CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald 5wx6w
Jailed Cuban writer receives press
award
By Frank Davies. [emailprotected].
Posted on Fri, Nov. 21, 2003
WASHINGTON - A Cuban writer who has been
imprisoned since March, Manuel Vzquez
Portal, is one of four recipients of the
international press freedom awards of the
Committee to Protect Journalists.
''He's in jail for the stories he wrote
about the grim reality of life in one of
the world's worst dictatorships,'' said
Ann Cooper, executive director of the group.
The other recipients of the award were
Musa Muradov, editor in chief of Chechnya's
only independent publication, who has been
threatened by Russian authorities; Abdul
Samay Hamed, an Afghan writer who was recently
attacked because of his stories; and Aboubakr
Jamai, publisher of an independent newspaper
in Morocco that had been shut down by the
government.
Vzquez helped establish an independent
news agency, Grupo de Trabajo Secoro, in
the late 1990s.
He smuggled out a prison diary via his
wife in June.
David Laventhol, board chairman of the
committee, said of the four journalists:
"None of them set out to be heroes,
but to us that's what they've become.''
He's delivering 'a new concept' in Cuban
music
By Fabiola Santiago. [emailprotected].
Posted on Thu, Nov. 20, 2003.
Juan Carlos Formell says his tunes "speak
about the stuff of everyday life in Cuba,
from the way a Cuban sees love in general
to the way he sees the future as well."
ENID FARBER 2003
Jamming at New York's Knitting Factory
one night five years ago, Juan-Carlos Formell
couldn't resist the urge to step out of
history.
He was belting out Mango Mang,
an AfroCuban tune based on pregones, the
calls used by street peddlers to sell their
goods, an old favorite played by every Cuban-music
lover from Celia Cruz to Charlie Parker.
Right then and there, in mid-song, the
young singer/songwriter came up with new
words, and instead of pushing mangoes, his
rhythmic pregn called for a little
thing called freedom:
" . . . Cuba one day will be free
/ my people, my song, my Obatal
says so . . . .''
That's all Formell ever wants to do --
deliver his own take on Cuban music without
the shackles of the past -- and that's what
he plans to do Friday night when he takes
the stage with his acoustic guitar at Little
Havana's Hoy Como Ayer nightclub.
He's calling the show Son Radical.
''It's a new concept and it's radical because
some of us Cuban singer/songwriters are
like guerrilla warriors or missionaries,''
Formell says of his new music. "We
come from a country that is different from
the rest of the world and we feel a great
need to express ourselves.''
Accompanied only by an electric guitar
and percussionist Wicly Nogueras, Formell
will play his progressive brand of son,
the music of Cuban peasants and African
slaves. He'll throw in boleros and filin
(a jazz-infused bolero), but don't expect
the dance rhythms of his two CDs -- Songs
From A Little Blue House (Wicklow) and Las
Calles del Paraiso (The Streets of Paradise,
EMI Latin) -- nor the nostalgic beats of
yesteryear, even if he might be persuaded
to perform his version of Mango Mang
titled A Cuba Nos Vamos (To Cuba We'll Go).
''The son is the root of everything,''
Formell says. "Working from that base,
we have the credentials to break the rules
of Cuban music and of the clichs
established by the world of Cuban music
itself.''
Formell, 38, belongs to a generation of
singer/songwriters who were born under Fidel
Castro's regime and grew up with the vigilance
of its apparatus and the banners of combative
slogans.
These musicians had parents who were, in
the parlance of the Cuban regime, ''integrated
into the system,'' and they, the inheritors
of it, were supposed to be los nuevos hombres,
the new and militant revolutionary men and
women.
Instead, they became outcasts and made
music that broke the mold. Their lyrics
reflected a disgruntled society and their
rhythms incorporated the modern world of
hip-hop and the sisterly grooves of samba
and reggae.
Among his contemporaries, Formell's story
is more complicated than most because of
his musical parentage.
His grandfather, Francisco Formell, was
the arranger for famed Cuban composer Ernesto
Lecuona and a conductor with the Havana
Philharmonic. His father is Juan Formell,
leader of Los Van Van, Cuba's most popular
dance band of the past three decades and
a group publicly ive of Castro's
government.
Although father and son are poles apart
musically and politically, people often
confuse them.
Formell, who was raised by his paternal
grandmother, prefers not to talk about the
relationship.
''If you want to know about my father,
you have to ask him,'' Formell says. "Children
don't talk about their parents. It's the
parents who talk about their children.''
He'd rather talk music.
His songs, Formell says, are "simple
and speak about the stuff of everyday life
in Cuba, from the way a Cuban sees love
in general to the way he sees the future
as well.''
Other songs address the hardships of leaving
everything behind and starting over. Formell
wrote Flores (Flowers) after accompanying
Nogueras, one of the founders of the hugely
popular Cuban dance band NG LaBanda, to
peddle flowers in the streets of Miami.
''To see a first-rate musician selling
flowers on the street to survive was very
touching,'' Formell says.
