They believed, so I did, too.I’m talking about the dancers in Madison
Ballet’s fast-paced feast of entertainment, cooked up by artistic director
W. Earle Smith and featuring his own action-packed choreography, Michael
Massey’s indelible rock n’ roll score (played live onstage by his band),
Karen Brown-Larimore’s slick steampunk costuming, and a big Broadwayesque
aluminum-truss set by the late Jen Trieloff. It played Overture's Capitol Theater last weekend, Oct. 16-17.
Dracula premiered at Capitol Theater in March, 2013, and returned in October of that year.In both of its previous runs it seemed like a
series of somewhat disparate dances, held together by a thin thread of story
plus the astute characterization in Massey’s score. But this time the cast reveled
in the plot, taking the tale to new heights while refusing to sacrifice dance
on the altar of drama. The ballet itself, with the exception of choreographic
adjustments to suit the styles of dancers who’ve joined the company since the
last time Dracula was staged, had few obvious changes.Except one.The action starts with Jonathan Harker trapped in Dracula’s castle, dancing
frantically.This solo of distress formerly
was done behind a scrim, which provided a delicious air of mystery that gave way to spine-chilling shock – when
the dance was done and the veil was lifted, there stood Dracula, in all his
glory.In last weekend’s production that
magic was lost – the scrim was gone, the Harker variation brightly lit.
Other than that I have no complaints.
If Balanchine had created a sex-oozing rock
n’ roll ballet in the twenty-first century, this would be it.The dance for Dracula’s brides is unmistakably
neoclassical, despite its subject matter. Abigail Henninger sizzled and slithered,
Rachelle Butler was lascivious, Kelanie Murphy demonesque – but what really
mattered was how the dancers’ precise pointework exaggerated their slinking
hips.
The Dracula corps is packed with talented soloists, so it’s no surprise that some of the show’s best dancing
happened in the ballet’s two large ensemble numbers.In “Gypsies,” eight dancers in goggles and
mohawks in charge of Dracula’s bags of dirt – vampires, of course, can only
rest if their coffins are filled with earth from home – travel with the Count from
Transylvania to England.Ensconsed in
the dark hold of a wave-tossed ship they shifted between partnering and unison
work, rhythmic and expansive like the roiling sea.“Minions” was bigger, wilder, and more
beautiful, full of batlike contractions that marry latter-day Balanchine with
Martha Graham.All ten dancers (six
women, four men) wore long red satin skirts that swirled and flew as they spun
and lept, to dazzling effect.
As eager suitors of the coquette
Lucy Westenra, the doctor (Jason Gomez), the Texan (Cyrus Bridwell), and the nobleman’s
son (Phillip Ollenburg) brought out an arsenal of balletic pyrotechnics, competing
for her attention with leaps and pirouettes. When she became a vampire, their pursuit – and
their arsenal – turned murderous.The
scene where van Helsing (Jacob Ashley) laid out his plan to slay the vampires just
popped.Men bravura dancing in unison,
with guns – pow!
Ashley’s danced this role in
every Madison Ballet Dracula
production to date.He’s always
been a powerful
jumper – grand cabrioles, switch leaps, and tours en l’air are his specialties
– but he’s upped his acting ante since last we saw him in van Helsing’s leather
frock coat. He was so authoritative he
looked presidential (ok, yes, it’s primary season), directing his posse in the
hemovore hunt.
Jackson Warring, cast again as
Dracula’s lackey (the crotch-grabbing, insect-eating lunatic Renfield), has grown
into his role, too.He came across as blazingly
crazy, and he nailed the intricate rhythmic shifts in Massey’s spot-on maniac
music.This is much harder than it
looks, since it demands complicated counts and an almost constant string of
various kinds of jumps.
The part of Lucy Westenra was
danced by McKenna Collins, one of two current company dancers who’ve come up
through the School of Madison Ballet.At
19, this was her first principal role. A
hint of tension that showed mostly in her shoulders held her back at the start
of her opening number, a wildly flirtatious rock n’ roll romp, but the stress vanished when her boyfriends charged
onstage.It was fun to see her relax and
let go, ripping through the rest of the dance with great delight that didn’t
abate as the plot moved along.Drained
by Dracula, laid out in her tomb, and sensing the
presence of van Helsing’s
posse, she heaved herself up from her icy slab, angry and hissing, feet
pointed.She bouréed across the stage,
pale under the cold light, arms gesticulating, hair flying -- a madwoman in a house of horrors.She bared her teeth and lept brazenly onto her
pursuers, one by one.
