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

Mar 3, 2010 News

Words By Ezra Gale, Photos by Quoc Pham

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.

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.

Tags: Alala, Bobbito, Bobbito Garcia, Boogaloo Assasins, Chico Mann, Codigo Music, DJ Turmix, Fania, Joe Bataan, Joe Cuba, Larry Harlow, Sammy Ayala, Wax Poetics

Beaterator: Rise of the Machines

Nov 20, 2009 News

It’s no news that technology has taken over many aspects of our lives. For the past week, I have been literally slave to a little device called “droid” which I compulsively check every ten seconds for a meaningful update to my virtual life.  I realize that we can now do a lot of things without the hassle and inconvenience of real human interactions. One of this things is making music and it’s behind the latest craze in music related video games such a Rock Band and DJ Hero.

Rockstar Games, the company behind the widely successful Grand Theft Auto franchise teamed up with Timbaland to create Beaterator, a mobile studio/beatmaker game geared toward music enthusiasts, aspiring producers and bedroom DJs.  Since they needed some music creds, Rockstar hired the ultimate music cred authority a.k.a Waxpoetics  to produce a series of short promo videos which resulted is this slick clip of Chico Mann using the game on a PSP. Coincidentally, the footage at the end of the video was taken during last saturday’s SLF Co sponsored Booty Crisis event.

With Droids and Beaterators infiltrating us,  it is now clear that the future of the human race is compromised.  We better start organizing the resistance…

If you’re not familiar with Chico’s infectious blend of electro afrobeat, I highly recommend checking out  his debut EP Manifest Tone vol.1 on kindred spirit records.

Tags: Afrobeat, Beaterator, Chico Mann, Video Games, Waxpoetics

Interview with Planet Rump at Booty Crisis, 11/14/09 – Brooklyn

Nov 19, 2009 Interview, Reviews

Interview and words by Linh Truong, Photos by Quoc Pham

Before the co-sponsored Sound Liberation Front event Booty Crisis at Public Assembly last Saturday, I got a chance to talk backstage with Planet Rump – the monthly party’s founders and resident booty shaker – about the Casio, breaking boxes (the metaphorical kind), and just getting down with your funky ass self.

SLF: How did Planet Rump come about?

Nasty Ness: We landed here on Earth.
Miss Strawberry: Crashed our spaceship.
DJ Tantric: It was an accident.
M: We’re from the Planet Rump, and we were going on a funky space odyssey, and then we ended up here. We were, like, what are we gonna do, we really gotta get back to Rump – it’s like the funkiest planet in the universe.
D: Then we saw there was a need for us.
M: We saw a lot of funky people, a lot more lame people, so we decided to bring the funk of the universe, channel it through our bodies…
N: Earth isn’t ready.
D: And it’s not about materialism, it’s not about something you need to have to bring the funk. It’s about harnessing the funk within you. You could be wearing some Tevas, you could be wearing some Keds, you could be wearing some Fruit of the Loom. It doesn’t matter because anyone can get funky with anything you want, and that’s how our music works.

SLF: Why Brooklyn?

N: Because this is where the trends begin.
M: And Brooklyn needs it the most. We got a lot of shoegazers here, a lot of too-cool-for-schoolers.
N: A lot of conformists.
D: A lot of people who just want to buy something to make them cool, but they don’t want to be cool on the inside.
M: But we know that this is the media platform of the world, and we just want to be at the center of it all. Get the message out there that love, peace, and funk are the only things you need.

SLF: Why use the Casio as your main instrument?

D: The Casio embodies pretty much the principle of you don’t need anything to be funky.
N: Keep it simple.
D: We play little baby toys from thirty years ago, and we can blow people’s minds away harder than someone with the most updated products of blah, blah, blah production. I mean, you don’t need to buy something to be funky.
N: You can be yourself.
D: And we’ve done a lot with those little toys.
M: That shit BOOMS!
(laughter)
D: And we work with some sound generation tools that don’t actually play notes. Like, we don’t even need notes. We don’t even need a scale or melody or whatever. Yeah, we do that a little bit, but creating bass tones generated out of some sort of nonsense…we’re playing in between the notes, and the sounds are cool. That’s what works with us.

SLF: How do you get the ideas behind your songs? What’s the creative process?

N: We take our real-life experiences from going out and being ourselves every day and just enjoying life. We take real-life scenarios, and we make it something tangible.
D: We don’t really stick to any genre or anything. We’re just playing music. And we can embody anything about anything by just playing music. You don’t have to pigeonhole yourself into a certain box. We try to play across all boundaries, and some of our songs embody a lot of different elements of other types of music.
N: Like, why be negative? Why not just make something positive out of everything? Just put it on display and build your self-esteem.

SLF: Is that the whole idea behind Booty Crisis?

N: Hell yeah!
M: Definitely.
D: Booty Crisis is, like, the boundless booty party where you can have anything, and we’re sort of exposing people to things that they were sleepin’ on. Whether it’s Chico Mann or Hiro Tha Jap or DJ A-Ko from upstate New York. There’s a bunch of people out there right now dancing to a DJ from upstate New York, and they don’t know it.

Tayisha Busay

SLF: What’s the process of choosing the acts in the lineup?

N: If we don’t like them, then they don’t play.
D: It’s group knowledge, but we’re all specialists in different ways. So, we get to combine our strengths – sort of like a big net – and bring in people. If we can agree on it, see what the benefit is, and how we can draw people together with our own scene, then that’s what we do.
N: And that’s the most important thing.
M: It’s gotta be fun. It’s gotta be positive. It’s gotta be boomin’. It’s gotta be danceable. Electronic is what’s hot right now, and we love that.
D: Enough with the diva entitlement thing. We just bring people who wanna bring the funk.
N: If I can’t rock out to it, then I’m not gonna book ‘em. That’s it.

SLF: What’s the act tonight that you’re the most excited for?

Planet Rump: (in unison) All of them!
M: They’re all amazing.
N: I’ve been to all of their parties, and they all blew my mind.
D: And if we’re lucky, they’re all gonna be friends at the end of the night. We got Latin- Cuban-Afrobeat music. We got Japanese dance music. We got Israeli, Brooklyn-based dance music. We got us. And everyone’s gonna love each other.

Chico Mann

SLF: So, it’s gonna be one big group hug afterwards?

N: Of course, it’s already one big group hug. Everyone here is a friend. There are no enemies here. It’s all love.

SLF: What are your plans for Planet Rump in the future?

N: Planet Rump is more than just a group – we’re an entity.
D: It’s a movement. So, we’re booking acts and getting momentum with that. We’re cutting an album right now. One of our guests Chico Mann is a good sounding board because he doesn’t live in anyone’s world or anyone’s box. He’s a good person to talk about a lot of things like that. We’re gonna keep moving in a different direction. Use some different elements of different music, and see where it takes us.
N: As long as we keep having fun.
D: Nothing less than sexy.
N: If we’re not having fun, how could anyone watching us be having fun?

Tags: Afrobeat, Booty Crisis, brooklyn, Chico Mann, Concert Review, Interview, Linh Truong, Planet Rump, Public Assembly, Quoc Pham, Williamsburg