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Ray Barretto
By Harvey Pekar
JUNE 15, 1998:
Ray Barretto has not only witnessed momentous musical change
in his lifetime, he has been at the center of it. As a lifelong purveyor of Afro-Cuban
jazz, Barretto has been a pivotal figure in the fusion of jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms,
moving the musical hybrid toward the mainstream with his propulsive percussion work.
"Because I love and respect the genre of jazz, I want to make sure that whatever
we do has the language of jazz held in highest esteem," says Barretto, calling
from his native New York. "That differentiates us from most bands that come
under the 'Latin Jazz' category. We play jazz with me providing the Latin overtones
- the Latin air about it - but it's still something that caters to and respects jazz
at the highest level possible."
Born in New York in 1929 and raised in Spanish Harlem, Barretto was exposed to
his mother's Puerto Rican records early on, supplementing his childhood passions
with the swing bands of the day - Ellington, Basie, Goodman. This music had a major
impact on Barretto. "It helped me survive spiritually," he states.
At 17, Barretto joined the Army to get away from the poverty of the ghetto, and
it was there that he became aware of the bop revolution, partly through his association
with Belgian vibist Fats Sadi, who was working in Germany when Barretto was stationed
there. It was in 1947, then, that Barretto's world was turned inside out by a bop
record universally acclaimed for its groundbreaking sound: Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca,"
on which the trumpeter bop band joined forces with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo.
"That song blew my mind," says Barretto, never mincing words. "It
was the basis of my inspiration to become a professional musician."
Nevertheless, the blending of bop and Afro-Cuban styles had been in the making
for a while. In 1930, Louis Armstrong recorded a popular Cuban tune, "El Manisero."
Six months later, Cab Calloway cut "Doin' the Rhumba." At the same time,
in Havana, a classical woodwind prodigy, Mario Bauza, switched to trumpet and started
playing with top Cuban pop groups. Immigrating to the States, Bauza started playing
with big bands such as those of Chick Webb, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, and in
1939-40, Cab Calloway. Bauza became Calloway's musical director and during his stay,
Cab recorded Latin-influenced tunes such as "Goin' Conga" and "Rhapsody
in Rumba." Gillespie played in Cab's trumpet section with Bauza, and it was
there that the two had serious discussions about Cuban music.
In 1940, Bauza left Calloway's orchestra to form a band fronted by his brother-in-law,
vocalist Francisco Perez Gutierrez, better known as "Machito." Before long,
Machito's Afro-Cuban band became one of the best and most popular of its kind, Bauza
incorporating jazz elements into the group's arrangements.
Back in Havana, during the mid-Forties, tres (a guitar with three double strings)
player-composer Arsenio Rodriguez had started a revolution with his combo, which
employed complex rhythms and improvised solos by himself, pianists Ruben Gonzalez
or Lili Martinez, and trumpeters Felix Chappotin and Alfredo "Chocolate"
Armenteros. Cuban music and jazz began increasingly to resemble each other.
Gillespie remembered Cuban music after he'd established himself as a leader of
the bop movement, so it wasn't surprising that he hooked up with Pozo to record memorable
selections including "Cubana Be Cubana Bop" and "Manteca," or
that Machito employed bop stars such as Howard McGhee as soloists; Machito later
collaborated with Charlie Parker. The exciting product of this synthesis became known
as Afro-CuBop, and jazz has had a strong Latin influence ever since.
Barretto returned from the service in 1949, got some drums, and taught himself
to play by sitting in and "playing at every club, going to every jam session."
His skills as a percussionist advanced. He got a job working professionally with
Jose Curbelo, and stayed with him for four years. This was a relatively good period
for Latin musicians thanks to the pop craze for mambos and cha chas. Once Barretto
got into the loop, he remained there.
One night a few years later, a producer from Prestige, one of the major independent
jazz labels, heard Barretto playing in Harlem and was impressed enough to ask him
to appear on a recording session with Red Garland, who had established himself as
a highly influential pianist with Miles Davis in the mid-Fifties. Around then, it
was normal for a featured pianist to appear with a bassist and kit drummer; employing
a Latino percussionist was unusual, though Mary Lou Williams had done it in 1953.