The Harker role was danced by former
Arizona Ballet principal Shea Johnson, guesting with Madison Ballet for this
show.An accomplished dancer, he exudes
an aura of smoldering lust that he gets a lot of mileage out of, adjusting it
as needed. He approached the ballet’s opening display of male bravura with
relaxed, confident swagger; he swooned and staggered, swept away, in the
vampiric orgy with Dracula’s brides; he was passionate, playful, and protective
in his bedroom-eyed pas de deux with his fiancé, Mina Murray (Shannon Quirk).
Quirk, as always, was a joy to
watch. We first saw her alone, dancing
on air, lyrical and light, dreaming of Harker.She was liquid; she flowed and soared. Her pas de deux with Johnson was an
ode to
carefree delight.Their chemistry was superb
– they were diggin’ it, you could tell.Sometimes
Johnson pulled her off center, exaggerating her luxurious long lines. The Mina / Dracula pas was the other side of
the sex coin – a dangerous, surreal dream in which Quirk appeared terrified but willing.The powerful Count (Joe LaChance) swept her hungrily into arched overhead lifts; he tossed her over his shoulder; he slung her
deep into fish dives; he tried to bite.
LaChance made a compelling
Dracula, tall, proud, and able to slip sideways through the ether while imposing
his will on vampires and humans alike.In his final variation, shot by the nobleman’s son, he sank to his
knees, slurped his own blood, and, like a wounded animal, rose to fight again. I desperately wanted him to break the fourth
wall and appeal to the audience before van Helsing drove the final stake
through his heart.He didn’t, but the
moment was gripping nonetheless.He
believed, so I did, too.
Shortly after dusk, a string of plump Dane County Farmers’ Market garlic wrapped around my neck, I muster my courage and tiptoe up the steep flight of steps that leads to the Secret Kingdom of Madison Ballet.I peek into a spooky, windowless room where a troupe of vampires is rehearsing a ballet.It’s artistic director W. Earle Smith’s Dracula, to be precise.I loved that show so much I saw all three performances of its 2013 premiere.That’s why I’m here.Insanely drawn to vampires and other bad boys, I can’t wait even one more day to see it again.Take it from me, though – unless you want to scare yourself silly, go for the finished product.It runs Oct. 16-17 at Overture’s well-guarded, very safe Capitol Theater.If you see the show there you get the total experience – Smith’s weirdly terrifying, action-packed, contemporary choreography; Michael Massey’s indelible rock n’ roll score, composed just for this ballet and performed live onstage; Karen Brown-Larimore’s over-the-top steampunk costuming; and the late Jen Trieloff’s bold, Broadwayesque aluminum-truss set.
Smith’s Dracula, like all really good story ballets, is more about the dancing than the narrative, though when you catch it onstage you can see the fable’s flow unfold.But since I’m sneaking in to see a rehearsal, and it’s early in the process, I’ll just get bits and pieces.To prepare, I boned up on the Cliffs Notes: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/d/dracula/book-summary.
I draw a deep breath and venture into the studio.At this hour all the sugarplum fairies have gone home, but except for an occasional glint of fang the members of the Dracula cast seem for all the world like perfectly ordinary highly trained ballet dancers (not that there’s anything ordinary about highly trained ballet dancers, but you get my point). They’re wearing regular old dancewear, which heightens the effect.
I work up the nerve to approach Smith.I don’t have any formal questions ready, so I just plunge in.“As the artistic director of a vampire company, I assume you usually work late into the night?”
“I do my best work at night,” he says.His upper lip lifts in a slight snarl, and I notice a red fleck on one of his front teeth. “I play best at night, too.I’m a night owl.”
“How do you keep them from biting you?”
“We don’t often bite our own kind, but the truth is best left unsaid – vampires never give away their secrets, or their feeding habits.”
Out of the corner of my eye I notice something unusual for ballet companies – half the dancers are men!Smith anticipates my next question.“The real tension in this ballet is between the Count and a number of mortal men who haven’t crossed over,” he says.“It takes more male dancers than we have in the company, so I called in Jacob Ashley – um, Dr. Van Helsing – because he’s the best vampire slayer I know.And I brought in former Arizona Ballet principal Shea Johnson, also known as Jonathan Harker, because, well, even though he’s a mere mortal, he’s just plain sexy.”
Smith turns away from this impromptu interview and bares his fangs; the dancers jump to attention.The opening notes of the overture to Massey’s Dracula score announce the start of rehearsal.(Just to clarify, Massey is not a vampire, but he is their favorite composer).