Nogueras played with Formell in his first
CD, Songs From A Little Blue House (Wicklow),
which evolved from Formell's inaugural performances
at Caf Nostalgia when the trend-setting
Miami nightclub was launched in 1995 at
the site of Hoy Como Ayer. The CD was nominated
for a Grammy in 2000 in the category of
best Traditional Tropical.
''It was there that I broke with what I
had been doing in New York, which was performing
with a big orchestra, playing dance music,''
Formell says. "When I returned, it
was a revolution because that city -- used
to Latin jazz, to salsa -- was not accustomed
to a Cuban singer/songwriter exposing a
new concept of Cuban music.''
In New York lately, he has been jamming
with other Cuban singer-songwriters who
come through town -- Pvel Urquiza
of the duo Gema y Pvel, Alma Rosa
of Havana's Nueva Cancin movement,
bassist Descemer Bueno and guitarist Ahmed
Barroso of Yerba Buena.
He recently jammed in a packed Living Room
with Bueno and Kelvis Ochoa, fresh from
performing in Miami with the Habana Abierta
ensemble, in the tribute Tres Tristes Tigres,
named after the famous Guillermo Cabrera
Infante novel Three Trapped Tigers.
''We belong to the same generation and
we are scattered around the world, so whenever
we find each other somewhere we want to
get together and play'' Formell says. "Many
Cubans who left in the '60s, the '70s don't
know this different Cuba and when we perform
they ask us to sing what they know, but
things are changing and people are now more
open to hearing the new trends, the new
artists.''
Unlike some of the Cuban musicians of his
generation who temper their stance against
the regime in public because they want to
be able to visit the island, Formell is
outspoken in his rejection of the regime.
''I left Cuba because I could not endure
the censorship and the lack of freedoms,''
he says.
Formell points to the irony of a regime
that sought to create egalitarianism and
instead has produced a generation eager
to embrace differences, to create new spaces.
''In Cuba, every person is a world, every
barrio, every corner is different and the
richness is in the differences,'' Formell
says. "Our mission as singer/songwriters
is to reveal all of that Cuban flavor. We
are musicians creating democracy.''
Brass reunion
By Lydia Martin. [emailprotected],
Posted on Fri, Nov. 21, 2003.
Generoso Jimenez inches his way across
an unfamiliar Miami house, a bent old man
visiting from Cuba with his legendary trombone.
Back in the day, it set Cuban music on fire.
This is a trombone with a voice as unmistakable
as Beny Mor's, the band leader it
sang with night after night, stage after
stage, vaciln after vaciln.
It is a trombone so entrenched in the history
of Cuban music that today it weighs heavy
for the man who made it famous.
''The problem is that 46 is not the same
as 86,'' Generoso says with a sigh about
his gig tonight at the Fontainebleau Hilton's
Tropigala. "I'll try to sound it, but
we'll see what comes out.''
These days the trombone is almost taller
than Generoso, an icon of that era when
the mambo was the mambo and a son montuno
-- (the son is to salsa what the blues are
to rock 'n' roll) played the way el Beny's
band played it, with all that brass and
all that swing -- could raise the dead.
Generoso is perched on a kitchen stool
in West Dade, reminiscing while his hosts
fry fish steaks and warm a pot of chicharos.
This is the first time he'll hoist his trombone
in South Florida since a gig with Beny in
the 1950s.
The gig is a recurring tribute to Beny,
featuring Tropigala's own big band. Fronting
is Israel Kantor, a former lead singer of
Los Van Van (he moved to the States in 1986)
who has found an uncanny Beny voice. But
the big attraction is the rotating old-timers
with names arguably bigger than Buena Vista.
POST CUBA REUNION
This time, Tropigala hit the jackpot, bringing
together two masters who haven't been face-to-face
in 46 years. Generoso, the lead arranger
for Beny, hasn't seen Alfredo ''Chocolate''
Armenteros, Beny's first musical director,
since the trumpet great left Cuba in 1957
to play with some of the biggest jazz bands
in New York, including Machito's Afro-Cubans.
''Imagine everything we have to talk about,''
Generoso says. ''Music, life, more music.
Cachao [Israel "Cachao'' Lpez],
was here the other night visiting me. I
hadn't seen him since, well, imagine. We
talked for hours.''
Chocolate is credited with organizing his
cousin Beny's band in 1953, bringing together
a sound so innovative yet so true to the
traditional it set the standard and the
soundtrack for 1950s Cuba.
''We never worked, we partied,'' Chocolate
said from his home in New York. "We
would start playing without Beny, then he
would show up and we would play another
set, then the show would end and we would
go to Tropicana with Beny to do another
show that started at 2 in the morning. After
that, we all went to the bars. We told stories,
we jammed. Nobody went home before 10 in
the morning.''
Generoso has his own recollections about
the old days with Beny, who died 40 years
ago, at age 43, of liver disease.
'Beny would be out drinking at a bar while
the public waited for him at a show. At
some point in the evening, he would
he had a signed contract with a place and
he would show up. The rest of us would be
up there playing. He would come through
the door and yell 'Hierro!' and we'd get
cranking.''
