CARIBE

VOL. VI, No. 3

• SPECIAL MUSK ISSUE

FALL 1982

• EXPRESSIONS '82
 PRESENTING
TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXPRESSMNS’82
A sophisticated international festival of seminars,
art exhibits, dances and music
From the Publisher

Letters
— Marta Moreno Vega

About This Issue

— Duane L. Jones, Editor

VARC's New Home

— David Jackson
2

4
A Tribute to Katherine Dunham 4

EXPWS0NES12
Is America Musical?
— Alain Locke 6

The Mighty Sparrow

— C.L.R. James 8

Mario Bauza: Profile of a Legend

— David Jackson 13
A celebration of cultural riches
from Expressions '82
(a) Program
Puerto Rico, Cuba, The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, (b) Program Notes
Trinidad, Brazil, Africa and the United States (c) Biographical Sketches of Artists and Panelists 16
Dance Music in the Fifties
—Robert Farris Thompson 24

-mKHBflB-
The Ebb and Flow of Be-bop: A Personal History
— Raymond McKethan 26

'82 Sunsplash Report

— David Jackson 28

Gallery of the Drums

— Roberto Borrell 30

Explore the history of your culture by attending these six free seminars:
OCTOBER 6/7 OCTOBER 13/14 OCTOBER 20/21
TRADITIONAL FORMS IN CONTEMPORARY ADMINISTRATIONS LIVING LEGENDS:
CONTEMPORARY EXPRESSIONS OF AFRICAN AESTHETIC THOUGHT Portraits
Location: AND PERCEPTIONS Location:
John Jay College Location: Fordham University
445 Wed 59th Street (10th Ave.) The American Museum of Natural History Lincoln Center at 66t Mh Street
Lecture HaB, first Floor (1355N) Central Park West and 79th Street Pope Auditorium
Kaufman Theater

A CELEBRATION OF AFRICA IN THE AMERICAS

A FESTIVAL OF DANCERS, DRUMMERS AND SINGERS
A RAINBOW OF CULTURES UNDER ONE SUN-October 8,9,15, & 16
SYMPHONY SPACE OCTOBER 9 AND BROADWAY OR OCTOBER 16
95thand BROADWAY SATURDAY, 8 PM
SATURDAY, 8 PM CALLCHARGIT AT
212/944-9300
OCTOBER 8 TRINIDAD'S UNITED STATES

FRIDAY, 8 PM THE MIGHTY SPARROW AND

THE TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
SPECIAL GROUP RATE FOR
THE TOP-PRICED SEAT $7!
MARIO BAUZA WITH
JAZZ-GREAT BILLY TAYLOR.
On the front cover
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC'S STEEL BAND CALL 212/427-8100
BALLET FOLKLORICO TICKETS: $15, $10
"Festa do Pilao de Oxala"
DOMINICANO PUERTO RICO'S
NEGRURA, INC. TOWN HAU AVAILABLE AT TOWN HAU (celebration of the mounting of Obatala)
HAITI’S 123 WEST 43rd STREET BOX OFFICE
LOUIS CELESTIN DOMINICAN REPUBUC'S 123 WEST 43rd STREET Plate 232 of "The Iconography of African
BALLET FOLKLORICO OFF BROADWAY OR
TABOU COMBO
DOMINICANO
OCTOBER 15 CALLCHARGIT AT Gods of Candomble in Bahia" by artist
MIRIAM DORISMEAND
PAULETTE ST. LOT
FRIDAY, 8 PM 212/944-9300 Carybe with text by Pierre Verger. Pub­
TICKETS: $12 and $8 BRAZIL'S
CUBA’S AVAILABLE AT THE ASTRUD GILBERTO lished by Fundacao Cultural do E. da
ROBERT BORRELL AND SYMPHONY SPACE BOX "The Girt from Ipanema"
SU KUBATA
OFFICE AT 95th STREET
and her Brazilian Ensemble Bahia, the Instituto do Livro, and the
LOREMILMACHADO
and his Afro-Brazilian Universidade Federal da Bahia.
Folkloric Dance Company
and hH Sarava Band

