Sound Liberation Front

Joe Cuba Reissue Party at LPR feat. Chico Mann and Boogaloo Assasins: An interview with Bobbito Garcia

Mar 3, 2010 News
Posted by Ezra

Words By Ezra Gale, Photos by Quoc Pham

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Last Wednesday, February 24th, the cavernous downtown basement space that holds Le Poisson Rouge shook with a party that recalled the best years of New York-based Latin music. A record release party for the reissue of Joe Cuba’s El Alcalde del Barrio: The Architect of the Nuyorican Sound, the night was jointly produced by Fania Records and Wax Poetics magazine and the Sound Liberation Front had the honor to be one of the event’s co-sponsors.

Wax Poetics is currently involved in helping to reissue a treasure trove of records from Latin music’s heyday of the 1960’s and 70’s-when salsa ruled radio airwaves and dance floors, much of it recorded in New York and released on Fania and several other smaller labels. Though much of this classic music fell into out-of-print obscurity over the last couple decades, Codigo Music has steadily bought the catalogs to many of the era’s classic record labels and now owns not just Fania but also smaller labels like Seeco, WestSide Latino, Discuba and others. The good news for music lovers is that Codigo has contracted WaxPoetics to catalog, remaster and essentially curate a series of forthcoming reissues that will reintroduce this irresistible music to the world.

The Poisson Rouge party was a coming out of sorts for the reissuing of many of these classic records that have been unavailable for so long, starting with the Joe Cuba release. Featuring the Boogaloo Assasins from Los Angeles – a tight, nine-piece Salsa group that rocked the dance floor with their take on the classic boogaloo sound of the late 60’s, and Chico Mann, whose electro-afrobeat was augmented for the night with samples of Joe Cuba’s music – the night was a perfect tribute to Joe Cuba, a conguero and bandleader who was one of the first Latin artists to mix Latin rhythms with funk and pop and gain wide popularity (his 1966 song “Bang Bang” was a massive hit and gave Cuba his nickname of ‘The Father of Latin Boogaloo’).

Manning the decks on Wednesday — along with DJ Turmix — was Bobbito García, a DJ, writer, entrepreneur and acknowledged authority on all sorts of urban culture for over two decades now. We talked to Bobbito after the party about Joe Cuba and his enduring legacy.

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SLF: So, how was the party?

Bobbito: The party was so much fun. I walked in there and immediately had a great feeling. That space, a lot of people don’t know, that’s the basement of the old Village Gate. I used to do a spoken word open mic, which is still running now at the Nuyorican Poets Café. We started that back in 1992 at the Village Gate, so I have a long history at 158 Bleecker st. So whenever I go down there I feel special. Rich Medina and I did our Happy Feet party there. So it’s a great space, great soundsystem, great staff, and you know, I’m not even talking about the party yet! I’m just talking about arriving there. So already I’m feeling good.

And then seeing Joe Cuba’s family there, seeing Sammy Ayala, a singer from Puerto Rico, Joe Bataan was there, Larry Harlow I saw outside, you know, cats were up in to support, and I thought that was lovely.

SLF: So for people who might not know, who was Joe Cuba?

Bobbito: Well, for people who might not know, Joe Cuba is an artist that used to be on a label called Seeco, basically he started recording with his own sextet in the late 1950’s early 60’s. And at that point in time, there was no term for salsa. So basically you had mambo, you had cha cha cha, you had boleros, you had guanguanco, you had all these different, beautiful Latin rhythms, which eventually got put under the term “Salsa.” You also had Pachanga, which was another popular rhythm in that time frame, to which Joe Cuba, really, he rocked with all of those, he was a very versatile artist, and towards the mid 60’s and the latter part of that decade, he was instrumental in developing the sound called boogaloo, which was the next Latin rhythm, with an emphasis on the one, which is a foundation for funk, which became a foundation for hip-hop.

Basically, he was using a sort of strategy that a lot of genres have used since, mixing Latin music with R and B music, and you know, he had a huge hit with “Bang Bang,” and it just really stamped that whole Nuyorican sound. For those who don’t know, Nuyoricans are Puerto Ricans born in New York, with strong ties to the island, but with sensibilities of the ‘rotten apple.’

He was also one of the first artists to have his singers perform in English, but with strong Latin rhythm behind it. He was really just a forward thinking dude, in a lot of ways. And his career endured, he kept making albums all the way into the 80’s, he kept on performing all the way to the 90’s. So I don’t think so much that there’s a Joe Cuba revival right now, insomuch that I can’t think of a time when his music was not relevant! In 1992 I had a DJ gig in Toronto, Canada and threw on “Bang Bang” in the middle of the set and the crowd just losing it! I think that’s testament to the fact that, as a conga player, bandleader, he just spent a lot of time with the music.

SLF: What do you think about Wax Poetics helping to reissue all of these Latin catalogs?

Bobbito: I think it’s natural. If one reads the publication, since day 1 it’s obvious that there is a care and concern and a depth to their approach towards music, I’ve often felt like each edition is not a magazine, but it’s a book, it’s a paperback book that comes out every two months. So I think it’s no surprise there that Fania would be insightful enough to partner with Wax Poetics to do these reissues, it works for everybody.

Really the way I look at it is it’s a great era of music and a great body of compositions, and they were huge back in the 70’s, but there’s a lot of it that is not being created so much in this day and age, so it’s a pleasure to try to attempt to continue the exposure of the sound.

SLF: Do you see new artists that are doing this sound?

Bobbito: Yeah sure, there’s a bunch. But they do it in their own way. You know, Boogaloo Assasins and Chico Mann are sort of obvious, because they performed at the party. I never heard Chico Mann or Boogaloo Assasins live, and was definitely delighted at some of their interpretations of the songs and the energy they had on stage.

I have a new label called Alala, which I’m just launching this month, it’s a very tiny indie label. There’s a lot of cats out there still making great music, it doesn’t necessarily get heard, it might not get the radio exposure, but that’s where my head is at, I love hearing and playing stuff like that.

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