[2] BRONXWORLD Homeboyssssss I watch the baseball game With my father Freddie of The Long Ashes Mets versus the Atlanta Braves And the announcer Mentions this one player’s name Mackie Sasser Mackie Sassssser Maaaackie Saaaasserrrr This is how Stanish And the boys Down in the Valley say it Mackie SasSirrrr Down in the Valley The Bronx Valley By Coop City Where Freedom Land Use to be Where the wiseguys Bury bodies Where once there’s A garbage dump And You can cruise For a hump At Eddie Cinders place Mackie SasSirrrr Guys like Antaknee Vara Joe Tarrrrrsia Ricky Morales Philly John Casiano Stanish Mousey And Walter The original rumpus man My best friend We talk Talk Like Talk Talk Like Taulk Tauulk Taaauuulk Taaaaauuuuullllllllkkkkkk Chomping on a mouthful of words And Spitting them back out Using every corner Of our mouths Eating Swallowing Digesting Spitting words It’s a memory Of a time When all We think sbout Is the fun we have With our friends just Talking The way we do Mackie SasSirrrr Yes Sir Hey, ever hear of Felipe Alou FelEEPeh AhllllloooOOUUUUUU Tough guy Irish illegal aliens, entrenched Italian Mafia crews under Matty "The Horse" Ianello plus street gangs like "The Black Spades" and "Intacrime" (christened by the crazy Pratt twins from the Edenwald Housing Project because, "we're into Crime!") dominate our North Bronx neighborhood. Mongo and his son Johnny Monks run an Italian social club on 214th Street where they control the local numbers, loan sharking and service rackets. Johnny also peddles nicks and dimes of “la babania” (marijuana). Crack does them in the eighties when the boys develop a taste for it. The Black Spades gang are a problem. They’re led out of Evander Child’s High School by their prez Ham. The Spades call for a “Get Whitey Day” throughout the city a couple of years in a row and get everyone shook up. Even the newspapers picks up on it. That really bugs me because depending on the situation with a group of Black Americans my skin becomes my sin. In an attack there’s no time to break down the Brown in my inner town. Nothing ever pops off in the neighbrhood though because, hell, if you come to the square be ready to kick some ass. Everyone mixes their running buddies in Our world and you really don’t now who you’re screwing with if you hit someone. So take that noise somewhere else. The Spades eventually branch out into boxing (Mitch “Blood” Green who, in my opinon, gives Mike Tyson a run for the money in their first fight) and Hip Hop’s Rainbow Division of rappers and wild stylers (Africa Bambata’s Zulu Nation). In our neighborhood life is coherent and I can get anything I need from a nuclear warhead to penny candy. That’s our little sandbox. We can fight, we can love and we can be free to do whatever we want along the lazy sidestreets that stretch from 211th Street to 233rd bounded by White Plains Road and Laconia Avenue. A perfect square. If the night is right I’ll take a long walk along 212th Street and circle around through Paulding Avenue back through 215th Street. But its got to be a right night -- a Bronx winter night with the temperature around 43 degrees. It’s a ritual to energize myself with the right amount of cold attitude. I circle the square A full moon Lights the neighborhood From a cloudless and windless sky Walking the streets Shrouded in a blue aura Little diamond snow beads The frozen tears of weeping angels Illuminate my path As I tip my hat To old and departed spirits There’s someone Peculiar In every home In the neighborhood People who have no qualms About saying what’s On their mind Over on 212th Street is Mrs. Davis house. I never find out her first name but she’s cool as all that and a bag of chips. A little muscular hefer who lives to be more than a hundred years old. A strong Black woman with a voice like Rochester on the Jack Benny show. “Child, how’s your mother. Tell her I said hello and to pass by for a glass of lemonade some afternoon. Now boy run on home and don’t be messing around those vacant lots up there. I seen a crazy dog running around in there and he might be hiding in those bushes looking for a soup bone. Well, a wish bone if he gets a hold of you.” Mrs. Davis always has lemonade time around 3:00 oclock each day. It takes me years to figure out she’s watching the passing school kids for neighborhood moms. Mrs. Davis own boy is all grown up and working at the GM plant by the time we meet her in 1964. She makes the best lemonade in the whole world with just the proper portion of sugar to balance out the lemon’s tartness. Mrs. Davis learns how to make it that way deep in the Alabama countryside where her momma teaches her the right amount of sweet respect for yourself can soften the tartness of life. “Mrs. Davis how did you get it to taste so good?” “Son, nothing beats a failure but a try.” Mrs. Davis is the Blackest woman I ever meet and she don’t take any guff. Yo, she’s I’LL BE BLACK BLACK – B.L.A.C.K. - BLUE BLACK – SIMPLY BLACK – IT’S A BLACK THING BLACK. One day this neighborhood bully we call Fat Carter decides he’s going to hit me with a tree branch. I’m five foot one and 85 pounds. This brother’s five six and 140 pounds, Lucky for me it happens right up the block from Mrs. Davis house. All of a sudden I hear this foghorn rip through the air. “BOY, what are you planning to do with that child. Put that damn switch down or else.” “Or what, old lady?” Mrs. Davis rears her 4 foot 11 frame and gets up from her chair on the porch overlooking the block, “Or what? Boy, don’t you speak