For More Information call (212) 427-8100

On the beck cover
"Instrumentos musicals do Candomble"
EXPRESSIONS ’82 IS A PRODUCTION OF THE VISUAL ARTS RESEARCH AND RESOURCE CENTER RELATING
TO THE CARIBBEAN (A PHELPS-STOKES FUND AFFILIATE PROGRAM)
(Musical instruments of Candomble) plate 18
ADDITIONAL FUNDING HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS. THE NEW YORK of Iconografia dos Deuses Africanos no Can­
STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS. THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS AND CHEMICAL BANK (FDIC).
THE TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO TOURIST BOARD domble da Bahia, by artist Carybe, text
Ml
Department of Culture of the Dominican Republic. Institute of Culture of Puerto Rico. Department of Pierre Verger.
Culture of Bahia. Brazil

PRESENTED,IN COOPERATION WITH .Con Through special arrangement with Brazilian

Edison Consulate, this book is on sale at our New
Caribbean Center at 408 Wes/ 58th Street.
 CflRIBE STAFF FROM THE PUBLISHER ABOUT THIS ISSUE LETTERS
We are sharing in this issue, for the first
publisher EXPRESSIONS '82 is a celebration of Africa in the Americas. This special issue of CARIBE serves a twofold purpose: it is a playbill and schedule of time, some of the many letters VARC has re­
Marta Moreno Vega events for Expressions '82 and it is also a tribute to the musical cultures of the African
Therefore, the primary objective of this festival is to continue to dissolve the false ceived over the last three years commenting
diaspora. Music, therefore, is at the thematic core of most of the material contained herein — on the work of our CENTER.
editor barriers which have unfortunately isolated many of us of African descent and have pre­
from Alain Locke's scholarly treatise to Raymond McKethan's personal and deliberately
Duane L. Jones vented our learning about each other. Taken together, all of the components of the festival
subjective history of the impact of music and dance in Harlem. Cartagena, November23, 1981
provide a spectrum of cultural expressions which illustrates how similar we are. The parang
associate editor of Trinidad is the parranda of Puerto Rico; the orisa of Cuba are the orisa of Brazil; the Expressions '82 affords audiences an invaluable opportunity to study and observe first DearMs. Morena Vega,
for this issue drums of the Dominican Republic are the drums of Africa. The circle is continuous — there is hand the impact and development of African music on the cultures of Haiti, Trinidad, the The First Annual Caribbean Music Festival
David Jackson no beginning and no end. Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and the United States. Few such oppor­ in Cartagena, Colombia is being organized
tunities exist anywhere else in the world. This issue is designed to enhance discussion, study with the purpose of integrating the diverse
This year in bringing representatives from Africa, Trinidad, Jamaica, the Dominican cultures of the Caribbean through music,
administrator and and further investigation of our singularly rich musical heritage; in it there also lies a plea
Republic, Puerto Rico, and Brazil to participate along with artists and scholars in New York, which we consider the universal language of
archivist for this issue that, even while appreciating and enjoying our music, we not continue to take this heritage
we are furthering our goal of establishing an African diasporic network. The participation of the area.
Laura G. Moreno quite so much for granted.
artists, scholars and religious leaders is vital to our understanding the full range of Black
cultures' In the Americas. In the past three years, the Visual Arts Research and .Resource I want to congratulate your pioneering
We are grateful to the writers and publishers for permission to reprint some of the his­
art director Center Relating to the Caribbean, producers of the festival, has through performances, con­ work in the creation of the Visual Arts Re­
toric articles we are able to offer our readers in this issue. Our special thanks to David
Vincente Morales ferences and exhibitions set before our audiences a reminder that as descendants of the search and Resource Center Relating to the
Jackson, publicist for Expressions '82 and associate editor for this issue.
