swing in their Youtube videos, but it’s almost entirely buried beneath relentless hip hop beats.  It’s not my taste, though I’m only going by what I’ve seen online.  But the Movits are energetic, they dance, they were a huge hit at the 2011 Lotus Festival – and they appeared on the Colbert Report (in 2009), accruing the incontrovertible Colbert bump.

Delhi 2 Dublin (Fri., Union Terrace, 8:30-10 pm), a multiculti band from Canada’s Pacific coast, mashes up bhangara, Celtic and dub / hip hop beats. Think Bollywood meets Riverdance in the land of global dance grooves. Like Irish steps, bhangara – born of the Punjabi diaspora in Britain – is a whole dance culture, with its own universe of joyful and rhythmic moves.  Not surprisingly, the two styles sync – it’s a wild fling that works.

MC Rai (Fri., Terrace, 10:30-midnight), from Tunisia by way of California, brings an older, more established fusion – rai – to the table.  Rai is rooted in the nineteenth century, multi-ethnic Algerian seaport of Oran, where Bedouin poetry aimed against French colonial rule was fused with Spanish, French and Jewish sounds.  Swing entered the mix with American troops in World War II.  After Algerian independence in 1962 the Islamic regime cracked down on this freewheeling, multicultural protest music, driving it underground -- but in the ‘70s and ‘80s, rai emerged in the expanding Algerian community in France, where it was inevitably infused with the dance beats and instrumentation of western pop.  MC Rai brews his own gritty, urban, hip hoppy brand in California, where he’s lived since the start of the new millinneum.

From the far end of the fusion scale comes Canteca de Macao (Sat., Willy St., 7:30-9 pm), a nine-piece outfit from the melting pot of twenty-first century Madrid. The name must come from the fact that the Chinese island of Macao, a Portugese-controlled port of trade and a hotspot in the world system from the sixteenth century through the end of the twentieth.  Canteca de Macao creates its own cultural crossroads, mixing flamenco, salsa, cumbia, reggae, reggaeton, jazz, rock, punky Madrileño style and a deep rebellious streak.  Besides breaking musical boundaries, Canteca de Macao cuts loose from capitalist orthodoxy.  You can download all their tunes for free [http://cantecademacao.net/es/] as long as you tweet about it or share on Facebook, and after putting out three albums on Warner, their 2012 release, Nunca Es Tarde, was fueled entirely by crowdfunding.

Madison World Music Festival Number Nine wraps as always with an outdoor finale.  Chicago’s DJ Warp, a staple of Windy City nightlife since at least 2003 (his day gig is organizing events for Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs), spins world beat on the Union Terrace (10-11:30 pm).  It’s your best opportunity to take one last unencumbered, ice-cream licking turn around that sanctified outdoor spot, since it’s just about two weeks till the first fall freeze.

         And oh yes, there’s an encore.  If you missed Canteca de Macao, or want to catch them again, or you just couldn’t boogie like you wanted on the concrete at the Terrace and your feet still want to move, head down to the Cardinal Bar, 418 E. Wilson, where the dance floor is beautiful, on Sunday, Sept. 16, at 9 pm. 

Interview: percussionist Todd Hammes

by Susan Kepecs

Late in June I posted a little piece about Ben Sidran’s 2012 Salon for Secular Humanists, Arch Democrats and Freethinkers, a summer-only treat ongoing at the Cardinal Bar on Tuesday afternoons through the end of this month.  I focused my prose on Sidran, as you’d expect, but also highlighted bassist Nick Moran and guitarist Louka Patenaude, longtime Sidran collaborators who’ve been on my radar screen for quite a while. I pretty much skipped over percussionist Todd Hammes. Up against three of the best-known players in town he essentially gets no billing for this event, and I’d never seen or heard of him before.  In my June post I called him the new guy in town, but it turns out that wasn’t quite right.  So I’ve been watching him play these last few weeks.  I like his intricate style, and his kit – bongos, congas, cymbals and sticks, no timbales, no snare, no bass – is just right for this gig.  Hammes wears several strands of ankle bells, to boot – ghungroos or kahtak bells, worn by traditional dancers in northern India.  

                                                                          © SKepecs 2012

Who is Hammes, and how did he land onstage with Sidran and company?  Hammes grew up in Onalaska WI, up by La Crosse.  “I’ve been making 100% of my living as a musician ever since I gave up my job bagging groceries in high school,” he said between sets yesterday afternoon.  “I play, compose and teach.  I have a formal music education and I play a lot of classical, but at 22, in 1992, I found my guru – an Indian tabla player – and I devoted myself to learning his style.  That singular pursuit has taken me all over the world and into hundreds of interesting situations.”