Harker, indefatigable fiancé of the lovely Mina Murray, bears a slight resemblance to the young Mikhail Baryshnikov – it’s his haircut, and some of his facial expressions.He’s executing a bold bravura variation and is in the middle of a string of second position pirouettes when the music goes gouhlish – the characterization in this score is right on point – and the imposing figure of Count Dracula (day name: Joe LaChance) sidles in with loose, lateral steps – the opposite of the diagonal dynamic we earthly humans usually employ.He stalks Harker, grabs him, and – sluuurp! – licks his neck – then pushes him away in disgust.
There’s a break; the dancers regroup.“Mr. Harker,” I ask, “do you find Dracula attractive?”
“Nooooo!” Harker replies, scandalized.“Of course, I’m apprehensive – I don’t really believe in vampires, but there they are!It’s all so weird – I don’t know exactly what’s going on here.”
The action resumes.Dracula’s brides (Rachelle Butler, Abigail Henninger, Kelanie Murphy) set out to seduce Harker, who’s ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time; they circle him, slinking lasciviously, hissing, hips jutting.Holding hands, arms crossed like three harpy cygnets from some perverted Petipa ballet, they slither
sideways doing the Count’s signature step.Each executes a bloodthirsty little come-hither dance. Henninger brandishes exceptional extensions; her limbs seem to stretch toward outer space.Butler, who’s been with the Count longer than the rest, flaunts a singularly voluptuous solo. Still, Smith isn’t satisfied.“Don’t prettify it,” he insists, incisors flashing. “Make it more grotesque!”
I’m itching to ask Dracula if bigamy’s common among his kind, but he’s protected by a band of Gypsies who pirouette, pas de chat and kick, pointe shoes flashing, like human spikes on the castle gate.It’s big, bold, off-center dancing that looks devastatingly dangerous.
The mortal Mina (the elegant Shannon Quirk) appears, leaping happily; she’s come to visit her friend Lucy Westernra (McKenna Collins), who responds with a welcoming outburst of shoulder-rolling, hip-shaking, sheer rock n’ roll that brings her three suitors (Phillip Ollenburg, Jason Gomez, Cyrus Bridwell) out of the woodwork in hot pursuit.Mina watches warily.Lucy beckons her to join this bacchanal. “Mina,” Smith admonishes – and it’s obvious how his tone softens when he’s around this superbly graceful dancer – “don’t fall for it.You’re like, oh no, no, I’m not doing that!Not me!I’ve got morals!”
Lucy is gossiping in the corner with some of the Gypsy girls.I make my way over.“I know you always have a lot of boyfriends,” I say, “but aren’t you afraid Dracula will come lusting after you when you do that outrageously flirty dance?”
“No, not at all!” she replies, laughing.“I’m a daredevil – I’m not afraid of anything!I find vampires alluring – I find most men alluring!”
That crazy Renfield – his day name’s Jackson Warring – is a bona fide schizophrenic.It’s slightly unnerving to see him suck up to Dracula with his loony little crotch-grabbing, insect eating dance.“I’m the action star of my own movie,” he says, safely back in his cell and drooling slightly.“I mean, I just want Dracula to like me.I want him to make me into whatever he wants.Ha ha, I’m a vampire!”
But Dracula has other plans.He goes after Mina, sweeping her into a luxurious penché and lifting her onto his back to carry her off.“Bite her!” Smith commands, chomping at the air. “Find your inner Dracula!”
Finally, I work up the nerve to approach the Count.Up close his towering presence is totally intimidating.“What is it you want?” I squeak.“The taste of blood – I need blood!” he snarls.“I’m a control freak.”His upper lip curls.“I want to do what I want, to whoever I want, whenever I want to do it, and nobody is smart or strong enough to top me.I’ve been dead 400 years – I don’t really want to reconnect with humanity.It’s insulting to have to associate with all these humans – I feel put upon.But it’s Mina – I have a long-term plan for her.I want her, which is why I want to kill Lucy.I’ve been feeding on Lucy for ages, but the next time she looks at me wrong I’m going to do her in.I’m going to do it for Mina, and the hell with Lucy and the rest of my brides!”
I’m starting to feel really weird about all of this.I want to get out of here, now.Mina must be thinking the same thing, because she’s inching toward the door.I follow her.
“How does it feel to be pursued by Count Dracula?” I ask as we tiptoe toward the stairs.“It’s terrifying, yet flattering,” she whispers.“I usually play it safer – it feels very risky to fall into being pursued, especially by a vampire.”
The first faint rays of dawn are visible in the hall.Only the hemovores remain inside the studio; the sound of coffin lids softly closing reaches our retreating ears.But someone who doesn’t belong in there is trapped – it must be Harker, since he’s not with us.We can hear him leaping, flinging himself at the walls in frustration.
