"The origins of `mambo' happened in 1937," Cachao said in a 2004 interview with The San Francisco Chronicle. "My brother and I were trying to add something new to our music and came up with a section that we called danzon mambo. It made an impact and stirred up people. At that time our music needed that type of enrichment."
The mambo was embraced early on and Cuban composers and jazz musicians have tweaked it over the years. It also influenced the development of salsa music.
In the 1950s, Cachao and his friends began popularizing the descarga ("discharge" in Spanish), a raucous jam session incorporating elements of jazz and Afro-Cuban musical approaches.
Cachao left Cuba in 1962, relocating first to Spain and soon afterward to New York, where he was hired to perform at the Palladium nightclub with the leading Latin bands.
He fell into obscurity during the 1980s after he moved to Miami, where he ended up playing in small clubs and at weddings.
But his career enjoyed a revival in the 1990s with the help of Garcia's documentary "Cachao ... Como Su Ritmo No Hay Dos" (Like His Rhythm There Is No Other) and the release of several albums, including the Grammy-winning album "Ahora Si!" in 2004.
In 2006, Cachao was honored at two Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts with the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra paying tribute to the Latin bass tradition. Cachao also led a mambo all-star band at a JVC Jazz Festival program at Carnegie Hall that year.
Cuban-born reed player and composer Paquito D'Rivera said Cachao made friends everywhere he went with his affable personality and good sense of humor. D'Rivera said he was working on a piece he had written for the multiple Grammy winner when he heard about the death.
"He was what a great musician should be. He represented what true versatility in music is all about," D'Rivera told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Cachao's wake was set for Wednesday, and his burial was set for Thursday, Albareda said.
Israel Cachao López, the Cuban bassist and composer who was a pioneer of the mambo, died on Saturday in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 89 and lived in Coral Gables.
Cachao, Mambo’s Inventor, Dies at 89
JON PARELES
The cause was complications resulting from kidney failure, said Nelson Albareda, whose company, Eventus, was his manager.
Cachao, as he was universally known, transformed the rhythm of Cuban music when he and his brother, the pianist and cellist Orestes López, extended and accelerated the final section of the stately Cuban danzón into the mambo. “My brother and I would say to each other, ‘Mambea, mambea ahí,’ which meant to add swing to that part,” he said in a 2006 interview with The Miami Herald. The springy mambo bass lines Cachao created in the late 1930’s — simultaneously driving and playful — became a foundation of modern Cuban music, of the salsa that grew out of it, and also of Latin-influenced rock ’n’ roll and rhythm-and-blues. For much of the 20th century, Cachao’s innovations set the world dancing.
In the late 1950’s, he brought another breakthrough to Latin music with descargas: late-night Havana jam sessions that merged Afro-Cuban rhythms, Cuban songs and the convolutions of jazz. The mixture of propulsion and exploration in those recordings has influenced salsa and jazz musicians ever since.
Cachao’s 80-year performing career dated back to the silent movie era. Born in Havana in 1918, he came from a family of musicians and studied classical music. He began his public career at 8 years old, playing bongos in a children’s group. A year later, he had stood on a crate to play bass for the Cuban pianist and singer, Bola de Nieve, accompanying silent films. At 13, he became the bassist of the Havana Philharmonic, and he performed with the orchestra from 1930 to 1960. But he also played Havana clubs with his brother Orestes, working with a noted Cuban dance orchestra, Arcaño y Sus Maravillas, and with their own groups.
“His phrasing and his attack and how he functioned in the orchestra was unique to Cachao,” the actor Andy Garcia, who reinvigorated Cachao’s career by producing albums and documentaries in the 1990’s, said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “He always played bass with the bow in his hand. He would go back and forth. And as he was strumming with his fingers, he always had the bow in his hand and the bow would strike the bass percussively.”
It has been estimated that the López brothers wrote thousands of songs. They worked in established Cuban forms, like the elegant charanga and danzón, while testing new ideas. In 1937, they came up with the first mambo. It was a failure. “It was too fast for dancing, and we were six months without any work,” Cachao told The Miami Herald in 1995. “People didn’t like it. When we slowed it down, then it became danceable.”