For 18 years Hammes called Tucson, AZ, his home base.  He played with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and picked up a plethora of jazz and world beat gigs.  But he came home to Wisconsin – to Madison, that is – five years ago.  “When I got here,” he says, “I went to hear who was playing.  I caught the New Breed jazz jam, back when they were at the Concourse [the current incarnation plays at the Cardinal, Tuesday nights at 8:30].  That’s how I met Nick.”

Hammes ended up sitting in with Moran and Patenaude “on a bunch of gigs.  So I wasn’t new to them this summer.  And I’ve known who Ben was for 30 years.  I knew his books, and I first heard the “Space Cowboy” song when I was 12.”  (Yes, it was Steve Miller who recorded that – but it was Sidran who wrote it, in 1969).

“But Ben didn’t know me from Adam,” Hammes says.

Until the Salon started up in June, that is.  And now the rest of us know Hammes a little bit, too.  For more, check out his website: http://toddhammes.com/ – and catch the last two Sidran Salons of the summer, Aug. 21 and 28 at 5:30 PM.

____________________________________________

There will be an encore – the very last of Sidran’s Salons this season – featuring Leo Sidran (Ben’s son) on drums, on Tues., Sept. 4.

Adios, Chavela

World-renowned Mexican cantante Chavela Vargas (who was born in Costa Rica but migrated to Mexico as a young teen) died yesterday, at 93 years of age.

Vargas’ classic rancheras, rendered in her uniquely soul-wrenching, gravelly, hard-drinking voice, will live on in the absolute force of nature that Mexican culture still is, despite the NAFTA-driven disaster of trashy transnational sweatshops, junk food, cable TV porn and the drug war.  Vargas counted Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Pedro Almodovar among her close friends – and she was a major inspiration to a younger generation, especially Mallorcan diva Concha Buika (who, with Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, recently recorded a spectacular Vargas tribute album, El Ultimo Trago [Wea International, 2009]) and world music goddess Lila Downs.

The Mexican press is overflowing today with poetic tributes – if you read Spanish, see http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/08/06/espectaculos/a16n1esp  
  I won’t try to repeat the prose of Vargas’ paisanos, but I woke up this morning with an overpowering desire to share one of her signature songs (this version recorded in 2009) with my readers, so here it is:

Dios botik, as they say in Yucatec.  Thank you.  Que en paz descanse.

                                                                       --------   Susan Kepecs

Ben Sidran's Brand New Music at the Cardinal Bar

                                                                                                         SKepecs©2012

by Susan Kepecs

I went to Ben Sidran’s Salon for Secular Humanists, Arch Democrats and Freethinkers at the Cardinal Bar late last Tuesday afternoon.  This year’s incarnation of said event began on Recall night, but this was the first chance I’d had to get down there.  Just in case the news hasn’t reached you, the Salon runs every Tuesday from 5:30 to 7:30 from now through August.  Our world-famous homey’s joined by two more red hot Mad City musicos, both longtime collaborators who grew up playing music with Sidran’s similarly talented son, Leo – of course I’m talkin’ about Nick Moran on bass and Louka Patenaude on guitar.  Rounding out the sound is versatile percussionist Todd Hammes.  He’s new in town; I don’t know much about him, but a quick Internet search shows he’s been getting around.

On Tuesday fourteen new Sidran-penned tunes made their debut. They're for an album he’s recording in New York next month, a Leo Sidran production. The songs, though still in workshop stage, swung smooth as silk. Sidran can jazzify Bob Dylan, rock Jewish liturgical music, and serve up sustained spoken word music history lessons while tickling the ivories. But Tuesday’s two sets were classic, no frills – just those trademark conversational vocals over straight-up blues / boogie / bebop piano.  Moran’s commanding standup bass and Patenaude’s inimitably inventive guitar licks synched seamlessly with Sidran’s style.  I found it impossible not to dance, though I did my little jitterbugs in the hallways since the Cardinal’s lovely dance floor was totally taken up with tables.

“I’m unabashedly going back to simple,” Sidran said when the band broke between sets.  “I’ve made 30 records.  I don’t care how hip this one is.  I’m going for a haunted sound.  Miles’ Kind of Blue is haunted – you can memorize it, hear every note in your head. Same with Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”  What I’m after is authenticity – that’s what’s gonna survive.  The simplest chord progressions.  Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” – that chord progression’s 300 years old. That’s why that new song sounded so familiar. Brand new music, same old song.  What could possibly go wrong?" 