Want to know what happens next? You’ll have to go to the show.But don’t forget your garlic, or you might be sorry.
________________________
Dracula tours to Oshkosh’s Grand Opera House (Oct. 21-22) and the Juanita K. Hammons Hall for the Performing Arts in Springfield, MO, on March 16. If you can’t get enough, get on the road.
Dr.
Juan de Marcos González wears a string of green and yellow beads on his
wrist. This bicolored bracelet is the
iddé of Orula, orisha mayor, oracle, brother of Changó, personification of
knowledge, keeper of all secrets of life and nature. Juan de Marcos isn’t particularly religious,
but the iddé is apt – the man personifies knowledge of Cuban music. He’s the keeper of its flame; he knows,
better than anyone else, its secrets, and the many facets of its brilliant
nature. He sees its future. For these reasons, Marcos is the UW-Madison
Arts Institute Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence this fall – and the purveyor
of the Cuban music experience not just on campus, but beyond the ivory
tower. He heads a series of performances
and lecture-demomstrations that are open to the public. This week he offers us
two events with his own master project, the Afro-Cuban All Stars. On Tuesday, Sept. 29, there’s a lec/dem at
Music Hall (7:30 PM) – and on Friday, Oct. 2, the ACAS play a gala performance
at Overture Hall at 8.
Juan de
Marcos is a world class, multilingual intellectual with advanced degrees in
hydraulic engineering and agronomy, musical training at Havana’s premier conservatories, and a deep, wide knowledge of son y rumba rooted in his personal
family experience. Family looms large for
Marcos, and the iddé is part and parcel of his heritage. “It’s something I’ve
had since I was little,” he says, “though not this particular one. My mother gave it to me when I was only
seven. I didn’t like it; I frequently
threw it away, and then she’d give me another one. About four years ago I made this one – not as
a religious object, but as a tribute to my family and my culture.
The Afro-Cuban All Stars, which has been around much longer than that particular
wrist band, is also a tribute to his family and culture. The idea for the project was sparked by the
success of Marcos’ first band, Sierra Maestra, which he put together while he
was a graduate student at the Universidad de la Habana. “A bunch of students got together to
play music in '76,” he told me some years ago when I interviewed him for
another upcoming ACAS concert. “Most of
our peers were drawn to British and US bands that had the allure of forbidden
fruit.”
Not that there was any authorized
rock n’ roll from “la yuma” on the big socialist island. But in Havana there were clandestine late-night rooftop
listening sessions revolving around radio pirated from Miami, and in 1973 the groundbreaking Cuban jazz/rock fusion
band Irakere, fronted by Chucho Valdés, started enlisting traditional Cuban rhythms
in the service of new, US-influenced forms.
Sierra Maestra took a different direction. “We were smitten with the
old-timers' music,” Marcos told me. “We were after a
punk look and we played traditional Cuban son. We were notorious, and very popular.”
From the
dustbins of prerevolutionary history, Sierra Maestra rescued the sounds Marcos grew
up with in Pueblo Nuevo, which, along with its neighboring Centro Habana
barrio, Cayo Hueso, was the Cuban capital’s twentieth century hotbed of
rumba and urban son. Marcos’ own father
– his puro, as Cubans say – sang with some of Havana’s greatest dance bands,
including the great Arsenio Rodríguez’ Septeto Boston, in the 1930s.
After his puro passed away, Marcos, looking
to take the Sierra Maestra concept one step further, found a deeper way to
celebrate traditional Cuban music. And
that’s how the Afro-Cuban All Stars came about.
The ACAS’ first album, A Toda Cuba
le Gusta, was recorded in 1996 at Havana’s EGREM studios, produced by World
Circuit’s Nick Gold, and distributed in the States through Nonesuch. For A
Toda Cuba, a big band affair, and its sister CD, Buena Vista Social Club, dedicated to the son septet style, Marcos and
his wife Gliceria Abreu rounded up as many of the old-timers as they could find
who were still able to play. Most of
them had abandoned music, or rather, the Cuban revolution had abandoned them.
A Toda Cuba le Gusta was a very traditional big band album of urban, '40s and '50s-style son, guaracha and guaguancó, starring a remarkable slate of musicians whose
names evoke reverence if you’re a fan of the Buena Vista albums: soneros Ibrahim
Ferrer, Pio Leyva, Raul Planas, Manuel “Puntillita” Licea; the great pianist Rubén
Gonzalez, bassist Orlando “Cachaito” Lopez (Cachao’s nephew), trumpeters "Guajiro" Mirabal and Luis Alemañy.