African diaspora our artistic expressions, our journey from Africa, our African-based lifestyle Caribbean, and the Caribbean Expressions
typist are parallel. There are, of course, many variations present. However, the pervasiveness of As of October of this year, CARIBE can be purchased regularly at the International Festival.
Varney Sinii African thought and beliefs have continued almost intact, making our similarities even Museum Shop at our new home, The Caribbean Center, on West 58th Street. Some back Festival de Musica del Caribe
greater than we are aware. issues are still available. Cartagena, Colombia
staff photographer
Marco Kalisch The festival and all other programs of the Center focus on the significance, contributions The next issue of CARIBE will focus on the influence of African dance in the Americas
for which Ms. Joanne Robinson will serve as associate editor and Rex Nettleford, special edi­ Editor's Note: The following letter was re­
and impact people of color have had on the cultures of the world. These festivals serve as a ceived after a presentation by Felipe Luciano
Typesetting and vehicle for the bringing together of our experts, our legendary figures, our heroes. Our goal torial advisor. We hope that those of you who are not regular subscribers will find occasion
to stop by and pick up that issue at our new home in Midtown. and Marta Vega as part of VARC's prison
Printing by in so doing is to make accessible accurate, documented information which is primary to the program.
Patane Press development and establishment of cultural resources and systems which will promulgate the Finally, I would like to express my personal gratitude to our readers and supporters for
beliefs, traditions and cultures we as people of color represent. their many kind words of encouragement and praise for our new format as introduced in our November 23, 1981
exchange advertising last Retrospective issue. That we may continue to serve you even more splendidly in the Hole Hermana,
Pamela Zapata and The objective of the festival like the objective of our Center in general has been and will future is my constant goal as editor of this publication. J did want to ask you more about yourpub­
Duane Jones continue to be the bringing together of scholars, artists and traditional leaders to share with
lication Caribe. J find the information valu­
New York audiences the rich heritage, cultural traditions and aesthetic contributions we have Duane L. Jones
able and enlightening especially the real deal
made to the world. We will continue this objective in our newly acquired "home" on West Editor
with Santerismo and Boricuas. J couldn't get
58th Street.
it together in my head, why Puerto Ricans
Finally, I would like to express my personal appreciation to you our audiences. Clearly VARC BOARD EDITORIAL mix up the Orisa tradition so much with
without your continued support and involvement, our efforts would be incomplete. I look OF DIRECTORS ADVISORY BOARD Christianity and the like, f tend to embrace el
EDITORIAL POLICY forward to and rely on your participation in our activities throughout the year. Santerismo but as I learn more and more of
Franklin H. Williams Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte the Yoruba concert, J find f need the true
CARIBE is ea quarterly
. publication of the Visual Welcome to Expressions '82. Lawrence K. Chang Herschelle Challenor meaning, I pride myself in dealing with the
Arts Researchi and Resource Center Relating to the Joel Dreyfuss conga because I'm able to feel my African
Caribbean, (VARC) an affiliate of the Phelps- s-Stokes
Lowery Sims
Marta Moreno Vega Henry Frank blood rising, and it is manifested also in my
Fund. VARC, a non-profit corporation, is fir inanced Leandra Abbot
by government and foundation support, member­
Publisher Cliff Lashley poetry and drawings. There is a need for this
Miguel Rosario
ship dues, subscriptions, and corporate as well as Felipe Luciano (Caribe) type ofliterature espercially in here,
individual gifts. Hector J. Montes
Rex Nettleford because like Felipe said we are all very close
CARIBE is dedicated to the exploration of the Laura G. Moreno Lowery Sims
African Diaspora and the cultures of all of its Blacks and Caribenos/the mango does not
Marta M. Vega fall too far from the cocon ut tree.
descendants residing in the Americas, in the Carib-
bean, and around the world. We actively/ encourag- Gue te guide todas las Orisas