The original mambos were for the string ensembles that played dances at the time. But big-band leaders picked up the rhythm and applied it to more aggressive brass arrangements — notably Dámaso Pérez Prado, who popularized the mambo worldwide. During the 1950’s and 1960’s, the mambo filled dance floors at New York City’s famous Palladium club and nationwide. In Havana, Cachao gathered top Cuban musicians for jam sessions or descargas, and a handful of recordings by Cachao y Su Ritmo Caliente — beginning with an after-midnight studio session in Havana in 1957 — became cornerstones of salsa.
Cachao left Cuba in 1962. He spent two years in Spain, then came to New York City, where he performed with mambo bands led by Tito Rodríguez, José Fajardo and Eddie Palmieri. For decades, he worked almost entirely as a sideman. He moved to Las Vegas — where he lived until he became, he said, a compulsive gambler — and then to Miami. Cachao made only three albums as a leader between 1970 and 1990. In Miami, he played at clubs, bar mitzvahs and airport hotel lounges, although he hadn’t been forgotten. Mr. Garcia said, quoting the Cuban saxophonist Paquito d’Rivera, “All the people who needed to know who Cachao was, knew.”
In 1990, Mr. Garcia — a longtime fan of Cachao’s music — organized recording sessions with leading Cuban musicians and a tribute concert for Cachao in Miami. “Master Sessions Volume I” and “Master Sessions Volume II” were made in five days; Volume I won a Grammy Award. The concert was also the basis for a documentary, “Cachao, Como Su Ritmo No Hay Dos.”
Mr. Garcia went on to produce two more albums for Cachao, “Cuba Linda” (2000) and the Grammy-winning “Ahora Sí” (2004). Another documentary, “Cachao, Ahora Sí,” will be released next month. During one recording session, Mr. Garcia recalled, he suggested that Cachao write a descarga that started with a fugue. “He said, ‘Tell the musicians to go and take a break and bring me a sheet of paper and a pencil,’ ” Mr. Garcia recalled. Using a conga drum as a desk and whistling the melodies, Cachao wrote a four-part fugue during the break, and recorded it immediately.
With renewed recognition, Cachao spent the 1990’s and 2000’s touring and recording worldwide and collecting awards. He performed with younger admirers and with his Cuban contemporaries, including the pianist Bebo Valdés, joining Mr. Valdés on a Grammy-winning trio album “El Arte del Sabor.”
He received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Before he grew ill in early March, Cachao had planned a European tour and new recording sessions. His manager, Mr. Albareda, said that Cachao told him: “You’ve got years. I’ve got minutes.”
He is survived by a daughter, María Elena López and a grandson, Hector Luis Vega. Orestes López’s son, Orlando López, is nicknamed Cachaito, and has been the bassist with important Cuban groups including the Buena Vista Social Club.
1 comment:
I am a Jewish American. But for some reason my heart bleeds for the plight of
the Palestinians.
After 911, I did the opposite of what most Americans did, I think. I looked into
the reasons why the Muslim world generally does not like America. Most Americans
dismissed those reasons because of 911, I feel. I specifically focused in on how
zionist terrorists stole the land of the Palestinians in 1948, according to
Benny Morris, a zionist historian, and according to Ami Isseroff, a zionist for
peace.
When I found out how my Jewish brothers and sisters violated the ten
commandments in order to form the state of Israel, I was filled with an angry
justice that has not gone away or diminished.
Most Americans do not realize how Israel was formed. Perhaps most don't want to
know. And the US corporate media certainly doesn't want to tell them.
My suggestion to Muslim and Palestinian leaders is to try to give the American
people an education in this history whether they want to hear it or not. They
need to see the context behind those suicide bombers.
On the other hand, in the present times, since the wall was built, there have
been few suicide bombers against Israel, yet the Israelis continue to kill
Palestinians on a regular basis and they continue to build settlements on the
land they stole. These excesses by the Israelis certainly help the cause of a
Palestinian state and the cause of justice by turning some Americans against the
Israelis.
But I feel without the context of history most Americans will continue to be
ignorant and unsympathetic to the victims of this brutal, barbaric and immoral
theft.
Post a Comment