That last line’s not just a rhetorical question, it’s a lyric – and maybe the title of the forthcoming album, too.  It goes with a jivey, uptempo tune that riffs on sentiments straight out of the blues: “Hey, how’s that new car workin’ out for you?  How’s that new job workin’ out for you?”

But the simplicity’s deceptive.  “Harmonically, what I’m playing isn’t much more sophisticated than Jimmy Reed’s basic chord progressions, but there are moments in the solos that are like stepping into an empty elevator shaft,” Sidran said.  “It’s the sly, ‘60s way of blues and bebop.  Mose and Monk did it.  Brand new music, same old song.  The lyrics are familiar, but they’ve got a very contemporary feel.  ‘How’s that new job workin’ out for you?’  We’ve been here before.  People are panicked.  These are tough times.  But you know, the way we win is by feelin’ good.” 

                                                                             SKepecs©2012

What feels good, Sidran contends, is clapping on the backbeat.  And that’s what the last song of the second set was all about.  

"There are people today who want us to be afraid,” he says into the mike, rocking out a blues on the keys.  “The world is coming to an end.  Tell you what – if it is coming to an end, the appropriate response is to clap on 2 and 4!  That’s right!  Rhythm!”

He tosses some Monkish, dissonant chords into the groove, then picks up where he left off with this improvised spoken word song that’s aimed smack dab at the still a little down-at-the-mouth, post-Recall audience: “I don’t know why, but I’m thinkin’ about Tommy Thompson right now.  This man is tired – but he’s out there fightin’.  Why?  Cuz the spirit don’t die!  I’m thinkin’ about Russ Feingold – he gave us 30 years, he got himself a girlfriend, he’s gone.  It’s not forever – it’s about now!  Let’s say a meteor falls on the Cardinal Bar – what’s the appropriate response?”

The people put their palms together and yell back “Clap on 2 and 4!” 

Say yeah.  See you there next week?

Dance Review: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at Overture Hall

by Susan Kepecs

Tuesday night’s concert by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was like a litmus test to see whether twentieth century American modern dance has a future a decade-plus into the twenty-first. How to approach the legacy of this artform now that its master choreographers are gone has been a matter of great debate.  Martha Graham’s company plies revived works in the name of teaching a new generation some dance history.  A concert of restored works by multimedia pioneer Alwin Nikolais, the Ririe-Woodbury Nikolais Dance Project, seen at the Wisconsin Union Theater in 2007, was nostalgic but weary.  And Merce Cunningham’s company took its final bows at New York’s Park Avenue Armory on New Year’s eve, 2011.  Only the Ailey company, among the great pioneers, has moved on under new directorship and with a substantial repertory of works by choreographers who’ve emerged since the master’s passing.  Last fall, Robert Battle – never an Ailey dancer, but a frequent company collaborator over the years – took the reins from Judith Jameison, who succeeded Ailey shortly before his death in 1989.  Tuesday night was the first opportunity I’ve had to see the company under Battle’s artistic direction.   

But the program was a mixed bag, dotted with disappointments.  The first piece, “Streams,” a minor but long Ailey piece from 1970 – a lushly lit leotard work with an electronic score and the sleekly angular vocabulary that was a hallmark of modern dance in that decade  (attitudes on supporting legs with bent knees, leg extensions in second position, leaps that land in falls) – was an odd selection.  It lacks entirely the powerful African-American identity of Ailey’s major works like “Revelations” (1960), “The River” (1970, a collaboration with Duke Ellington), or “Cry” (1971), the dance that made Judith Jameison a star.  In general “Streams” looked good.  But given the fabled strength of Ailey dancers, the occasional shaky standing legs supporting the arabesques on which much of the piece was built constituted a subtle flaw that could have been avoided with an extra touch of turnout.

Also on the bill were two pieces by Battle, neither of which I loved, and neither of which I’d seen before though both were made for the Ailey company in the ‘90s, under Jameison’s direction. “Takedeme” (1999) featured soloist Megan Jakel in a red top and fringed pants, doing what we used to call “sound theory” in Alwin Nikolais’ improv class in the 1960s.  Jakel’s rapid-fire jumps and poses, framed in a spotlight circle, looked precisely the way the soundtrack – Sheila Chandra’s “Speaking in Tongues II” – sounds.  The Chandra piece lends itself perfectly to this kind of choreography; Li Chiao Ping uses it to similar effect in her wacky holiday show, The Knotcracker.