to me that way or I’ll slap the mess right out of you.” With that she bounds down the stairs and snatches the branch from a stunned Fat Carter’ s meaty hands and throws it in the gutter. “Isn’t your mother Ms. Helen? Helen Carter? Over there on Duncan in the white house with the red trim. I told her not to paint it that way. And it looks like she missed a few strokes on your behind as well. Now you go along and terrorize someone your own size and child don’t come around here messing with the plants or trees ripping them down like that. Have some respect for God’s things and for Mrs. Davis tree. Now go and put some Jesus in your life to get your mind right. Go. Go now, shoo -- go as fast as your fat little legs can carry you!” Fat Carter later became a transit cop. Figures. Frankie and his family live up on 215th street. Damn, it’s a big Irish clan. There must be 12 or 14 of them. His father looks as tired as mine after a long day of work and sits in this easy chair with a glass of Rheingold beer watching this pack of kids tear through the house waiting for that right moment when he shouts, “Silence. All of you. You’re killing me. You’re killing me here. You’re all CRAZY. Absolutely killing me. That’s it. No, no, no more. I’m going to leave this family and enlist in the army that way they’ll send me to Vietnam where I can at least SHOOT my enemy. Maybe I’ve already died and gone to hell. Is that it God? Is this hell? Well if it is CHECK PLEASE! I want out. Out I say. Out. All of you get the hell out of here and Mary Frances bring me a beer before you all leave. Skat you spawns of Satan! There’s one thing that works in this house – THE DOOR – now use it and get out.” Frank teaches me how to skateboard the steep hills of Paulding Avenue, soup up electrical slot car racers and build go carts out of two by fours with baby carriage wheels. One time we try to slap a lawn mower engine on a go cart in my back yard but it ends in disaster – as most of our crazier experiments do. We haul this thing to the small hill on Barnes and 213th Street and let her rip. All is fine for about ten feet then the damn thing suddenly blows up. Frankie’s laughing, the flames are shooting out the back of the go cart but its still rolling down the hill and picks up speed. When Frankie’s hair catches fire he bails out of the cart which runs into an oncoming car. And whose driving it? His father, “You’re killing me. You’re killing me here with your craziness. Absolutely killing me. Maybe I’ve already died and this is hell …” You get the picture. I pass by Herbie and Kevin Carter’s house on the way home. Leukemia dogs Herbie. Kevin wants to play in the NBA. His dreams crash and so does he in crack hell. Herbie and Kevin are not related to Fat Carter. In fact we have three Carter families in the neighborhood that aren’t related. There’s Fat’s family, Herbie’s and “White” Carter, a tough white boy whose amused he has the same family name as the others, “Yeah, I’m the White Shadow.” Michael and Johnny live next door. They’re from a German Irish family. We decide to build a raft out of an old box spring and float the nearby Bronx River. The “yacht” barely makes the bend under the Gun Hill Road overpass. We end up sinking in three feet of water and getting sick. But what a rush. I get to know how Huck Finn feels Bronx style. Sonny is the Jim in my ‘Rico Finn’ life phase. A big old robust brother about thirty three years old living on 211th Street and Holland. He’s built like a rock – GI Joe muscles carved from years of construction work. Sonny fishes us out of the Bronx River and saves Little John, Michael’s brother, from going under. “What the heck you boys doing. Can’t you spend your time better than this. Hell, you didn’t even build the boat right!” Sonny sails the Bronx river in his own home built rig when he’s fifteen. In those days they call him Boy. Then Colored. Nigger. As he ages and demands respect just by his presence he’s a Negro. Soul brother. Black man. He teaches us all this. But he’s sly about it. “What you boys should be doing is getting ready for the talent show.” Sonny still throws annual talent shows in the lot next door to his building. Neighborhood cultural shows. He’s 70 years old now. I win my first competition at 14 and get five bucks by singing Marvin Gaye’s Heard It Through The Grapevine acapella. Sonny echoes Mrs. Davis favorite saying, “Boy, nothing beats a failure but a try.” There are other Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood. Eric lives in the projects by the Gun Hill Road Train Station and Pilar who lives across the street from us. Both of their mothers are Puerto Rican but Eric’s father is half black and half white and Pilar’s dad is from Spain. Pilar and Eric are just buck wild. They experiment with sex, drugs and rock and roll starting at St. Philip and James grammar school. We attend school there because the Capucins at Immaculate Conception in our neighborhood parish want to keep their school all white. No problem. Father Gartland in the neighboring parish St. Philip and James is more than happy to have us. Father Owen Gartland is the bomb. A first generation Irishman who attends Cardinal Hayes High School in the South Bronx as I eventually will. He gets the call from God at 12 but is forever a man’s man. I never know sexually abusive priests like is commonly reported today. Father Gartland is a righteous consecrated wolf right out of central casting. A Bronx version of Spencer Tracey in Boy’s Town. Five foot eleven, hams for