ed systematic scholarly investigation and original
research supportive of the concept of an African Paz y tranquilidad siempre mi Hermana
continuum in the New World; we solicicit papers and
articles which uncover, identify, and chronicle
Tito Lespier
African cultural retentior
sns; we consciously promote Queensboro Correctional Facility
critical, serious writing which
'
African presence in thes world.
■
positively affirms an
CARIBBEAN CULTURAL CENTER November 12, 1980
~ts in English are welcome
Unsolicited manuscripts
but cannot be returnedx unless u accompanied by a
DELGADU. HUEIiEL. P.C............... DearMs. Vega,
stamped,:.self-addressed envelope. All translations KUSH BUILDERS INC. The Volunteer Services office at Ossining
must be caccompanied by a copy of the text in the Correctional Facility and the inmate popula­
original languacige.jWriters are advised to adhere to MARTA IZDRENU VEfiA FRANKLIN H. WILLIAMS
the suggestionss of the MLA Handbook. Neither the tion sends its deepest appreciation and ap­
i
editors nor VARC can assume responsibility for AFFILIATE (IF THE PHELP STORES FUND plause to you for giving our facility your
damagei or loss of unsolicited manuscripts. Opi- positive participation.
nions texpressed in CARIBE are those of the in-
dividuclal writers and not necessarily of the Your kind participation ssists our office in
publisher, editor, or the Phelps-Stokes Fund. its unending struggle to change minds with
Subscription rates for CARIBE: $7.00 yearly and community participation, and positive pro­
$12.00 for two years within the United States; $10.00 grams for selfhelp and development.
yearly and $18.00 for two years for the United States
institutions; $14.00 yearly and $26.00 for two years Yours sincerely,
foreign individual; $17.00 yearly and $32.00 for two James McBride
years for foreign insitutions. Back issues are $3.00
per copy, available uponon request. Supervisor, Volunteer Services
All subscriptions and1 iiinquires should be address- Ossining Correctional Facility
ed to CARIBE, c/o VAF, iRC, 10 E. 87th Street, New
York,N.Y. 10028. Marta Moreno Vega (VARC), Richard Veneziano, Eric Soto and Miguel Rosario (Chemical Building Supervisor, Mike Haviken and VARC Executive Director, Marta Moreno Vega at the site of continuedyDn page 32 3
2 All rights reserved. Bank representatives) at the Chano Pozo Tribute, Town Hall - 1981 Photo: Marco Kalisch VARC's new home.
 THE CARIBBEAN CENTER:
OUR NEW HOME
The Visual Arts Research and Resource
Center Relating to the Caribbean, under the
Executive Directorship of Ms. Marta Moreno
Vega, has a new home at 408 West 58th
Street between 9th and 10th Avenue in mid­
town Manhattan, across from Roosevelt
Hospital. The five story brownstone — open­
ing officially on October 22, 1982, with an
exhibition on the modem dance pioneer
Katherine Dunham — will house the Center's
extensive collection of Caribbean cultural
resources, including photographs, slides,
books, video tapes and recordings. The new
building also provides much needed space
for expanded exhibitions, the Center's
library and audio-visual facilities, special
conference rooms, and the performing arts
programs such as Expressions '82 which
many have come to enjoy and anticipate dur­
ing the last six years of the organization's
existence.
"The building will be the crossroad of all
African culture in the Americas," Marta
Vega said. "There are millions of Carib-
beans, Latin Americans, and African-Amer­
icans who comprise a significant portion of
this country's population and who have been
contributors to the overall cultural life of
America. African retentions and continuities,
the linkage between these cultures of people
of color, are pervasive. It has been our posi­
tion that the impact of these retentions on
American civilization has not always been
properly recognized or valued. The building
THE NEW CARIBBEAN CENTER
_____ |
I 0
1. BASEMENT—to be used for storage, duplication, mailroom, and VARRCRC archives.
2. FIRSTFLOOR—willhouse the street level walk-in InternationalMuseum Shop and Exhibition Gallery.
3. SECOND FL OOR—a floor-through exhibition gallery.
4. THIRD FLOOR— will contain a reference libraryand visual arts resource center.
4 5. FOURTHFLOOR—administrative offices and conference room.
will make things a little easier in our efforts to
challenge conventional notions of history