Of Battle’s works I preferred “The Hunt” (2001), a tribal, drum-driven dance for six men in long, black split skirts lined in red satin that flared, flamelike, as the performers lept or spun, often in unison.  Heavily spiked with belly-to-belly jumps (backs arched, knees bent), flat-footed up-and-down jumps like little levitations, and wrenching upper torso contractions, the piece, with its spirit posession finale of frenzied yelling, jumping and falling, was the epitome of what New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella calls “muscle ballet.”   

The tensions and jazzlike structure of “Urban Folk Dance,” a 1990 rejection / attraction jitterbug for two couples by the late Ulysses Dove, were captivating.  It's worth noting that Dove studied at UW-Milwaukee in the late ‘60s with the Kirov’s Xenia Chlistwa (with whom more than a few of Tuesday night’s audience members also studied, either there or in Madison) before joining the Ailey company in 1973. Dove’s piece made stark contrast with “Journey,” a soft woman-spirit solo choregraphed by another late Ailey dancer, Joyce Trisler, and performed Tuesday night by Sarah Daley, one of the youngest dancers in the current company. 

But the soulful “Revelations” remains by far this company’s piece de resistance.  A dance-literate friend who accompanied me to the concert had never seen the master’s choreographic crown jewel; surprisingly, at least to me, she found it dated and ordinary. I’ve seen “Revelations,” an extremely painterly work loosely based on the choreographer’s own African-American childhood in Texas in the 1930s, many times, and I always find it lush and beautiful.  For me, the experience is akin to returning to the Uffizi for the Boticellis – an enriching act that’s worth repeat visits over the years.  Still, like the Boticellis, “Revelations” is now a museum piece. American modern dance, I’m afraid, is heading into history.

Gran Baile at Great Hall -- the Much-Anticipated Return of Sierra Maestra

by Susan Kepecs

September, 1997, was a month of momentous events. The world wept, watching Princess Di’s funeral at Westminster Abbey; NASA landed a global surveyor on Mars, the first mission to the red planet in 18 years; Steve Jobs, who left Apple in 1985, returned to the company he co-founded 1976; a violent earthquake shook Umbria, Italy, crumbling the vaulted ceiling of Assisi's Basilica of San Francisco, and with it Giotto’s ethereal frescoes.  And son cubano – the musical heart and soul of the big island from the 1920s to the ‘50s – busted out from behind the blockade and took the U.S. by storm.  The album Buena Vista Social Club, recorded in Havana by Ry Cooder and World Circuit Records producer Steve Gold, was released to rave reviews.  And another Cuban son outfit, Sierra Maestra, played the Club Tavern in Middleton, Wisconsin.  I wasn’t there.  Just back from a frivolous trip to Umbria I was doing penance, locked away in the stacks at Memorial Library to appease my dissertation deities.  Cardinal Bar owner Ricardo Gonzalez, who introduced Cuban music to Madison in the 1970s and with whom I had a Cuban salsa band in the early ‘80s, wasn’t there either – he was in Texas, attending to family matters.  So for González, and for me, and for all you other son (or salsa) smitten souls out there, this Friday night, March 23, is a momentous occasion.  After the long hiatus imposed by W. Bush’s post-9/11 visa blockade on Cuban artists, Sierra Maestra finally returns to Madison for a bodacious baile at UW Memorial Union’s Great Hall.

Yes, you can salsa dance to it, but son is not salsa.  Salsa is a U.S. invention that put Latin rhythms on the disco floors of New York at the end of the 1960s and is still super caliente.  In fact, son montuno, a jazzed-up, urban form of Cuban son originated in ‘40s Havana by the great Arsenio Rodríguez, is the strongest and deepest of salsa’s roots.  

But son – even son montuno – is old-school.  While the Buena Vista phenomenon, augmented with Wim Wenders’ (1999) dreamy documentary about Cuba’s great old soneros – the ones on the Buena Vista albums, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González and Compay Segundo – went international, Cuba’s youth culture was going wild for a new sound – fast, rhythmically unpredictable, rap-influenced timba.  