hands, knows how to use them, drop dead gorgeous and can woo the parish ladies. He also adopts different bad kids in the school who he knows are just going through changes at home. Glenn “Little Man” Bowman is one of his boys. Glenn’s dad is a pistol and gives him holy hell. Father Gartland takes him under his wing and Glenn becomes a standup guy with a career in the military. Funny dude with much love. Father Gartland can drink and throws down with my father in the rectory and local bars. When I’m an altar boy he drinks from this huge chalice and I fill it with a good shot of wine with just a drop of water. He’s set for the morning after 7 AM Mass and puffs away on 3 packs of Chesterfields a day. He rescues me once from a beating by a neighborhood thug called Milo who jumps me outside school in the eighth grade and redislocates my jaw. My mom first knocks it out of place two years earlier. I head for the rectory and within five miutes Father Gartland is out there in his car searching for Milo and his crew. He sets them straight. Father Gartland does that with other hoods in the neighborhood too. That cat can swing a sermon and left hooks unlike anyone I know until I meet my Uncle Heriberto. Owen dies from throat cancer but not before he gives away this young woman at her wedding. Many in the parish suspect it’s his daughter. A standup guy to the end. Father Owen is trully God’s man in my eyes. Much love Owen. You do your job well. At least with me. When we hit puberty we adopt a Bronx look as teenagers will. Things are bad, boss, stupid silly We ride the I. R. T. See Kung Fu Movies on forty deuce Listen to Roger Dawson Spin Salsa On Sundays Switch between Frankie Crocker And Nasty Joe Gaines weeknights Waiting for those Musical terrorists Carlos, Carlos and Cheito On KCR Pose for memories In Playland’s photo booths With our look Broadway stars in our Own Way The uniform of the time is simple Playboy shoes or Little Abner boots But don’t wear those Tom McCaan Playboys With the bubble top Marshmallow shoes after 1973 Sharkskin or double knit pants Chino pants and Pumas For hanging out Silk shirts Flowered Pattern Knit shirts A long black cashmere coat Or Leather Don’t you be wearing Pleather And a brim The walk Well you have a choice Either a single or double bop Today, young tough guys walk with a side to side motion like clearing a field on a chain gang. Hip Hops originators – cats from the Bronx - walk with an up and down energy; slightly lifting ourselves on the ball of our left or right foot to create a bop in our walk - a wave of energy that rises above the horizon, so to speak. We’re jumping at the sun just like Roberto Clemente snagging a fly ball in the outfield or Juan Marcial doing that elegant wind up kick on the pitchers mound. For the more adventurous there’s the double bop like Pitcher Louie Tiant’s pivot pump but that was a bit extreme and goofed on if you couldn't pull it off. I only knew one homeboy who does it with Style, Ed Robinson from Harlem USA. He coaches me in a brief track career where I go to the Junior Olympics and place second in the mile regionals. An ethnic mix of young guys at Cardinal Hayes High School in the South Bronx surround me united in one purpose: don’t let the priests catch you doing anything. They’re like black draped phantoms and appear out of thin air when you pull some stunt. The schools intercom system serves as operations central: “John Bugafusca report to the Dean of Disciplines Office immediately! We know you’re in the building. Surrender now … come out come out wherever you are Mr. Bugafusca and meet your destiny!” “Mr. Bugafusca you’ve been spotted hiding in the second floor lockers … son don’t make me come and get you.” There was always a dramatic flair among these Christian Brothers, Franciscan, Jesuit and Marist Priests. As demonstrated by Father McCormick, a former middleweight boxer with a propensity for steel tapped shoes. Click Click Click Click “Be Seated. Gentlemen, you are here in our care. There is a term in Latin that applies to this particular situation En Loco Parentis. Do any of you, hmm, scholars know what that means? Come now … It’s Latin for ‘In Place of The Parent’. Gentlemen, you are in our charge and we can do with you what any parent can do and from the looks of it we will be dispensing discipline on a grand scale with this motley crew.” “Oh, brother.” “Who said that … You, stand up and come here.” “But Father.” “What is your name.” “Luis Chaluisan” What a way to start life at Hayes. They’re more than seven hundred freshmen assembled in the auditorium. 450 graduate in my class. Those priests don’t fool around. “Mr. WHAT! Well Mr. Charlemagne or whatever your name is report up here immediately. Right here … Right now … That’s right … Stand right there, son. Gentleman, this is an example of what you are to expect with any insubordination.” Click Heel Turn Whoosh Smack! “Whoa Father take it easy!” “Congratulations, Mister Sang Huang Hey er…. Chaloosian. You will be taking it easy in detention for two weeks. Now, back to your seat. That’s right. Take yourself back to your seat. Splendid. Sit! Gentleman use all your proverbial talents wisely and don’t cross us. We will find you wherever you are and set your mind right. God help us all. You are on your way to becoming Hayes Men ready to battle incompetence in the world. Don’t blow it. Stand UP … I will be proud to lead your wonderful boys into battle any time … anywhere. Dismissed.” Click Click Click Click But it isn’t all Patton like