and provide audiences with a wide range of
cultural activities highlighting the anesthetic
perceptions, creative expressions, and ideas
of people of color in the Americas and
Africa."
The exhibition "A Tribute to Katherine
Dunham: Pioneer of Modem Dance" will
take place on the 1st and 2nd floors of the
new 58th Street space. It features large blow­
up photographs of Katherine Dunham —
who founded a dance company in the 1930's
(while still a student of anthropology at the
University of Chicago) that made history
touring 57 countries on 6 continents — pro­
grams from performances in the 1930's and
'40's, costumes worn by Dunham in concert
and films, various African musical instru­
ments, and other Dunham memoribilia. "We
are very excited about this exhibit," Ms.
Vega recently said, "Katherine Dunham is
someone I have admired and been inspired
by for years. She exemplifies, like Arthur
Schomburg exemplified, those things that
the Center wishes to stress." The exhibition
will run through the end of November.
The building will feature an international
museum shop selling an impressive array of
folklore artifacts from the Caribbean, Latin
America, Africa, and the United States.
Books, recordings, post cards, T-shirts,
posters, magazines, and CARIBE will also be
on sale there. The move to the 58th Street
facility marks a crucial turning point in the
history of the Visual Arts Research and Re­
source Center Relating to the Caribbean.
TJ I_ I U I_ i
□
ft
— Drawing courtesyofDelgado/Huegel, P.C. Architects
KATHERINE DUNHAM
By David Jackson
With the rise of the modem dance in the
1940's black dancers found an artistic means
for free expression without betraying their
ethnic past. The earliest contributions came
with Katherine Dunham's theatricalizations
and Pearl Primus's dramatic visualizations of
spirituals. Katherine Dunham has for many
years been one of the leading exponents of
primal dance in the world of modem choreo­
graphy. She has used her training in anthro­
pology and her study of primitive rituals from
tropical cultures to create unique dance
forms which blend sensuous, stylized quanti­
ties with sophisticated Broadway stage set­
tings. Bom in Chicago on June 22, 1910,
Miss Dunham attended the University of Chi­
cago, where she majored in anthropology.
With the aid of a Rosenwald Fellowship, she
was able to visit the Caribbean and Brazil to
further her knowledge of the dances and reli­
gions of the African diaspora. During the past
30 years, many scholars and performing ar­
tists have pioneered black dance in the con­
cert field, mounting authentic African spec­
tacles and ceremonies for metropolitan au­
diences, but Katherine Dunham's sleek,
glossy, and pre-eminently "theatrical" pro­
ductions, such as her best known pieces
"Bhahiana" and "Burrell House", have made
her, along with Pearl Primus, one of the
towering figures in the world of modem
dance.
Pearl Primus and Katherine Dunham were
pioneers among black dancers in the United
I I
l’I«K (HAMS and wills
■
B
Portion of Katherine Dunham exhibition as it
appeared in Chicago
States. Though unlike each other in per­
sonality and technigue, they shared some
aspects of their careers. Both women were in
the Vanguard of "educational" dance,
academic dance studies in colleges and
universities. Both women based their ideas
dance ideas on anthoropological research,
and on the inspiration of African dance
movement and rhythms. Dunham, a sen­
suous personality, with a flowing style,
developed her own approach to movement,
incorporating African and Caribbean in­
fluences. She headed the well-known
Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts in
New York City for many years, and directed
the Performing Arts Training Center at
Southern Illinois University. Her school pro­
duced dancers and teachers who taught
primitive, Afro-Cuban, Haitian, and other
ethnic forms. Perhaps the best-known
teacher was Syvilla Fort, who continued to
be an influence for many years. In her class
the drummers would set up a rhythm, and a
step was done across the floor with
movements in the shoulders, hips, pelvis. The
tempo would build to a near-frenzied pitch,
sending the dancers into flying leaps across
the room.
Alvin Ailey saw Katherine Dunham's
"Tropical Revue" in 1945 at the Biltmore
Theatre in Los Angeles, .and was fascinated
as much by the costumes as the dancing.
