[8] NEW RICAN VILLAGE Porque tu sufres Si tu no tienes Por que sufrir Porque tu llora Si tu no tienes Por que llorar Downtown Stop Look Listen It now New Rican time On Avenue A off Sixth Loisaida Alphabet City New York New York Big Butt Lulu Slides across the dance floor Earthquake thighs keeping time With Andy Gonzalez' bass As Nestor Torres' flute Unleashes a dance hall trance With a Valentino smoothness Hilton Ruiz The high priest of the piano Arches in the darkness Responds with tinkling caresses That stream in between The steady clave keeping time For Jerry Gonzalez' drums Notes thrust from every angle in the room Penetrate Lay sweltering just below my stomach I absorb all eagerly As music and being Lock For the climax Welcome to Eddie Figueroa's New Rican Village Loisaida N.Y. Temple of the New Rican Renaissance Lola Magdalena Mambo smiles Showing more teeth than Jaws Yo Yo Montalvo swallows the evening He's awaken to hunt Billie Zombie passes joints laced with dust and cases club members to rob later Suzie Sidewinder hovers above all Mussolini in high heels Little Lucie Blue Eyes waits for her Man With the patience of a practiced killer Wilfredo the Anointed Apostle Is surrounded by a sea of estrogen A man drowning on dry land Kept afloat by Saint Ana The turquoise dressed martyr As Carmen Baby sits at home Murmuring her mantras To saints and candles behind blessed glass And Johnny Boy "el Malote del Bronex" Well, he feeds his lovers A thousand yards of tongue Stingray shocks his prey Then disappears in the mist Porque tu sufres Si tu no tienes Por que sufrir Porque tu llora Si tu no tienes Por que llorar Izzy's editor at Latin new York in the summer of 1977 is pulp novelist Soledad Santiago, wife of the lower east side writer Lefty Barretto. Barretto's biography Nobody's Hero is recently published. A departure from the style Piri Thomas and Nicky Cruz debuted in Down These Mean Streets and The Cross and The Switchblade, Lefty is unrepentant and still has a few scores to settle. His wife Soledad (Sabira Vural) actually writes Nobody's Hero but it's Lefty's take on life and stacatto verbal delivery that form the core of the autobiography. Her writing saves the book from being mundane. Soledad is an interesting case in point about how Puerto Rican culture is a lure for those people who want to be a part of rather than apart from. German and Turkish in origin she adopts a Latino outlook in the seventies that serves her well on her adventures as a woman in the literary and political world. Soledad recruits me to write for Latin NY Magazine after meeting her through contacts at the New York Shakespeare Festival. (Playwright and former Black Panther Ed Bullins recommends me for a job at the Public Theatre. I initially study under him at Amherst College but it turns out he only lives a block away from me in the Bronx.) I am more than willing to work for Izzy since Latin NY is the only hip Latino print/media outlet that has some glitz and style. Lefty and Soledad live in Loisaida, the Lower East Side haven of musicians, painters and numerous offbeat storefront theaters -- many with dubious directors. However, several anticipate the future with early spoken word performances and alternative entertainment; places like the New Rican Village and the original 6th Street Nuyorican Poets Cafe. I prefer The New Rican Village (housed where the Pyramid club now stands at 101 Avenue A between 6th and 7th Street. You can still see the place in most of its original condition. I don't think they've painted the spot since former Young Lord Eddie Figueroa had the space in 1976-79. He later moves the New Rican to the South Bronx in the early eighties). Eddie Figueroa 1977: “The Arts is the vehicle we're going to use to illustrate this transition we must undergo in order to advance. When the artist is in touch with his art and its really happening something else is happening. A heavy spirit comes through that is bigger than the musicians or artists creating them. We want to experience that more, study it, articulate it and get the information out. What's happening at the New Rican Village is traditional ... there are traditions involved and historical forces focusing energies here. It's no accident that a few of the people that are here were involved in The Young Lords and are people who made committments -- that made heavy committments -- to their people and the development of a consciousness, an awareness. During that time it was very idealistic and very romantic but people committed their lives to building a new nation... building new institutions and developing a new person in the day when we called ourselves revolutionaries. I don't use that word anymore. Its not in my vocabulary, you know. The forces that were happening during the period the Young Lords were active were historical forces all converging on that point in time. In the begining the Lords were able to succesfully interpret the true aspirations of the Puerto Rican people. That nationalism was for real . Where the Lords screwed up (mainly Felipe Luciano and Yoruba Guzman) was when they thought it was about them. We don't own it ... it passes through us. We're a channel for that. The Arts is a way for us to express our culture, our beliefs to a large audience. Our main philosophy is about personal growth. People developing their own potentilities. Their capacities learning who they are, how this operates .. psychology. For example, we start working on a play by Pedro Pietri in a couple of weeks. Pedro is by far one of our more important writers. He's always been ahead of the curve. He's very laid back and a lot of people can't understand what it is seeing things