discipline. Hayes priests and lay teachers have some heavy duty lessons to give. Father Principe is this ramrod first generation Italian man who is Jake Lamotta with a conscience. Martin Scorcese pays this man much respect. He’s a real stand up guy. He can wrap this magnificently oversized set of hands (he had been a star football receiver at Hayes) and conceal a volume of theological discourse as easily as the side of your head. He doesn’t have to smack us around too much to get our attention. Father is one of us. A wiseguy with a calling. He introduces our classes to the world of Teilhard de Chardin – a Jesuit scholar whose also an anthropologist. De Chardin’s spiritual writings in light of his anthropological studies give him a perspective that challenges the status quo in creationism. The Vatican gags him. This is my kind of guy. Other teachers at the school make us look at the bigger picture – though at heart most of them are a bunch of smartasses like English teachers Father Johnston and Wild Bill Kerrigan, “Boys, Boys, Boys, Boys …. The lesson here is truth. Yes, St. Augustine became a pious light in the early Church but let us examine what got him there. His life is drenched in debauchery – lust and debauchery boys, boys, boys. You can’t escape it gentlemen. He absolutely debauched himself and then examined his life. Got a best seller out of it and influenced an entire culture.” “A factor which prompts the Southern Grotesque Flannery O’Connor to write her seminal work A Good Man Is Hard To Find … but gentlemen … of course, for Ms. O’Connor A Hard Man Is Better To Find. Do not write that down in your notes, boys. It is merely for mental mastur… I mean Observation.” It doesn’t take much to spur on my hormones in those days. I read on the back cover of an O’Connor short story collection that “she now lives in Georgia raising peacocks.” After Bill Kerrigans joke I have this fantasy of a naked Flannery O’Connor sauntering about these huge plumed birds. A fantasy destroyed when I see a picture of an old dried up wrinkled O’Connor. A real southern grotesque. And here she’s a buxom 27 year old brunette South Bronx kind of Irish/Rican girl in my mind. I attend classes with percussionist Bobby Sanabria, Broadway gypsy John Aller and future New York Times columnist Dave Gonzalez at Hayes. They’re some of the smartest Latinos I meet in my life. David tells me once that the paintings, poems, stories and music we create are really messages from God revealing the past, present and future. He and my brother Ronnie graduate from Hayes ranked first in their class and are inspirations for me all these years. Bobby Sanabria and John Aller posses a creative focus that’s light years ahead of many of us. “Forget about playing in a band, the real career is a session man in the recording studio. That’s what I want to be doing.” Bobby goes from the high school band to Emerson College and is recently nominated for a Grammy. In our Senior Year John appears in Equus replacing Elliot Gould and bounces from Broadway show to show until he gets sick from the virus and goes to perform in heaven. I do get mad at God taking him, “Damn, Yo he was just hitting his stride” but such is life in the big city. What are you going to do? John arranges for me to audition at the Alliance of Latin Artists in the summer of 1975. The Alliance is a semi professional summer touring group that presents folkloric dancers and singers throughout the city. Thirty performers are on call. Three quarters of the Alliance is Puerto Rican dancers and singers from the High School of Performing Arts. The school is made famous in the movie Fame. As good as it is, the movie only captures a tenth of that school's energy. I meet Isa Diaz while touring with the Alliance. She wants to be a headliner and plays the part well. A five foot six Cuban redhead (bottle of course) who knows every trick in the trade. She perfects the way to get all eyes on her when she’s on stage by plugging in a hundred watt smile, working her long black eyelashes and showing a lot of chutzpah. She works night and day to get on Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, way the Hell Off Broadway. There’s also Latin Nightclub hustle/mambo dance reviews, street theater and endless voice/dance classes-- you name it she does it. She believes in the old school approach to celebrity personified by Jose Ferer, Rita Moreno and Miriam Colon. They strive for perfection and believe that in doing so they achieve the celebrity they do. Few can match Ferrer’s command of the English language or Moreno’s talent to cross theatrical boundaries as an actress and musical theater performer. No one can play a maid better than Colon on the movie screen. However, we have a nasty encounter with Miriam at her Travelling Theater which is an eye opener for both of us. I’m working for Joe Papp’s Shakespeare Festival. Part of my responsibility is to attend and evaluate performances by Hispanic Theater groups to see if there’s a crossover hit lurking about. The Travelling Theater presents a play about U.S. intervention in Nicaragua during the nineteenth century. At intermission I’m introduced to Colon and tell her I find the play slow and boring. She looses it and the next thing I know I’m on the carpet at the Shakespeare Festival. I often wonder about that. I’m all of nineteen. You’d think she’d take a moment to explain the significance about the play to a young brother instead she goes on a tear. Ah. Celebrity. In her house the maid becomes a tyranical