Ailey was persuaded by a friend soom after
to take class from a Dunham company
dancer, Thelma Robinson. Miss Robinson
taught the classes in a nightclub and Ailey
was "put off," he says, by the sleazy nightclub
atmosphere and even moreso by what he
called "all that hip-shaking." But the 20th An­
niversary Gala program for the Ailey com­
pany, for which the "old" and the "new" Ailey
dancers performed, was dedicated to Kath­
erine Dunham, Pearl Primus, and Beryl
McBurnie. Ailey was persisting in his intent to
preserve what he considered to be the heri­
tage of black dancers and of modem dancers
in America. The Dunham technique is still
taught at the Alvin Ailey American Dance
Center and at the Clark Center for the Per­
forming Arts.
Katherine Dunham made an invaluable
contribution to the American dance theatre,
and not a little of the influence she exerted
was through her own beautiful person. In the
1940s, Miss Dunham and her Dunham Dan­
cers appeared in films like Carnival in
Rhythm, Warners, a short on her and the
company, and Stormy Weather, 20th-
Century Fox, and Cabin in the Sky, with
Lena Home, Cab Calloway, Louis Arm­
strong, and others. She did the choreo­
graphy for Cabin. She later toured the U.S.
with her dance group and, after the war, also
played to enthusiastic audiences in Europe.
Eartha Kitt was chosen to join the first troupe
that toured the U.S., and soon became Dun­
ham's vocalist. After a European tour with the
troupe, she decided to stay in Paris, France,
and made her nightclub debut there. The
great artist Talley Beatty was one of the nine
dancers in Katherine Dunham's original
troupe. (Beatty's masterwork, The Road of
the Phoebe Snow, is a splendid example of
continuity and change in American dance,
and of Afro-American adaptation.) Miss
Dunham appeared on Broadway, choreo­
graphed "Aida'' for the New York
Metropolitan Opera in 1963, and in 1966
was asked by the President of Senegal to
train that country's dancers for the First
World Festival of Negro Art. The paper she
read to the colloquium on that occasin
displays great sensitivity to the problem of
choreographing ethnic dances without fur­
thering stereotypes. Dunham has long been
aware that to the uninformed of casual
onlooker, African dance as performed in a
non-theatrical setting may look manifestly
primitive and repetitious. But, being an an­
thropologist, she was interested not so much
in ho w as why blacks dance as they did.
A collage of memorabilia from Katherine Dunham's illustrious career from the Chicago exhibition
.... Chicago Public Library
There were no anthropologists among
Afro-American intellectuals until the 1920's
when two pioneers emerged—Caroline
Bond Day and Zora Neale Hurston. The
number increased during the next decade.
Zora Neale Hurston's career brings to mind
that of Katherine Dunham who took a
master's degree in anthropology at the
University if Chicago about ten years after
Zora first began to study with Franz Boas at
Barnard. As a student, Dunham was also in­
terested in literature, music, art and folklore.
As part of her work in Chicago, she and an
Asian student carried out a study of the
Moors, the Islamic predecessors of the Black
Muslims in the Chicago black community.
But her heart was in the dance. With her
Rosenwald grant she went to Haiti to gather
data that could be used eventually in a doc­
toral dissertation. She ended up, instead,
organizing her dance troupe.
Katherine Dunham's autobiography,
Touch of Innocence (1959) are the travel
notes of a truly remarkable woman who
found more than her share of pure
Africanisms as an anthropologist. It's also the
story of a dancer, director, producer,
author, choreographer. She knew how to
"entertain" while shaping the intellectual
orientations of people interested in inter-
cultural education. She and Pearl Primus
have gained permanent recognition and
respect for their pioneering work, and their
compeers. Dunham's dances are a part of
Ailey's repertoire, along with those of
George Faison, Dianne McIntyre, Eleo
Pomare, Talley Beatty, and others. Katherine
Dunham is a different kind of lady, a natural
aristocrat, who explored the multiple in­
telligences of the World, and brought the
jungle, as it were, into its own. With her own
ritualistic touches, making it appear to be one
of the most natural fertile areas of the world.
5