from their points of view but he's a visionary. His stuff is out there. He shows relationships well, the ridiculousess and the tragedy of our relationships. Jesus is Leaving is an example of this but it wasn't executed well. The actors didn't put that across but the script did. He has a play that just closed called The Living Room which is about mental illness and the piece that we're going to do What Goes Down Must Come Up which is about relationships. More things are hapening on radio than TV for us. The music on radio and a lot of the happenings that are ocurring now are being documeted on radio, not TV. I see cable TV as going to develop in the future for us. The focus moving into the eighties is more personal. If you want to call it politics it would be the politics of responsibilty. Are we going to be responsible for the space that we occupy? Are we going to be responsible for educating ourselves in developing our own awareness and getting at the root of what it is? See, I don' t believe anymore in playing the victim. I'm oppressed, oh, its so terrible that the Americans have done these things to us because it has nothing to do with Them. It has to do with Us. I'm not saying that we're responsible for all of it because we haven't created the situation, the situation has been created for us but for Us to be successful we have to depend on our own resources. That means taking responsibilities for our lives and our own destiny each and every indvidual. We have power as a group and as individuals. We have power because we have heart, we have imaginations and because we're creative - that's power. There has to be another Movement -- a new Movement -- a Renaissance. Our people have to get down and deal on all levels in all areas. We have to decide that we're going to do that. Or at least take responsbility for the space that they occupy ... at least want to do that and try to get the information about it instead of sleeping or going for the superficial appearances of things. The Renaissance Movement we have to develop is based on loving ourselves. Our culture is strong, things will survive and continue if we make them happen. Things don't go down mysteriously -- people create the world. That's what's robbed from us -- that knowledge that we have the power to create our lives and create the world.” The New Rican Village is a music driven venue that features guerilla salsa by Conjunto Libre. While punk rock and new wave bands like The Talking Heads, Blondie and Kid Creole develop around them in the East Village, the Gonzalez brothers explore Afro Caribbean rhythms as reactionary head music with the New Rican house band. Andy and Jerry Gonzalez (Conjunto Libre) lead a pack of musicians who carve a special niche of their own in Latin music history. They perform each Thursday night. Flute player Nestor Torres, pianist Hilton Ruiz and saxophonist Mario Rivera (with his Salsa Refugees) stand out. Nestor and Hilton are fresh from Puerto Rico. Nestor got here four years earlier with his family. A conservatory-trained musician who studies with Alberto Socarras (the first jazz flute solo on record is attributed to Socarras in 1928), Nestor Torres is a delight to meet and related to my father’s side of the family. His tone is pure. He plays the flute percussively dancing on top of the conga rhythms as a butterfly darts over a field of lilies. The genius of Nestor and bassist Andy Gonzalez is how they develop a musical language while they play. Each anticipates the others rhythmic patterns, notes, key changes while locked in a unique conversation of beats. When the music between Andy and Nestor is really happening there’s a deep communication that occurs where the two are one in touch with their most inner selves. Their signature piece is a bass/flute duet entitled Tres Palabras -- Three Words. Their sound could be translated just as simply in three words: It was heavy • Rule number one at the New Rican when Andy and crew play: NO ONE TOUCHES MANNY OQUENDO'S TIMBALES! • Rule number two: THERE ARE NO OTHER RULES! If Oquendo comes in and someone's playing his timbales (especially Nicky Marerro) he's liable to give birth to a conga while beating the hell out of everybody. Manny Oquendo is another Tito Puente: ticks allegedly brought on by too many late night ski trips, strong opinions and genius. Scary dude. However, in the year and a half I go to the New Rican he's never there. His timbales are set up but he's nowhere to be found. His presence is felt though. Strange bird that Oquendo. He is like the enraged father with a pack of wayward sons who is trying to keep his job as a working musician. He insists on being designated the group leader although in reality Andy and Jerry maneuver around him and the old school of promoters and producers. It's a serious game for them. Jerry Gonzalez matches Oquendo's intensity. I'm left with the impression Jerry is the enforcer of the group. At least the buffer between them and the more thug like operators in the recording/club industry. He matches be bop trumpet playing with furious Afro Caribbean/west African conga playing. This thin reed musician emanates so much menace that the paint peels on the wall behind you when he glares at you. Eddie Figueroa 1978 "The people in Libre are some of the most socially conscious of the artists that have been been at the New Rican Village. Their consciousness is on a lot of different levels. Their concerns are not just this and that. They're dealing with a lot of questions." • Rule number three at the New Rican Village: FORGET RULE NUMBER TWO AND DON'T MESS WITH THE ARTISTS. THEY'RE LIABLE TO BITE. |
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