queen. What are you going to do? Every day during high school I tune in WBLS Radio into the early evening to get my daily dose of funky soul: The color of the day is yellow WBLS One oh seven point five In stereo-ere-ereo-ereo Where you hear James Brown Tito Puente The Stylistics Pucho The Ojay's Santana With Frankie "Holly-wood!" Crocker: "I'm here to put some more dip in your hip some more glide in your stride as you get on down to hear DJ Flowers spin tonight at the Cork and Bottle. Now here’s some Deodato with Ave Maria." But after eleven p.m. it's Salsa time Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays on WKCR 88.9 FM. Carlos De Leon, Carlos De Jesus and Cheo Diaz host alternative Latin music shows on Columbia University's Radio Station. The shows mix a wide range of recorded Latin music from 1917 to the present while they interview musicians, arrangers and various musical terrorists who can say just about anything in the free form atmosphere, Rene Lopez musicologist 1977 on WKCR FM "We're fortunate to have a blend of Indian, Black and White bloods as Puerto Ricans. The mix is going on for generations and so we're a new type of people. In any event, we’re Ourselves." Or in other words, there’s not a problem I can't fix cause I can do it in the mix. This is a radical departure from the tension that the idea of assimilation creates and permits me to go exploring Latin stuff by age sixteen after a big blowout with my dad. A stupid fistfight resulting from a practical joke and too much booze. Ring, Ring …. Ring, Ring “Hello.” “Louie, Poppy. Listen we’ve been arrrested and we’re going to the precint. Tell your mother everything is OK. See you all later … bye ..,. Click” Now I’m freaking out and start pacing the kitchen not knowing to tell my mom or not because I fear the drama that will result. “Damn, I knew he was drinking too much with Heriberto and now this. I can’t believe it. Why would he do this? Why would he do this?” I round up all the liquor in the house and break the bottles. A few minutes later my father and uncle show up laughing, “We were just fooling around … Let’s get a drink … where’s the bottle … Oh, shit who did this … who the hell did this?” “Me, I got mad because you said you were arrested and it pissed me off.” “Oh yeah …” Whoosh Boom Smack And my father is down for the count. It takes a long time for us to be comfortable around each other again. Things change. On the bright side, it launches my explorations. It’s part of the reason I go away to Amherst College sight unseen. But before all that I taste New York’s Latino night life and it blows my mind. There's these nights at the Chez Sensual on Westchester Avenue and The Corso in Manhattan that stand out in my mind as the first exhibition of a new truth while witnessing a real life "electric Rican cabaret.” Latino gays and flaming heteros turn it up a notch at The Ice Palace on 57th Street. It's all from the future. My friend Lulu is with me one evening at The Corso on 86th Street. We just got out of rehearsal with Felix Romero's Teatro Otra Cosa and I want to go see this crazy trumpet player perform at the club. Roy Roman can hit high C's that open up the ceiling. I snag a table with Lulu ringside and in a little while Evelyn (a photographer who becomes a card carrying member of the early Latin New York crowd) joins us. A bunch of young Puerto Rican dancers shows up at the club about 11:30. The midtown jazz dance studios have let out and the Broadway shows wrapped for the evening. These are hardcore Rican cabaret jazz dancers from the city. "Yeah, I be dancing, performing and studying everything from African tribal dance to Jose Limon since grammar school so don't you bother me because I'm going to blow you off the dance floor one, two, three here it comes -- damn did you see that move -- I got you now, te lo dije, I'm bad, I’m bad … I’m bad.” They're part of the next wave that's going to redefine dance on Broadway. All they want is a break. Aids wipes a lot of them out. But, honey, for now these kids work their money makers. Some graduate the High School For Performing Arts. Others the various Catholic High Schools in the city. Many are understudies and chorus dancers in various Broadway and off-Broadway shows like The Wiz, All That Jazz and Pippin. All rehearse and practice long hours getting ready for their chance to break through to fame. The club's D.J. plays a minute and a half jump swing number by the MFSB orchestra to signal the opening or close of its live music sets. Man, that piece still swings. It's not hip it's Hep. Well, the MFSB swing horns blow and the dance floor explodes as this crew of dancers takes the floor. Break dancing pales against what I witness those dancers do that night as Lulu and Evelyn simultaneously perform their own verbal mambo. Evelyn cracks up telling Lulu about a boyfriend loosing his teeth as he's performing oral sex on her, "I know he has false teeth and I never really give it much thought but there they went. The next thing I know he's fussing around down there and I feel this hard thing like a plastic cup near my ass. I say, oh no papito -- you ain't doing nothing around there but I look and he's popping his teeth back in his mouth. Man, I couldn't stop laughing and couldn't go on screwing him until I cooled down." As Evelyn wraps up her story the Corso's DJ launches into a remixed version of "Push Push in The Bush" that’s heavy on the bass drum, bass and percussion. At a break he switches to a second percussion laden segment