Almost all of
the grand old soneros featured on those two albums and the handful of followup
solo recordings from that series are gone now.
But musicians Marcos' age and younger were in the mix, including, on A Toda Cuba, sonero Félix Valoy, Marcos himself on trés and his now-deceased
brother Carlos González on bongos. All were integral to Marcos’ plan. “I was always aware that the old ones have to
die, so even in the beginning I was adding younger musicians to the lineup,” he
says.
The ACAS is a
hands-on, real-life study in the sustainable evolution of tradition, and we’ve
watched it happen here in Madison. Some of
the original artists were in the lineup that played at the old Civic
Center’s Oscar Mayer Theater, in April, 2000 – Puntillita Licea (who died later that year), Alemañy, Marcos, his wife and ACAS
manager Gliceria Abreu, his brother Carlos, and Valoy – plus Teresita Garcia Caturla, who wasn’t on A Toda Cuba, but whose career in Cuban
song is legendary. A few smokin’ young
players whose styles were edged with jazz and timba shared that stage. Among them were pianist David Alfaro and
trumpeter Yauré Muñiz. Garcia wore
white; the men wore zoot suits in Changó's colors, red and white.
They cooked, they danced, they played a mix of tunes from A Toda Cuba and the just-released second ACAS disc, Distinto,
Diferente (Nonesuch, 1999).
There’s son on that album, and a traditional canto Abakuá, but also a timba-son penned by
Marcos, who called the package a modern interpretation of traditional Cuban
music. “The only way to preserve the
traditional roots is to let in contemporary elements,” he
says.
The
Afro-Cuban All Stars were slated to return in November, 2002. But early that fall, in his post-Sept. 11
delirium, Bush 43 (Fidel, in his
interminable speeches to Cuba’s version of Congress, the Asamblea Nacional del
Poder Popular, used to call him “¡Boochún!”) beefed up his already hardline
stance against the island, declaring it a state sponsor of terrorism. As part
of this offensive the US started denying visa applications from recording
artists, essentially on the grounds that Cuban music was harmful to US
interests. Fidel countered with an
addition to the Cuban constitution instituting socialism as an
“incontrovertible” Cuban principle. As a
result, squelched demand for economic reform on the island drove a strapping
diaspora of Cuban artists to spots around the globe.
By the time the ACAS finally returned to Mad
City – to play at Overture Hall – it was March, 2009. The band had three new albums out, including Step Forward: The Next
Generation (yes, the album title’s in English) on Marcos’ own Havana-based record
label, DM Ahora! (2005). “It’s classic
Cuban, mixed with elements of contemporary music and a lot of improvisation,”
Marcos told me when it was released. It
paid homage to the elders while showcasing the next generation’s superstars, and mixed son y rumba with multicultural, hip-hop-tinged beats – guaguancó-timba (or guarapachangueo),
ballad-timba – and older fusions like Irakere’s funkified batumbatá.
On the 2009 tour all of the players, including
Marcos himself, who had moved his family to Mexico City, were expats, which insured
that the show would go on. The golden age threads were gone, replaced by sharp dark suits. The repertory
was part traditional, part Step Forward,
and the lineup – as always an all-star affair – was packed with ACAS, Buena
Vista, and Sierra Maestra alums of assorted ages, plus (among others) Calixto
Oviedo, who played drums and timbales with the original timba outfit, NG La
Banda, in its best days, and the brilliant pianist Nachito Herrera, who studied
with Rubén González as a child and who’s now a leading Latin jazz figure based
in Minneapolis.
For this week’s
concert the All Stars are all expats, too – a good thing, since even now, with the door cracked open a few inches, it’s
hard to get musicians out of Cuba. As in
2009, there’ll be some traditional tunes and some of Marcos’ contemporary
compositions. Since I'm an old-timer myself, I mention, during my
most recent interview with him, that I’m not, in general, a fan of today’s
youth music.
“It’s
important to have continuity, but Cuban music is not static,” Marcos responds. “Cuba is revolutionary and competitive in
music, and if you want to play all of its genres and review its history
you have to include the new styles. When
I compose, I often mix contemporary and traditional elements in the same song.”
“I don’t do reggaeton or hip-hop,” he adds. “But, you know, I do use timba. Of course, timba was very contemporary in the
‘90s, when it was new, but now it’s pretty traditional. I do it for that reason, not because I want
to influence the market. I’m lucky, I
don’t have to make concessions to have an intellectual and cultural effect on
Cuban music. Inside Cuba, though, young
groups are being heavily influenced by commercial sounds like Puerto Rican reggaetón, and they're mixing it into what they do.” [Note: there's a whole youth genre called "Cubatón" these days.]
