Luminaries from the world of Latin jazz will converge on New York´s Aaron Davis Hall at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, November 18, to celebrate National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master Cándido Camero as he heads into retirement. “Cándido: The Last Legendary Music Journey,” presented by City College Center for the Arts (CCCA) and Latin Jazz USA, will also mark the final performance of Camero, known as the first percussionist to popularize conga drumming in jazz and popular music; a man who has worked with almost all of the great jazz figures, including Miles Davis, Clark Terry, Dinah Washington, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Mongo Santamaria, Buddy Rich, Tony Bennett, Tito Puente, and hundreds more. The event, which will feature performances by the multi-Grammy-nominated Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band, David Oquendo, Xiomara Laugart, (U)nity and more, is sponsored by Telemundo and curated by Nelson Radhames Rodriguez and Ivan Acosta.
Born on April 22, 1921, in Havana, Camero immigrated to the United States in 1952 and shortly thereafter moved to New York City, falling into the jazz scene there with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor. His 70-year career spans the globe as well as genres—from jazz to pop and rock to R&B. A percussionist phenomenon, he pioneered the playing of multiple congas and multiple percussion instruments and developed the technique of coordinated independence, a polyrhythmic style of playing. Camero has also been acknowledged for his contributions to the development of mambo and Afro-Cuban jazz. In 2008, he was honored with the NEA Jazz Masters Award.
Other artists performing at Aaron Davis Hall include Amaury Acosta and Benjamin Lapidus. Additional acts have been invited. An exhibition of plastic artists and a special salute from the jazz community by Audelco award winning actor and vocalist Rome Neal, accompanied by Richard Clements, will also pay tribute to Camero.
“Cándido is truly a living legend,” said CCCA Managing Director Gregory Shanck. “Retirement is a big deal, especially if you are a pioneer of a musical revolution. Cándido’s selection of City College Center for the Arts and Latin Jazz USA as the organizers of this celebration is a tremendous honor for us, and we invite you to witness this historic moment.”
THE PERFORMERS:
Cándido Camero, NEA Jazz Master (America’s highest honor in jazz, 2009)
Amaury Acosta & (U)nity, Benjamin Lapidus, Xiomara Laugart, Rome Neal, David Oquendo, Bobby Sanabria
A locked security zone resembling a prison is not the most obvious location for a musical gathering. But on Saturday, as they have every year since 2008, musicians assembled on either side of the border between the United States and Mexico, carrying traditional Mexican string instruments and dance shoes with clickety-clack wooden heels. Through the thick metal weave of the fence, the grids so tight that a pinkie could barely squeeze through, they struggled to make out the faces of their friends and musical colleagues who were gathered and facing them on the Tijuana side.
On Saturday, some 60 musicians traveled to the heavily patrolled enforcement zone oddly named Friendship Park for an annual musical event known as the Fandango Fronterizo. A heady mix of joyful fiesta and sober political statement, the Fandango is a gritty affirmation of son jarocho — a centuries-old string music tradition from rural Veracruz, a southern Mexican state along the Gulf of Mexico, that has strong Spanish, African and indigenous roots.
The fandango at the border did not start out as an overtly political act. But through the years, as the national debate over immigration has become ever more divisive and as violence in Mexico has continued, the event’s symbolism has deepened and grown more bittersweet. The fandango itself is a communal custom involving musicians gathered in a circle, from which son jarocho grew.
The idea for the event came from Jorge Castillo, a lanky 57-year-old librarian and musician with a salt-and-pepper beard who was born in El Paso and grew up in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico. Mr. Castillo bought his first jarana, a stringed instrument, in 2007 and started attending fandangos in San Diego. Like many here, he quickly grew frustrated by the fact that many of his fellow musicians who lacked papers were unable to cross the border. Volunteering for a beach cleanup one day near the border site, Mr. Castillo had a revelation: “When I saw the fence, and the people on the other side, I thought, ‘Wow, this is the perfect place for a fandango.’”
When the event had its debut, “We didn’t know how we would feel,” Mr. Castillo recalled. “It was very powerful. The only thing that can cross besides the birds and the winds is the music.”
Since then, the fence has become increasingly militarized: Holes once big enough to accommodate Mexican popsicles or mangoes on a stick have been shrunk. As the wall becomes taller and thicker, “it has become a challenge to keep both sides in sync,” said Adrian Florido, a longtime organizer. “To see friends through the fence, you have to close an eye and peep.”
Organizing a two-nation event in a highly politicized, federally controlled space is not for the faint of heart. (Last year the Fandango was almost canceled because of concerns about contraband being smuggled in instrument cases.) Planning takes six months, often via Skype.