from a second song and so on in rapid fire until you can't tell what song is playing but damn that beat is kicking. The D.J. that night pushes the beat on the music up in such a way that it seems to stop time as Lulu and Evelyn riff about what else? Life = Sex: A wave of caramel toned He made love to me Glistening bodies like he was Snake in and out of pissing in the street Each other with movements (Mary Panza © 1991) In megaforces Jumping Laughing Spinning Groaning Coupling Splitting Relaxing Stretching their bodies taut He carefully moved To catch the downbeat the bottle back Of the song and forth And when the one hits When he didn't do They release themselves the same to me later In a cascade of smooth I was disappointed (Mary Panza © 1991) Muscular perfection Aware in the direction Where each and every Other dancer is vibrating So never to disrupt The overall flow of joy There's so much rhythm In that part of the room That the nearby tables Even dance The club's twirling Lights rain on He says that erotic Each and every one faces make him Appearing as diamonds come too fast so I Crowning their heads crossed my eyes While illuminating the group He came anyway In its own special spotlight (Mary Panza © 1991) That captures distinct eyes, smiles and Promising Young Rican Faces This unfolds for a solid half-hour As they glide from beat to beat While never missing the one It's not African Caribbean dance Or Jazz movement From the States Though it comes From those places No It's none of these anymore In their Rican bodies The dance becomes Something unique It's the epitome Of the swagger No I don't Ricans add to think the world The streets of the Big City revolves around my They translate the beat of life clitoris but it should (Mary Panza © 1991) In all those Rican apartments Throughout La Gran Manzana And lay it open For us to see In their exhilaration But it doesn't end there Checking out Roy Roman Roy looks out from Climbing on stage the bandstand for the next set Lulu speaks And answers Lulu Her sexual healing Floats in and out CLAVE With the music Swinging 1 2 3 1 2 Recounting adventures In Spanish Que Buenos Son How Fine With a recent lover In English Que Buenas Son How Fine Accented by the With the Que Buenas Son How Fine percussion percussion Son Las Mujeres Are Women Dripping from the Dripping from the Speakers Speakers And the dancers And the dancers Coming in Coming in front of us front of us He then blows Wicked trumpet lines Over the beat Inviting the band in Who joins With righteousness Streaming From canned disco To live musica As the dancers and the girls Stepped out of time Drenched in SALSA If you ever want to upset a hardcore musician or musical purist just use the word SALSA to describe Puerto Rican music in New York. For instance, these two guys at the New Rican Village are arguing one night about the word Salsa and its use to describe the Latin Music being recorded in New York. "Man, don't you get it. Salsa is that sticky bittersweet stuff that's left on your thighs after you make love. It covers everything after a while if you keep on coming. It's like life in A major. That's what we play - music for sex. Look, look. You know how Heny Alvarez wrote that song Tremendo Coco? Man, he was checking out a girl walk down the street and based the beat on how her hips swing – Sal sa ... Ahi, Na Ma ... one two one two three clave Co mo Me Gusta Mi. one two one two three clave When it comes down to it, Salsa is about the banger or the bangee and who's keeping time on the clave." You know what it really is? Salsa Is the truth Life is a dirty Lowdown shame That shouldn’t Happen to a dog Salsa Is the things New Ricans Do In their lives To bark at the Life It exposes "el jibarito" In the big city It’s Spic Chic Parading the runways To a Caribbean beat Steamed in a A mainland cauldron It’s African spirits Rising as aromatic mist Freed to exact their Due after surviving The Middle Passage It’s a Taino soul Tempering That just anger It’s Freedom Land And Section 5 at The Bronx Riviera Salsa Is oratories That exorcise Suffering There are only Fleeting bad moments In life All changes And our sorrows Are prayed away In verse and song It’s a bronze Statue of Liberty Holding sheet music And A set of maracas While Ricans stay in clave And See the world Awash in Renaissance perspective Aware of the past in the present Reinterpreting it But holding true To it’s lessons Fufillment Fueled by Desire Channeling Regrets It’s as much as Batacumbele As it is Eddie Palmieri Sharing the stage with Los Lobos While Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz Bless the congregation And Ralphie Pagan And Hector Lavoe die Powdered deaths For Our Sins Salsa Is a lover's passion caught by a musician's voice It anticipates Interactive media In the computer age Salsa Is sensuously stylish Latin dancing Don’t get lost in the percussion And Miss the real deal in Salsa The secret is How the bass riff And The two dancers Thrust against each other Wrap themselves Around the hips To drive in unison Across the floor In its most abstract IT Is the switch between The bass The dancer hips And The left hand of the timbales player Accenting the count It’s making love With your clothes on To a celestial metronome Record producer Al Santiago understands this philosophy thoroughly. The ubiquitos “Uncle Alegre”. He’s Uncle Al to all of us who buy his Alegre records and seek him out at the original Casa Alegre Music Shop. That heavyset manic uncle every family has whose so