"Music inside Cuba is getting more commercial in another way, too," Marcos adds. “There’s a singular new phenomenon going on. Cuba has no commercial
system – there’s no official market. But
today’s youth have created an internal market for pirate CDs and music videos
by influencing the public. They make
commercial videos like capitalist pop stars to get the word out about their
concerts and their bands.”
Things have changed since the days of Boochún. The seeds of this quasi-miracle were planted in 2008 -- six years before the move toward normalization that began late last year -- when Raul Castro succeeded his brother as president and
initiated a series of minor economic reforms; among them was permitting the
sale of electronic devices, including computers and cell phones (with service),
to ordinary Cubans. It took a few years for this technology to become widespread. “But young musicians are now using flash drives, text messages, and Twitter to advertise,” Marcos says. “Everyone in Cuba texts and tweets – it’s
not controlled by the government, like Internet access is. There's a whole subcommerce that exists within a
socialist system where the possibilities for individual promotion are very
limited.”
Cubans are notoriously inventive, and Cuban musicians in expatlandia, like their island counterparts, are constantly reinventing the way they approach their work. So it's no surprise that the Afro-Cuban All Stars have a new sound. For about four years, Marcos has been using the sonora (or
conjunto) format first made famous by Arsenio Rodríguez.
On the heels
of the Septeto Boston, in which Marcos’ puro sang in the '30s, Rodríguez, a
king among trés players, urbanized the son sound, creating a new, larger
format – the conjunto – by adding piano, a second (and sometimes third)
trumpet, and tumbadoras – congas – officially prohibited by the island’s white
regime for being “too black” until the ragingly louche nights of Batista’s
corrupt, Mafia-allied reign overtook Havana in the '40s and '50s.
In his rhythms and lyrics, too, Rodriguez brought a blazing sense of
black pride to a style of Cuban music (son) that’s African side was tempered
with the sabor of Spain.
The only wind instruments in the classic sonora sound are trumpets, and the rhythm section has no timbales, but there are no hard and fast rules in this game. Marcos uses timbales in this incarnation of the ACAS, but also three trumpets, no trombones, no sax. “I wanted more frequency,” Marcos explains. "The trombones and barritone sax can be a
little aggressive. I chose to use
clarinets instead. I’ve also added an
instrument that hasn’t been used in Cuba since the ’60s – the vibraphone.”
Vibes are far from a traditional Cuban instrument, but in that decade a few Cuban jazz combos, whose players would have noticed how the instrument was being used in US jazz, picked it up. Nuyorican salsa players in that decade were using vibes, too. Most famously Joe Cuba, “el padre del boogaloo,” often used them instead of horns to fill out the sound of his sextet.
“I really like the vibraphone for its sweet sound,” Marcos says. “It's sophisticated, and it’s an excellent counterpoint to the
horn section. I think I'm the first Cuban orchestrator to use it in a son format. But no matter what
instrumentation I use, I respect the genres of Cuban music. I try to play all of them, bolero, cha-cha-cha,
guapachá, son – with this sonora sound.
I’m working on a new album in this format. It’s called ‘Step Backward.’ It’s only half finished, but it’s more
traditional than anything I’ve done for a while.”
Friday night’s concert, with this orchestration (the full lineup is below), will
be, at least in part, a taste of “Step Backward.” And, like Orula’s iddé, it’s a family
affair. Gliceria Abreu, as always, will
be onstage playing hand percussion, singing chorus, and dancing with her
husband. Their two intensely talented,
conservatory trained daughters, Gliceria and Laura González, will be there,
too.
“My daughters have always worked with me on recordings,” Marcos says, “but I
didn’t want to incorporate them into the stage shows until they finished their
university studies.”
The year they started appearing live with the band was 2010. The younger Gliceria, 30, is an orchestral conductor (and a lyric soprano);
she’s teaching a Cuban string ensemble workshop in conjunction with Marcos’ UW
residency this fall. But Cuban classical music is just part of her art. Onstage with the
ACAS, she plays keyboards and vibes.
Laura’s the clarinetist.
“Of course, they’re not just great musicians, they’re Afro-Cubans,”
Marcos says, with tremendous pride.
“They play percussion, they sing and dance.”