Barretto, however, had developed a unique swing style that he used in jazz contexts,
and his work was very well received; so well, in fact, that he was soon recording
with a number of name jazz men, including Lou Donaldson, Gene Ammons, and Wes Montgomery.
Due to Barretto's influence, Latin percussionists appeared with increasing frequency
in jazz groups, particularly those with a funky style.
Barretto continued to work in the Latin field as well. Tito Puente, who'd just
lost Mongo Santamria to Cal Tjader's band, heard the percussionist and hired him
on the spot. "Tito said, 'Be at RCA studios tomorrow,'" recalls Barretto.
"I went in cold." His initial LP with Puente was the very popular Dance
Mania - not a bad way to break in.
By 1960, Barretto's work was much in demand. He'd practically become a house musician
for the Prestige, Blue Note, and Riverside labels, quite an achievement for a guy
who didn't start playing an instrument until he was almost 20. In the early Sixties,
the charanga became quite popular, so Riverside officials asked Barretto to
recruit musicians for a charanga session. Barretto countered by asking to
lead, which Riverside okayed, so he picked up musicians from the Charlie Palmieri
and Johnny Pacheco bands and made the date, his first as a leader.
At this time, New York became increasingly important as a center of Latin music.
Cuba and the U.S. had broken relations, so no one really knew what was happening
in the Havana music scene. émigrés in Florida weren't taking up much of
the slack, either. However, the hundreds of thousands of Latinos living in the New
York area had been developing a musical culture for decades, constantly enriching
it with ideas from the many genres they heard. Latin funk and Latin boogaloo were
popularized, for example, by Santamaria and Henry "Pucho" Brown.
After appearing on hundreds of recordings as a sideman, Barretto decided it was
time to do his own thing. After leading the aforementioned Riverside date, he decided
to become a leader on a permanent basis.
"Many great years of salsa followed," says Barretto. "Though [we
were] not always commercially successful, the level of music was generally good and
sometimes creative and great."
Before the decade had ended, Barretto had become a major figure in Latin music
and had cut over 50 albums as a leader, most in Latin styles. If you can find it,
a particularly rewarding Barretto album is Tommorow, a two-LP Atlantic recording
containing work by the great Cuban trumpeter Alejandro "El Negro" Vivar.
Vivar also appears on the currently available Barretto disc Carnaval on Fantasy.
Hopefully that label, which now owns the Riverside catalog, will be reissuing more
of Barretto's work.
References to music as an international language may be clichés, but they're
true. As far back as the Forties, Cuban bands used American musicians. Now, salsa
has spread throughout the world. It's played by French, Equatorial African, and Japanese
musicians. In all probability, it's become a permanent part of the international
pop music vocabulary. And now we appear to have gone full circle. It's illegal for
people in the U.S. to import recordings from Cuba, but the music of that nation has
been getting here indirectly on foreign labels such as World Circuit and Messidor,
and plenty is worth hearing. Producer Joe Boyd of Hannibal records, aware of the
exciting music scene there and fed up with the trade embargo, took matters into his
own hands in 1995. After meeting with Cuban trumpet star Jesus Alemany in London,
Boyd asked him to recruit an all-star Cuban band in Havana, then went there and recorded
it. The resulting CD, Cubanismo, received international acclaim, and Boyd
returned to Havana to cut two more.
Possibly because of Boyd's success, Nonesuch, in partnership with World Circuit,
recently issued three CDs cut in Havana, one produced by Ry Cooder. They feature
singers and instrumentalists who were in their prime in the Forties and Fifties,
no longer spring chickens but still capable of generating excitement. Cuban music
is returning to the States; even Jesse Helms may not be able to stop it.
Helms and his colleagues haven't been able to isolate Cuba from the rest of the
world. That has been demonstrated in the field of music, where Cuban artists have
been picking up American influences. The Cuban band Irakere contained some fine jazzmen,
including Paquito D'Rivera. Havana pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba is a brilliant artist
whose work with Charlie Haden and Joe Lovano indicates that he's mastered both straight-ahead
and avant-garde styles. The hybrid jazz/Afro-Cuban recordings made by Rubalcaba are
also impressive. He began in Havana and Barretto in New York, but they seem to have
arrived at similar musical conclusions.
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