While Generoso tells stories in his soft,
deep timbre, one of Beny's biggest hits,
Camarera del Amor (Waitress of Love,) blasts
from the big-screen TV in the family room
at the home of Recaredo Gutierrez, the Miami
businessman who financed the just-released
CD and DVD of the Tropigala show, by the
Tropicana All Stars.
Generoso looks over, surprised by what
he hears. That's not Beny singing, but Kantor.
''I have thought for a long time that someday
somebody had to do something like this to
honor Beny, but I would ask myself who would
possibly be able to sing it,'' says Generoso.
"In Cuba, we have nobody. Beny is a
difficult voice. He had an amazing range,
the lows, the highs. Then I heard Israel
was doing it and I started ing his
hits with Los Van Van and a door to the
heavens opened up.''
Says Kantor, who is here this afternoon
for the chicharos and the chance to have
unplugged time with Generoso:
"Beny's singing was so textured. It's
very hard to do it, but the more I study
him, the more I understand and respect him.
He was prodigious.''
Juanito Marquez, the master guitarist and
producer whose work includes Gloria Estefan's
Mi Tierra, gives a lot of the credit to
Generoso.
''Generoso is a symbol,'' says Marquez,
an arranger for the Tropicana All Stars.
''He established all kinds of things with
his trombone. Until Generoso, the trombone
didn't have that kind of role in the Cuban
jazz band. In a big way, it gave the sound
to Beny's music, and to Cuban music of that
era.'' Generoso's name, if not his face,
has been well-known to Beny fans through
the decades thanks to one of the band's
biggest hits, Que Bueno Baila Usted (How
Well You Dance.) In it, Beny sings, '''Generoso,
que bueno toca usted,'' (Generoso, how well
you play).
Its joyous son montuno energy hides a dark
truth: It was the beginning of the end for
Beny, for the band, for the old ways in
Cuba.
FALLING APART AT THE SEAMS
''It was 1956 and we were in Venezuela
doing a TV show,'' says Generoso. "Several
of the original musicians had already left
the country, or had left Beny. It wasn't
that great orchestra anymore, it was a guerrilla.
We picked the six easiest songs because
some of the people we had playing with us
didn't know Beny's music. We finished and
we had 10 more minutes on the air. We had
nothing else to play.''
But if Beny and his band were known for
anything, it was their improvisational genius.
'We start playing this riff and Beny comes
in and sings to the guy who plays the guiro,
who happened to really know the Cuban dances
of the day, 'Castellano, que bueno baila
usted.' (Castellano, how well you dance).
Then he went on to 'Generoso, como toca
usted,' (Generoso, how you play). And I
followed it up with 'Beny Mor, que
banda tiene usted,' (Beny Mor, what
a band you have.) And we kept this up until
credits rolled. It became a hit. But it
happened because everything was falling
apart.''
Beny was boozing and it was bringing everybody
down. Especially Beny. Generoso made the
mistake, he says, of calling him on it.
'We were on an other trip to Venezuela
and he had to see a doctor. The doctor told
me, 'When you get back to Havana, you have
to get him serious medical attention.' But
Beny said not to get involved in his life,
that he knew what he was doing.''
There was an eventual falling out. But
in February 1963, Beny showed up at Generoso's
house.
''He came to ask forgiveness,'' says Generoso.
'He said, 'If I had paid attention to you,
I'd be sound as a bell. But I'm dying.'
''
Liver disease claimed Mor's life
just a few days later, on Feb. 19. There's
a common rumor that Beny was intercepted
at sea as he tried to escape the Castro
regime and died from a beating in jail.
''I saw him right before he died,'' said
Generoso. "There were no bruises. If
he had been beaten, I would have seen it.
Plus, he would have told me.''
Generoso stayed in Cuba, but he is not
viewed as an artist who was with the government.
In fact, he and his trombone were largely
ignored by post-revolutionary Cuba. In 2002,
a CD titled Generoso Que Bueno Toca Usted
was recorded in Havana, featuring new compositions
by the trombone great and played by a collection
of 27 star musicians. Among those who contributed
were Arturo Sandoval and Paquito D'Rivera,
Cuban exiles who would typically not collaborate
with the other side.
But this was Generoso. And that made all
the difference. The CD was nominated for
a Grammy in 2003.
And Generoso is still marveling at all
the new attention.
"I went to this restaurant last night
called La Bodeguita del Medio, like in Cuba.
Seores, I could not believe it,
everybody applauding. That has never happened
in my country. Let's just leave it at that.''
What: Tributo a El Barbaro del Ritmo
(Tribute to the Wildman of Rythm)with the
Tropicana All Stars Orchestra featuring
Generoso Jimenez on trombone, Alfredo "Chocolate"
Armenteros on trumpet and Israel Kantor
singing Beny More's biggest hits.
When: 9:20 p.m. today.
Where: The Fountainebleau's Tropigala, 4411
Collins Ave., Miami Beach.
Cost: $25.
For More Information: Call 305-672-7469
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