The City of Musical Memory. Lise A. Waxer
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popularity, which sold more records, which brought them back for more concerts, and so forth.
Cuban music had a particularly strong impact in Puerto Rico (see Manuel 1994). This musical interchange has its roots in the close historical ties between Cuba and Puerto Rico. These links, both political and cultural, emerge from the fact that they were the last remaining Latin American colonies of the Spanish Empire and remained virtual or (in the case of Puerto Rico) literal colonies of the United States through the first half of the twentieth century. The islands constituted “the Caribbean” for the United States, and because of this they provided more economic and political gains than the neighboring Dominican Republic, which—despite a similar colonial history—failed to establish a solid export-oriented exchange economy (Martínez Fernández 1994: 58). According to Martínez Fernández, despite the potential profits that investment in the Dominican Republic promised in the last century, internal “political instability, the threat of Haitian aggression, and the zealous interference of European merchants and consuls blocked such economic endeavors,” essentially cutting the country off from the Atlantic-Caribbean commercial system (1994: 94–95). Cuba and Puerto Rico were thus in a much better position for their musical expressions to be diffused to the rest of the hemisphere, and of the two, Cuba was the stronger, because of its geographic proximity to the United States and its larger economic base. (Some observers say that Puerto Rico’s current affluence resulted from the shift in U.S. tourist-oriented development after the 1959 revolution terminated such investment in Cuba.20)
United States record producers clearly felt that they had a more profitable commodity with Cuban popular music than with other styles. The fact that Cuban songs are in Spanish made Hispanic Latin America an obvious target for promotion of Cuban recordings, but it is probable that Cuba’s economic subordination and proximity to the United States contributed to the predilection of New York record companies for Cuban artists. The economic ties between and geographic proximity of these two countries certainly stimulated migration from Cuba to New York, and many Cuban musicians headed north in search of work and opportunities. New York’s economic strength and position as a principal international communications and entertainment center in turn launched this Cuban presence into the world.
Hollywood’s images also influenced the international glamour tied to Cuban sounds. For instance, the movies of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (great favorites in Cali) frequently featured Cuban music, usually in the simplified rhumba form. For U.S. audiences, Cuba was seen as exotic, but not too exotic, and hence became an ideal, unthreatening other for North American projections and fantasies. While Mexicans were stereotypically portrayed as rural, sombrero-wearing bumpkins, Argentines were conventionally typecast as smoldering Latin lovers. Brazilians were presented as hot-blooded but frivolous, embodied in the image of Carmen Miranda and her ridiculous fruit-bowl headdresses. Cubans, however, were exuberant and festive, sexy but also charming, fun but not mawkish—in other words, enticing but safe. Compare the domesticated exoticism of Desi Arnaz, for example, who romped through the nation’s living rooms every week as Ricky Ricardo, Lucy’s cute Cuban hubby, with the dark and slightly menacing sensuality of the Argentine tango dancer epitomized by Rudolph Valentino (Pérez Firmat 1994: 61–63). These images influenced Latin American consumption patterns. Although música antillana was promoted and controlled through a highly impersonal industry, the key link to its popularity was its level of face-to-face enjoyment. Certainly, dancing to Cuban music was perceived as fun, and for many, the rhythms of rumba, conga, and mambo were more compelling than, say, the melancholy, marchlike compass of the tango. The joy and release generated in the intimate, vital physicality of dance and motion has contributed most directly to Cuban music’s widespread adoption, reinforcing the commercial channels through which it attained prominence. It is this affective power, ultimately, that transcended geographic and cultural boundaries to literally move thousands.