restless he recreates the Sistine Chapel ceiling in his living room out of chalk pastel because his wife tells him to touch up the room. It doesn’t matter where this type of fella is – he’ll always create something to entertain himself. Overworks, overeats, overdrinks TYPE A+ Personality, that’s our Al Our Man in the Bronx.” In the 1930's Puerto Rican record producer Gabriel Oller makes a living selling acetates of hot Latin bands to labels like RCA Victor. In the late fifties, Al Santiago creates a company that handles the product from top to bottom. I meet him at various east/west village rehearsals and recording studios. “I wanted to play top of the line saxophone so I studied real hard. At 16, I went to see a movie … The Benny Goodman Story and the next night at a church dance one of Goodman's sax players is in the orchestra playing for ten bucks that gig. I decided right there that there had to be a better position in the business and I found that as a producer." This is the man who creates the prototype for today's mainstream salsa industry with his Bronx based Alegre label in the '60's. (Fania Records under Johnny Pacheco -- an Alegre Alumnus - Fania owner Jerry Massucci and alleged mobster/record distributor-producer- kingpin Morris Levy take this formula to the next level.) Al packages the soundtrack for "spic chic" in the early sixties on Alegre Records while enlisting future Latin NY publisher Izzy Sanabria as the creative director for album covers. Beautiful paintings grace some of the l.p.'s; others have faux Hollywood poses; and campy illustrated characters populate a series of l.p. covers for Alegre Recordings that feature the label's All stars. There is a story line tying these album cover comic strips and even a lost L.P. (think of today's craze for finding lost television episodes.) Al realizes the power of hip Latino marketing by creating the product and, get this, all based in the Bronx U.S.A.. Vaya Al, you did good. Alegre musician's humor is caught on tape and included on the recordings. Through it all, Al is the skipper of this Mad Magazine type crew that confronts popular culture and says "include me." In the meantime he's developing entertainers to cross over into the American Industry. He sees that there is a bigger market for these rhythms other than the "cuchufrito" (chitlin) circuit. The Alegre recordings of the early sixties anticipate new wave production of the early eighties and extend sonically into today's CD's. In the current era when DAT recordings are becoming increasingly favored by cutting edge musicians, Al masters two track live recording in the late fifties and sixties that have an extra sonic sparkle when replayed off CD disc. His production genius launches the first disco song nominated for a Grammy - Sunny by Yambu (1975). A triumph for what is essentially a Salsa band. He recognizes a market with a unique Urban Latin style as early as 1956 and delivers the goods 20 years later with Sunny. The song is developed at the Third Street Music School. Late Disco bastardized the New York Latin Beat driving Sunny and it takes many more years for others to recognize the cultural commercial mint Latin music is today. Say thank you Ricky, Jennifer and Marc. "God loves Adam so much that He gives him Eve. God loves Al so much that he gives him vision. Only problem is that He doesn't tweak the power gauge before Al is already fucking going full blast." Fania All Star Trumpet Player Ray Maldonado 1977 Al is the original El Extreme and he's got a few years left in his life. At times, his energy is beyond manic high voltage. He deftly gets into detailed crazed arguments during recording sessions and uniquely resolves them. Some moments are brilliant. Others are exercises in satire inspired by his passion for reading Voltaire. The books prepare him to delight in the unexpected as he rubs elbows with people like Beatle John Lennon who arrives bombed out of his mind at a Santiago recording session with a charanga band in 1977. Lennon insists on playing with the band but is too far gone to do anything coherent. His solution is a late night session in an east side geisha house. Al is thoroughly grateful, "It relieved this really bad headache I had and put me on a higher plane." One night he and Charlie Palmieri analyze the left versus right hand playing of Eddie Palmieri in the mambo classic Azucar. Al bets Charlie he can come up with the common denominator in Eddie’s playing. He creates fractions and formulas; permutations and counterpoint theories -- all sounding quite precise in its mathematics -- and at the end of five minutes raises his bulky frame to triumphantly announce with a bellow: "And the common denominator is NAUGHT!" He then immediately excuses himself mimicing Claude Rains playing Police Inspector Louie in Casablanca, "I'm shocked Charles.... say shocked ... that there's gambling and foolish musicians in this establishment!" "OK OK OK …. Here's your winnings Inspector." "Thank you .. shocked I say – Round up the usual suspects." Al then gets up to get a snack of rice, beans, roast pork and a Diet Tab leaving Charlie Palmieri in hysterics at the control board. He produces some sides with one of the usual suspects singer Jimmy Sabater over the years. Jimmy’s riding a small crest of success of several well produced Fania Record releases and the disco version of the ballad To Be With You; the late seventies disco tune is a precursor to I Like It Like That and the Ricky/Jennifer/Cristina phenomenon. Jimmy, Joe Cuba, Nick