Changó,
Orisha of lightening and storms, dance and music, is in the house. His colors
are red and white.Offer him red apples,
red bananas, a red rooster.He loves to
sing; his dances are wild. You will
sense his presence all over town for the next two months, starting with the
appearance of San Francisco-based Cuban son septet Pellejo Seco at the 12th
annual Madison World Music Festival (Willy St. stage, Saturday, Sept. 19, 5:15
PM) – and again at Music Hall on campus (Tuesday, Sept. 22, 7:30 PM), when UW-Madison Arts Institute Interdisciplinary Fall Artist in Residence Dr. Juan de Marcos
González gives us all a superlative lesson on the long evolution of Cuban son, with
Pellejo Seco illustrating the music’s many forms.The open-to-the-public son class is the first
in Dr. Marcos’ series of public presentations on Afro-Cuban music. FYI – and
you will want to know – here’s the complete list of events:http://artsinstitute.wisc.edu/iarp/juandemarcos/events.htm
Marcos is the founder of the traditional, still-in-Havana son outfit
Sierra Maestra; the force behind the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon of the
late 1990s; and the leader of the legendary Afro-Cuban All Stars (who appear at
Overture Hall on Oct. 2).And
Cuban son, to be clear, is today the descendant of the muy Africano Changó and
the madre patria – Spain – in the late nineteenth century. Juan de Marcos and Cuban son don’t need much
of an introduction to my regular readers, but if you want more, try these: http://culturaloysterwut.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-taste-of-february.html;
That said, Pellejo Seco is making
its very first Mad City appearances next week, so here’s the scoop. Marcos had planned to bring back our beloved Sierra
Maestra, which hasn’t played here since 2012.Unfortunately, the band’s visas got caught in the shark’s jaws. “When Sierra Maestra couldn’t come I thought
of Pellejo Seco right away,” Marcos says. “They’ll be perfect to fill the big hole in
the schedule left by the absence of Sierra Maestra.They’re excellent musicians, and the band is
perfectly representative of the traditional son septet.”
Marcos met the leader of Pellejo
Seco, composer and tresero Ivan Camblor, in Havana, back in the early
2000s.The latter was working on a
recording with Marcos’ good friend, Cuban composer / filmmaker Edesio Alejandro
– I think this was during the production of the outrageously funny Cuban film Hacerse el Sueco, for which Alejandro
composed music with Camblor’s collaboration. A few years later Camblor married
a Californian and moved to the Bay Area, and ever since, he and Marcos have
gone to (and sometimes sat in on) each others’ gigs there.
Camblor, born and raised in
Havana, considers himself a composer first and foremost, but he’s also a
helluva tresero.The Cuban tres –
slightly smaller than a modern guitar, with three sets of two strings – provides
the looping, rhythmic melodies quintessential to the son sound.
But son is old-school music, and almost
all of the great old soneros, including Buena Vista stars Compay Segundo,
Ibrahim Ferrer, Pío Leyva and Manuel “Puntillita” Licea, are gone now.And despite Sierra Maestra’s continuing
presence, along with a handful of younger Cuban players who, like Camblor, love
son, popular music on the big island today leans heavily toward hip-hop
influenced genres like timba and guarapachangueo.
“At first I wanted to play rock n’
roll,” says Camblor, 44.“That’s what my
generation listened to – North American rock.But when I was very young I heard son, in concerts and on the
street.I loved it, I thought ‘why don’t
people still write these songs?’So I
started studying it with some of the old-timers, and I had to leave rock
behind.
“I’m not an academic, I’m a street
musician,” he adds.He started
learning to play with the late Octavio “Cotán” Sánchez, a guitarist and tresero
from the golden generation of soneros.Sánchez was born in Oriente – the east end of the island, and the cradle
of son – though he migrated to Havana and became part of the urban son movement
in the 1940s.
“It was Sánchez who first had me
play the tres,” Camblor says.“He had me
play it in a trio and I figured out that I had opportunities as a tresero.I’d wanted to be a guitar player, but I
decided to learn the instrument Sánchez put in my hands. He told me ‘you’ll never lack money if you
learn the tres.’”
Camblor started following the
sound.“Wherever I heard son I’d enter
and ask to play with the old timers.When they weren’t playing they were sitting around telling stories.It was a great education.”
After Cotán, Camblor continued his
formal studies with el Niño Rivera, definitively one of Cuba’s greatest tres
virtuosos.“I was with Rivera till he
died.I was going to his house, playing
for classes.When he died I dedicated myself
to following his work.”
Camblor says he’s always studying
the great son composers from Oriente and Havana.“I wanted to develop my own sones.So that’s what I’ve been doing, ever since I
was 17.”