Today the Buena Vista boom is over.  Almost all of the old soneros are dead.  And the musicians of Sierra Maestra, who come from a younger generation, are heroes. There would be no more son if they hadn’t rescued the genre from the dustbins of pre-revolutionary history. The 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution wreaked havoc on the music industry.  Many musicians fled to the U.S.; the old-time soneros left on the island faded into obscurity.  By the late 1960s a new, politically-themed, government-approved singer-songwriter style of music, la nueva trova, emerged.

At the same time, rebellious Cuban youth took gigantic risks, listening to American rock and jazz fusion, officially prohibited – Castro called it the enemy’s music – but accessible on the radio via Miami.  The band Irakere, begun in ’73 by Chucho Valdés, today one of the world’s greatest Afro-Cuban jazz pianists, created a groundbreaking mix of dance-worthy jazz fusion that coexisted with la nueva trova because, as Paquito D’Rivera once told me, “Fidel knows nothing about music.  He prefers sports.” 

And then, in 1976, a group of students at the University of Havana decided to play son.  They called their band Sierra Maestra, after the mountain range in eastern Cuba where both son and the Revolution were born.  Juan de Marcos González, who grew up next door to Compay Segundo (and who sought out the old-time soneros, introducing them to Cooder for the Buena Vista project), was a founding member.  “People thought son was old folks’ music,” Marcos told me some years back when I interviewed him in Havana, “but because we were at the university we were able to influence our generation.  They got to like son.”

Marcos, who plays the trés, a double-strung Cuban rhythm guitar, went on to lead the Afro-Cuban All Stars, whose first album was part of the Buena Vista series.  That always-evolving big band last played Madison (Overture Hall) in March, 2009.  Meanwhile Sierra Maestra keeps on keepin’ on, playing traditional son in its many-splendored varieties.  Today, five members of the original nine are still with the outfit.

How has the group changed over the years? Eduardo Himely (bass) and Alejandro Suárez (percussion), both with Sierra Maestra since the beginning, fielded that question and a few more, from Havana via email:

CulturalOyster: How has the group evolved?

Himely: Besides Alejandro and me, the original members who are still with us are Carlos Puisseax (güiro), Virgilio Valdés (vocals, maracas) and Luis Barzaga (vocals, clave).  Our newer members are Emilio Ramos (trés), Eduardo Rico (congas, bongos, cowbell), Jesus Bello (vocals) and Yelfris Valdés (trumpet).  I think the personnel can change, but not the project’s central objective.  On that we’ve been firm – we play son.  Of course there are modern influences in our sound – despite trying to faithfully reproduce themes from the 1920s and ‘30s in the 1970s, the result is a bit distinct from what you would have heard earlier in the century.  Sierra Maestra’s never been afraid to use genres or instruimental formats that aren’t exactly classical.  On some of our songs we use electric instruments; we’ve been known to do jazz fusions and Afro-Cuban descargas that aren’t strictly son.

CulturalOyster: Like the descarga “Anabacoa,” on Tibiri Tabara (World Circuit, 1997) or “Sangre Negra,” on your 2010 (SASA Music) album Sonando Ya, which was nominated for Best Traditional Tropical Album at the Latin Grammies that year. 

Himely:  Yes. Our willingness to play outside the box has helped us achieve our own sound, which can be very difficult when you’re dedicated to playing a certain type of music.   

CulturalOyster: Son cubano has a lot of variation, and a long history.  Tell me about that.

Suárez: It’s very difficult to synthesize the evolution of son, the most popular and important genre of Cuban music.  Son was born in Oriente – the eastern part of the island – and according to most musicologists its closest relative is the changüi, a rhythm native to Guantánamo, on Cuba’s eastern edge.  By the end of the nineteenth century changüi had spread across the island, carried by the mambises [guerilla fighters] during the War of Independence.  As changüi, or early son, evolved, it adapted to the regional music played in different parts of Cuba. By the early twentieth century son appeared in the cities, in new formats – trios, quartets, septets. In the 1920s, with the advent of the phonograph, son started to be recorded, and it became popular in urban dance halls along with new foreign dance music like the Charleston.

The early small-format son bands usually were composed of the trés, six-string guitar, various percussion instruments and marimbula [a hollow wood box with metal tongues that sort of sounds like a string bass].  By the late 1930s musicians started experimenting, replacing the marimula with standup bass and introducing trumpet and piano.  In the 1940s son bands reached their maximum expression – the most famous was Arsenio Rodríguez’ band.  The bands of that decade added a second or even a third trumpet, tumbadoras [congas], and montunos [looping, syncopated piano vamps], to the delight of the dancers.  This format, the son montuno, remained popular against the new dances of the 1950s – the cha-cha-cha, the mambo, etc. 