Jimenez, Phil Diaz, Willie Torres (and briefly Willie Bobo) are barrio boys who fuse early sixties rhythm and blues and doo wop with Latin beats. Richie Ray launches boogaloo but Hector Rivera and the Joe Cuba sextet get the commercial hits with Bang Bang and At The Party. Willie Bobo goes to Los Angeles and creates Latin Rock with Sonny Henry who writes Evil Ways -- later to become a hit for Santana. "It's something else to be a star. All the singers in the original [Joe Cuba] sextet are a bunch of criers. Willie [Torres] can't sing To Be With You because he can't do a take without busting out crying. Cheo [Feliciano] the same thing. The day he sings Como Rien he’s getting married. And if you listen carefully to the Seeco record you can hear him ready to bust loose. And that’s a couple of takes in. We had to get a mop after the first session. Sonny [Joe Cuba] was running outside to get bed sheets to hold back the river that was coming from underneath the door of the recording booth in the studio. It was crazy. I don't know how we survived. And the gigs, damn! We play the Colgate Gardens. Sonny says we got four sets but that we won't have to play after the second. That we're already paid up front. It's a lock. Guaranteed shoot out at the end of the second set. Second set ends. BANG!!! BANG!!! We pack up the instruments and speed back home. A week later at the Hunts Point Palace we blew Tito Puente's orchestra out of the water. We were promoting that Boogaloo el Pito (The Whistle) and we handed out all these whistles. Then we played out asses off and left the stage one a time. When Sonny finally got off stage the whole place was filled with the sound of these damn whistles. The audience blew so long on those whistles it disrupted Puente's set. He was pissed but we showed him that night. King or no King of Latin Music we could rock him anytime we wanted. And that pelican jaw Puente Manager Jose Curbelo couldn't do shit about it." Jose Curbelo is an old school bandleader/manager/operator. His cocktail rumba style piano playing garners him enough success during the forties and early fifties to allow him to become a "booking agent/manager". His meal ticket is Tito Puente whom he teams up with in 1938. Curbelo is part gangster, part fop and ruthless when it comes to his Tito. Some estimate that his huge extended jay leno jaw goes beyond Manhattan into New Jersey. Curbelo’s pelican like bill scoops up all the green fisheees. Only his ego is bigger. "All these promoters are characters" Jimmy Sabater says as he pours himself a drink, "But none of them have anything on Federico Pagani.” The grand promoter of Latin sets since the 30's, Pagani is a legend on the "cuchifrito circuit". Sabater talks about one of Pagani's stranger spectaculars at the Teatro Puerto Rico in the South Bronx. Appearing tonight - Tito Puente, Richie Ray, Eddie Palmieri, Celia Cruz, Charlie Palmieri, Pacheco, Machito, Totico, Patato, Mongo, el Bobo, Monty Rock III, Joe Cuba, Willie Colon, Larry Harlow, La Lupe..." and the marquee continues on and on. All for five dollars! Two shows -- one at five. The other at ten. Comes the five o'clock show and the theater is packed. Teatro Puerto Rico can hold up to 3000 people. It's the fifth largest movie house in the city. And it's packed with hard-core Puerto Ricans. 95% from right there in the South Bronx. Five o'clock and nothing. Five Fifteen Five Twenty Five thirty and nothing. This crowd of 2200 Puerto Ricans is now getting restless. From behind the blue green curtain steps Federico. A little Indian looking Rican. Five foot three -- tall for a jibaro del pais. He tries to get the audience's attention. "Q -me ... Q - me .. Por favor." Now they're starting to throw popcorn lids, cups, paper and Federico is ducking, "Q -me ... Q - me .. Por favor .... pero ... me perdonan ... Por favor but THERE WILL BE NO SHOW TONIGHT." The place goes completely quiet. "The truth is my mother has cancer and needs an operation and I had no way to raise the money so I had to do this." The place is stunned but now comes the moment of truth and demonstrates how Federico had delivered successful promotions for more than 30 years.From the balcony one guy yells out, "Ah the hell with it, let him keep the money." The crowd grudgingly agrees and begins to file out. Just as the audience is surging for the doors Federico sincerely announces, "And don't forget, tell your friends that there's another show at ten!" Teatro Puerto Rico hosts different acts in those days. Movies, Reviews and there is always the Passion Plays during Easter. Reenactments of Christ's crucifixion. It's all very solemn. Yomo Toro plays accompaniment with a Jibaro trio. Men openly weep. Women say rosaries. Children mess with each other. You get the picture. But there is a problem. The Cross noticeably shifts during the performance. At the moment that Mary Magdalene announces before Christ's stage death: "Listen he speaks" instead of "My God My God why have you forsaken me" the cross begins to crash and Jesus yells out, "Me Hooooooedeeeeeeee" (I'm screwed) and lands with a resounding thud. Not a beat is missed. The performers pick up the knocked out Jesus and carry him off stage. There is another Jesus for the resurrection scene. And who is it? Why Federico Pagani of course! That little Indian looking Rican promoter. Five foot three -- tall for a Jesus del pais. There's always a Puero Rican in the mix to save the day. Especially in Bronxworld. |
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