Being a young tresero in Havana was
a double-edged sword.“It was an offense
for a while [among his timba-loving generation],” he says.But in some places son was still in
demand.“My life was chaos. Every time
I’d go by a place where some old-timers were playing, people would say ‘there’s
a tresero.’ There aren’t many any
more.So I played everywhere.I played some clubs with other soneros of my
generation – there are some, but it’s hard to make a name in music now in Cuba,
so you don’t hear about them. And I played with famous old soneros.I played at the Tropicana – I was 16, 17
years old – with [Buena Vista Social Club trumpet player] Guajiro Mirabal and
the Tropicana Orchestra.People loved
it.”
California was a huge
change. Camblor arrived there planning to play, but he needed money.“It’s hard to get work if you’re not
American,” he says. He began by picking
vegetables in Ventura County with migrant farmworkers. The name Pellejo Seco is
partly a tribute to their hard lives and sun-scorched skin, though it’s also
Havana street slang with multiple sexual allusions.“I wanted to leave behind traditional Cuban
band names and have something happier – I don’t want everything to be serious,
I want people to laugh,” he says.
Money issues notwithstanding,
within a year and a half Camblor had put together a septet of Bay Area Cuban
expats and recorded his first album, Enganchate
(an independent production distributed by CD Baby, 2006).“We’re the only Cuban septet in California
that maintains the tradition of writing new music in the son style,” he
says.“The scene is much more fragmented
here than in Cuba, but I’ve had luck maintaining the septet.We’re always playing – we play a lot of big
festivals – and we have two albums out [the second is Despierta, with Chuchito Valdés on piano, CD Baby 2008], with a
third on the way.
“But,” he continues, “we haven’t
made much money.We haven’t traveled
much.We’re marginalized a little.”
Pellejo Seco is sometimes described
as a world fusion band, because you can hear a hint of flamenco there, a smidge
of hip-hop there.But it’s just the
evolution of Cuban son, says Juan de Marcos.“A lot of contemporary son has the essence of traditional groups from
the golden age like Septeto Habanero or Septeto Nacional de Ignacio
Piñiero.”(I’m not going to upload a lot of
ad-laden YouTube videos, but here’s a gem I pirated
from the Internet.For more, Google these bands yourself!)
But,” Marcos continues, “in contemporary son the lyrics are
distinct.The musical themes are similar
to traditional son, too, but many contemporary Cuban composers add breaks or
blocks that aren’t characteristic of the original sound.Cuba was isolated for so many years – even
back in the ‘80s, musicians on the island listening to radio pirated from
Florida tried to use foreign sounds to add an air of cosmopolitanism.Ivan does that, he mixes global elements into
a base of son in his own music, but he knows very well how to play very
traditional son.”
There certainly are some world
sounds in the tunes on Pellejo Seco’s CDs, but after watching a bunch of videos
I gotta say that in live performance this band sounds absolutely, definitively
Cuban.Camblor agrees.“I’ve tried to stay outside of jazz,” he
says, “to conserve the son tradition.As
a composer I want to concentrate on that.I do use some jazz and some other elements, but I use them in the
service of traditional cuban son.We’re
really a traditional son septet.I play
mostly my own compositions, I don’t have to play standards.When people hear my songs they recognize the
sound, they feel the accent of the son septet.On Facebook they say things like “Cuidado, ¡esa gente tiene un gran
sonido cubano!”
And like many Cuban composers
before him, Camblor likes to use humor in his lyrics – guaracha, an uptempo son
style, is full of jokes and double entendres.“I wrote a tune called Sushi Cha Cha,” he tells me,“because everyone in California eats
sushi.You’ll like the song.It’s spicy, ‘pa gozar.”
The great Orquesta Aragon – Cuba’s
most famous, most recorded charanga, the long-lived king of cha cha cha bands –
was visiting San Francisco for the Jazz Festival a couple of years back.“They didn’t know what sushi is,” Camblor
says, “so I said it’s like guanajo relleno.”That’s stuffed turkey – both a dish and a famous son by the Septeto
Nacional.Aragon liked “Sushi Cha Cha”
so much they played it during their show.
Pellejo Seco plays Camblor’s
compositions almost exclusively onstage, but it’s impossible, he says, not to
play a Buena Vista standard or two.He
mentions a few favorites, including the guajira-son “El Guateque Campesino” and
the bolero “Dos Gardenias,” both Buena Vista classics delivered to the world
via the silken voice of Ibrahim Ferrer.
At the Madison World Music Fest,
Pellejo Seco surely will focus on Camblor’s compositions. The Music Hall lec/dem
offers a chance to hear another facet of this band.They’ll play a couple of their own tunes,
Marcos says, but also a number of traditional sones that illustrate the
evolution and styles of the form.
“It’s an honor to work with Juan de
Marcos,” Camblor says.“We’re very
excited to come to Madison.”