Today the son montuno [mostly in the hands of Sierra Maestra] persists, with new shadings like the occasional addition of trombones and saxes.  And much to our satisfaction, you can still hear the original sound behind it, played on the trés, guitar, and bongó. 

CulturalOyster: Since the 1990s, everything in Cuba is timba, timba, timba.  If you want to go dancing in Havana, that’s what you get.  Here in the U.S., too, Latin youth flock to clubs to dance to timba.  In Cuba you only find son in the streets of Santiago, or by the Cathedral in la Habana Vieja, where the tourists go.  So I want to know – how is Sierra Maestra doing in Cuba?  Have you managed to inspire a new generation of soneros on the island?

Suárez: Like you say, almost everything on radio or TV in Cuba is timba.  In the ‘80s, when our band took off, a number of son groups came along, some more popular than others.  I can say that Sierra Maestra influenced the generation that followed us, keeping the word for the next generation.  I can mention names – Jóvenes Clásicos del Son, Septeto Turquino, el Son del Nené – though they’re not big-name groups.  Sierra Maestra hasn’t escaped relative obscurity, either, though we did a national tour last year to commemorate our thirty-fifth anniversary and were thrilled to discover that Sierra Maestra is very much loved and respected.  We weren’t able to do a mass event, say, playing in a public plaza, since we lack an adequate sound system, but the people still love our music. 

So there you have it.  As my friend Victoria Gutiérrez said to me one night a couple of months ago, sitting at the Cardinal’s bar talking about what’s happening in Cuban music in general and the upcoming Great Hall baile in particular, “Sierra Maestra – son el son.”

Mini Review: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones at the Union Theater, Thurs., March 1

by Susan Kepecs

I wasn’t going to write a review, thanks to a bad back and doctor’s orders not to sit at the computer this week.  But three days after Bela Fleck and the Original Flecktones played the Union Theater, I’m still obsessed.  “Sunset Road” (from the concert, but originally recorded on the band’s first, eponomyously titled 1990 Warner Brothers album) loops continuously through my head.  While trying to do other things I find myself surfing the web, hunting YouTube videos – none of which do justice to the sheer genius of this band live in performance. But here’s a goodie, shot in Prague in ’09, featuring the original Flecktones – Fleck himself, the banjo maestro; piano man / blues harpist Howard Levy (aka Skokie Slim), and the Wooten Brothers – bass boss Victor and the indomitable FutureMan, inventor of the amazing Drumitar:

For the Mad City show wildman bluegrass fiddler and frequent Flecktone collaborator Casey Driessen joined the quirky quartet on several tunes. 

The Flectones’ unique sound defies classification, so I’ll just call it jazz. Thursday night the band carried off some of the most simpatico improvisation you could ever hope to hear. These players are alchemists wielding a host of harmonic structures and a bag of tricky time signatures, melding genres you know well into sparkly new material.  Sure, it’s hip to mix styles these days, but it's the Flecktones who're blasting the phenomenon we call music into the future.  No wonder the title of the new Original Flecktones album (Entertainment One Music, 2011) is Rocket Science.

Here’s how the blastoff sounds, rendered in brief, inefficient words: Fleck’s fleet-fingered licks travel full-circle, welding bluegrass, bop, and hints of the banjo’s West African roots.  Levy tosses snippets of “On Wisconsin” and Bach Cantata No. 147 ("Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring") into a Chicago-style blues harp solo that sounds like a whole band all by itself; he plays a wry stride piano run, then stretches out on a Monk-like solo, sneaking in a sole montuno.  Wooten’s funky, funky slap bass synchs with a thousand heartbeats, weaving whole cloth from a diverse, full-house audience.  FutureMan dances out polyrhythms, Drumitar in hand, sitting on a cajón that sports a pair of metal castanets for added nuance.

And that's not all.  The Flecktones play more for the joy of it than for the money. They ran at least twenty minutes over the standard 90-minute show before tearing into their finale, a Flecktoned take on the Beverley Hillbillies theme. The crowd, cheering throughout the show, went wild. Two roaring standing ovations brought two rafter-raising encores.  That’s proof enough for me.  The Union Theater, which shuts down for rennovation this summer, re-opens in fall, 2014.  From my opinionated perspective, the Flecktones belong on the bill for the grand re-opening season.