Puerto Rican artists also performed Cuban music and creatively reworked Cuban elements to create new Puerto Rican expressions that became internationally popular (Manuel 1994). By the 1950s, Puerto Rico’s most popular dance band—Cortijo y su Combo—performed Puerto Rican bomba and plena on Cuban percussion instruments instead of Puerto Rican drums. While the Cuban influence in música antillana is often overstated, Puerto Ricans not only adopted Cuban elements but also transformed them into musical vehicles that expressed a distinct Puerto Rican sensibility. As Ruth Glasser notes, “Puerto Ricans on the island and the mainland did not adopt Cuban music wholesale to the detriment of their own traditions but incorporated it into an ever-evolving repertoire of available cultural materials” (1995: 6). The hegemony of Cuban styles and artists in música antillana history is based on the predominance of Cuban instruments, rhythms, genres, and artists who were recorded, filmed, and distributed far more widely than were their Puerto Rican counterparts. I am not entirely comfortable, however, with the Cuba-centered discourse of many Latin music specialists. I think the Colombian term “música antillana” is actually more useful in this regard, since it does open a conceptual space for thinking about the historical ties that linked Cuba and Puerto Rico and led to the emergence of a transnational sound that by the 1950s could no longer be contained solely by the label “Cuban music.”
From Música Antillana to Salsa:
The Sonora Matancera and Cortijo y su Combo
Two of the most important groups to play a role in the transition from música antillana to salsa were Cuba’s Sonora Matancera and Puerto Rico’s Cortijo y su Combo. Although the style established by the Cuban innovator Arsenio Rodríguez and continued by the conjunto of Felix Chappotin and Miguelito Cuní21 was also important for several New York musicians and collectors, many productions made by Fania Records in the 1970s were modeled directly on the sound of the Sonora Matancera. In fact, one of salsa’s biggest stars from this period—Celia Cruz—was a key vocalist with the Matancera in the 1950s and recorded nearly identical versions of her former hits for Fania with a band directed by Johnny Pacheco. Pacheco also produced several albums in this vein with other musicians. The salsa historian Cesar Miguel Rondón criticized this trend, accusing Pacheco of strangling salsa’s innovative potential by “Matancerizing” the industry and imposing a commercial formula based on the old 1950s sound (1980: 90). Indeed, a retrospective of classic 1960s and 1970s New York salsa can be envisioned as a beast with three heads: one in the experimental vein led by Eddie Palmieri and Willie Colón; a second, “heavy” one in the Arsenio-Chappotin vein, led by Larry Harlow and Ray Barretto; and a third in the lighter Matancera style, led by Johnny Pacheco and Celia Cruz, that at times appeared to overpower the others. Of course, these schools are interrelated, and to an outsider the differences between these artists may not be clear—after all, “it’s all salsa.” To aficionados, however, their stylistic nuances are marked.
Puerto Rico, in turn, had its own schools, growing out of the combined influence of Cortijo and also the Sonora Matancera. The most famous group, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, was founded in 1962 by members of Cortijo’s original combo after Rafael Cortijo and his lead vocalist, Ismael Rivera, were incarcerated for drug possession. El Gran Combo carried Cortijo’s legacy into the 1960s and 1970s, even after Cortijo and Rivera formed salsa bands of their own. Puerto Rico’s other principal band, the Sonora Ponceña, was founded during the 1950s. Originally modeled on Cuba’s Sonora Matancera, the Ponceña underwent several transitions and by the mid-1970s emerged with a style that retained the bright trumpets of its Cuban model but was fused with the heavy sound of the Arsenio school and the dynamic delivery of the Cortijo school. Marisol Berríos-Miranda notes that Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera also had a significant influence on Venezuelan salsa musicians (1999).
In order to understand the impact of the above groups on Caleño audiences, it is worth examining the stylistic elements that characterized the Sonora Matancera and Cortijo y su Combo—the two most-loved música antillana ensembles in Cali. The Sonora Matancera featured a modified version of the Havana conjunto format established by the pioneer Arsenio Rodriguez, with only two trumpets in place of the three or four featured by Rodriguez and his successor Chappotín. When Caleño música antillana fans discuss the local popularity of the Matancera, they often refer precisely to these trumpets, which had a very bright timbre and piercing projection. In addition, the Matancera’s sound was characterized by the crisp detonation of the maracas,