To reach the bleak steel entry wall — at the southernmost corner of the continental United States — musicians lugged instruments a mile and a half from a parking lot, astride tire ruts of United States Border Patrol vehicles in the sands of Imperial Beach along the Pacific Ocean. Their ranks included those who could legally cross the border and those who could not. “The Fandango is a way to transform something very painful to immigrants into a space that heals,” said Carolina Martinez, a 34-year-old musician from Medellín, Colombia, whose parents still reside in her home city.
The custom weaves together music, poetic verse and foot percussion — petticoated dancers in swoopy skirts elaborately stomping out rhythms on a wooden platform. Popularized in the United States by Ritchie Valens’s hit interpretation of “La Bamba,” son jarocho evolved from the fandango and has become a spirited fixture on both sides of the border.
In solidarity with their border compadres, musicians participated in simultaneous fandangos in far-flung locations like New York, Zurich, Montreal, Mexico City and Tenosique, Tabasco, on Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.
Elisabeth Le Guin, a music and musicology professor at U.C.L.A., at the Fandango Fronterizo. =By design, fandangos are communal and are not the place for prima donnas. In Mexico, they are held to honor patron saints and are staples at birthday parties, weddings and funerals. Eduardo Garcia, a professor and son jarocho teacher in San Diego, has compared the warm feeling of kinship of fandangos to a campfire in the middle of nowhere.
“It’s a practice that instills conviviencia, or being present with each other,” said Martha E. Gonzalez, an assistant professor at Scripps College and lead singer of the Grammy Award-winning Chicano rock group Quetzel, which she founded with her partner, Quetzal Flores, in Los Angeles. “The fandango calls a community into being.”
The call begins with “El Siquisiri,” a welcome song. On the Tijuana side, a city park next to a bullring, three master musicians who were invited guests appeared as flickers of light and color through the fence: Adriana Cao Romero, a harpist and dentist from Mexico City; Alddo Flores, from Veracruz, playing a carved gourd he strums with a bicycle spoke; and Felix Machucho, a 68-year-old farmer and wizened master of verse from rural Veracruz who had flown in an airplane for the first time to be there.
At a typical fandango, musicians encircle the tarima, or dance platform, the ritual’s spiritual heart. (The border version had two tarimas on either side of the fence.) Son jarocho musicians play a variety of guitarlike instruments: the eight-stringed jarana, which is strummed, and the more difficult four-string requinto, which carries the melody and is plucked with a long and somewhat lethal-looking pick carved from a bull’s horn. Once passé, the genre has had a resurgence over the past few decades. It has inspired a trans-border clutch of gifted artists like Tacho Utrera from Consolapan, Veracruz, revered for his elegant ebony and cedar requintos. On Saturday he kicked off the opening son.
At a music workshop in Tijuana last week, young beginners trained with elders in sombreros like Mr. Machucho, who comes from an august lineage and considers his knack for improvising verses “an inheritance,” he said. From the rooftop of a cultural center, multigenerational rhythms reverberated late into the night.
For many, especially those whose immigration status divides them from loved ones, fandangos serve as “a form of social glue,” said Elisabeth Le Guin, a music and musicology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. At the Fandango, musicians “make a community across borders through beauty,” she said.
The festive atmosphere and music — women with silk flowers in their hair; a multitasking male bass player cradling an infant; a dancer in San Diego swaying in unison with her soul sister in Tijuana — is in stark contrast to what is arguably the country’s most surreal public space. Access is restricted by United States Customs and Border Protection to a four-hour window on Saturdays and Sundays.
In an opening welcome that felt like a blessing, Mr. Castillo spoke of “the border that divides that ends up uniting.”
There would be five sons in three hours, including “Señor Presidente,” about corruption in Mexico, and the rousing “La Bamba,” played at a speedy clip with only 10 minutes to spare. The event concluded with the 90 or so musicians, from both sides of the fence, counting in unison from one to 43, a solemn reminder of the chilling disappearance of 43 college students in the state of Guerrero, just south of Mexico City, in 2014.
Jubilant melodies from the Tijuana side wafted through the air, a defiant coda as the steel gates on the United States snapped shut.
To Panquetzani, a Mexican herbalist from Long Beach who has studied the jarana with elders in Veracruz, juxtapositions like these make the Fandango Fronterizo so hauntingly compelling. “There’s beauty and there’s sadness — and that’s what son jarocho is all about,” she said.
LatinWorks' Creative Wins At One Show By Linda Ball
LatinWorks took home the Gold award at the One Show Awards in NYC last week for the Music Has No Enemies spot, ‘Jack.’ The spot features a World War II scene of soldier figurines with a powerful narration by 94 year-old WWII veteran, Jack Tueller. The purpose of the spot was to showcase how music truly unites and inspires emotions that can transcend loss, fear and violence.
“Our LatinWorks creative team is honored to be recognized at the prestigious One Show in NYC for our work with Music Has No Enemies,” said Gabriel Garcia, Executive Creative Director at LatinWorks. “We wanted to bring to life the power music has in its ability to change a mood, a moment and literally, lives.”
Creative team credits go to: Gabriel Garcia – ECD, José “Hache” Hernandez – CD, Rodrigo Rothschild – CD, Nick Garza - Sr. Copywriter, Javier Peraza – Sr. Copywriter, Victor Rojas – AD.
About the One Club & the One Show Awards The One Club exists to champion and promote excellence in advertising and design in all its forms. It is the world’s foremost non-profit organization devoted to elevating creative work in the industry. It seeks to celebrate the legacy of creative advertising and to use that legacy to inspire future generations. The One Club is the ‘keeper of the flame’ for advertising creatives.
The One Show remains the pinnacle of achievement by providing a showcase of the world’s best work, and by inviting collaboration among individuals who are actively developing outstanding work.
About Music Has No Enemies Music Has No Enemies is an organization focused on creating meaningful music and film content for socially responsible companies and non-profit organizations around the world.
Billboard Latin Music conference took place in Miami BeachTwenty-seventh edition of conference focused on new technology and genresU.S. Hispanics growing clout and numbers reflected in music
By Daysi Calavia-Robertson, The Miami Herald
The “tectonic shifts” happening in Latino culture and music and the ways new technology has changed the industry are two topics at the core of this year’s Billboard Latin Music Conference at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Miami Beach.
“It’s a young conference with speakers that reflect a younger demographic and that explores a lot of new topics,” said Leila Cobo, Billboard’s executive director of Latin content and programming. “It’s a different world from what it was, even one year ago. People are still looking for great music, but technology has changed what we listen to and how we listen to it.”
The 27th edition of the conference, which began Monday and finishes Thursday with the Billboard Latin Music Awards, mirrors the changing industry, Cobo says.
“Radio has long been the source of discovery for new music, and though it still is, there are many new sources,” Cobo says. “Streaming has become a big deal and it’s growing stronger, a lot more people are streaming music as opposed to buying.”
Cobo says digital distribution and streaming services like Spotify are helping to change the game. “It’s not just random playlists put together by fans anymore,” Cobo says. “There are playlists generated by the site for its users, which are curated music charts, so, there’s other avenues of discovery which weren’t there before.”
Michael Huppe, a conference panelist and CEO of Sound Exchange, an independent nonprofit collective management organization that gathers and distributes digital performance royalties to featured artists and copyright holders and is sponsoring this year’s event, agrees with Cobo.
“What’s most exciting about the music industry right now is that there’s an unbelievable explosion, not only of the places to get music, but of the type of music available,” Huppe says. “There’s no limit to the type of music you can find. … What people listened to before was dictated by local radio, but now, not so much.”
The conference also reflects Latin music’s expansion beyond pop, featuring artists in a variety of genres, particularly reggaeton.
“There’s starting to be a blurring of the lines, and I’d like to bring more mainstream people to the conference,” Cobo says. “It’s a vibrant, developing, growing genre. … Many people are unaware of what a big business Latin music is. It’s now part of the fabric of music in this country.”
She cites the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is of Puerto Rican descent, and more Latin music in films and TV shows — as well as online services such as VEVO, which regularly features Latin artists on its homepage.
“More than a musical phenomenon to me, I think it’s a demographic shift,” Cobo says. “Latinos make up such a large portion of the population, it’s impossible not to see the culture seeping in, and music, of course, is a big passion point.”
That passion can translate into big numbers. According to Comscore, an internet analytics and marketing data agency, iHeartRadio, an online radio service, reaches 38 million Hispanics, while Pandora, another online radio service, reaches 15 million Hispanics monthly.
Latin music is one of the music industry’s fastest growing segments,” Huppe says. “At SoundExchange we process royalties for digital radio services, many of which have reported a 25 percent increase in Latino listenership.” In 2015, SoundExchange paid approximately $56 million in royalties to Latino artists and copyright holders.
“It’s exciting, and we’re making an ever-growing effort to engage with our Latino constituency, there’s no doubt it’s an incredibly important segment.”
Your Editor Opines:
Sensitivity is a learned sense, and music a learned art. Those marrying them can make fortunes.
Let’s take our hats off, but not to ask for more.