. . . All over the New World there are still examples ofpure
African traditions that have survived three hundred years of
slavery and four hundred years of removal from their source.
"Africanisms" are stillpart of the lives ofNegroes throughout the
New World, in varying degrees, in places like Haiti, Brazil,
Cuba, Guiana. Of course, attitudes and customs of the non-
continental Negroes were lost or assumed other less apparent
forms, but still the amount ofpure Africanisms that have been re­
tained is amazing.
LeRoi Jones
from "Blues People"
William Morrow and Co., 1963
Editor's Note: Edited to article form, the The best explanation is that early America
following are select excerpts from Alain was mostly Anglo-Saxon (more so even than
Locke's definitive and prophetic work first present-day America)—and that meant a
published in 1936 "THE NEGRO AND HIS weak musical heritage, a very plain musical
MUSIC" taste, and a puritan bias against music as a
child of sin the the devil, dangerous to work,
IS AMERICA MUSICAL? seriousness and moral restraint. So, early
America could only open its throat in church
by Alain Locke
in praise of God; in the daily routine of life,
America is a great music consumer, but she hummed or whistled simple ditties or
not as yet a great music producer. Music chewed and kept silent.
spreads over the whole surface of American There was open and obvious joy in music
life, but there are few deep well-springs of
only where the French and Spanish influence
native music as in the folk music of many
touched American life as in Louisiana and
other countries. Negro music is the closest
Southern California, or later where German
approach America has to a folk music, and so
immigrants with their traditional back-
Negro music is almost as important for the
. ground_ of music settled in considerable
musical culture of America as it is for the
numbers. The beginning of American opera
spiritual life of the Negro.
were at New Orleans and the beginnings of
If we ask ourselves why America is not a our great orchestras and their cultivation of
musical nation, we find that it is because serious classical music are to be traced in
America is not a singing nation. Early col­ most instances to German influences. It is
onial America was tuneful only in church, doubtful if America would have produced
and then in a way neither spontaneous nor
much great or original music without these
original. This was not due to the hardships of minority influences.
the colonial settlers and pioneers, for the peo­ America's Folk Music
ple who had the most hardships in If American civilization had absorbed in­
America,—the Negroes, turned out to be the stead of exterminating the American Indian,
songsters of the western world. If the rigors of his music would be the folk music of this
the climate were responsible, we could never country. It could have been, for it was a
explain the Russians, with their great passion music very noble and simple, full of the spirit
6 and ability for music.
of the wind, woods and waters; as serious
and not rest content with being musical by
nature. They must build up two things essen­
tial for the highest musical success;—a class
of trained musicians who know and love the
folk music and are able to develop it into
great classical music, and a class of trained
music lovers who will support by apprecia­
tion the best in the Negro's musical heritage
and not allow it to be prostituted by the
vaudeville state of Tin Pan Alley, or to be cut
off at its folk roots by lack of appreciation of
its humble but gifted peasant creators.
Our music should not be at the mercy of a
popular fad, which may die down at any
time, or be exploited, or even developed
most seriously by other than Negro musi­
cians. Of course, it is a common possession, a
gift that we would not take back even if we
could. The use to which the white musician
has but Negro music, especially of late, when
the most serious musicians of the land have
been cultivating it, is a tribute as welcome as
it is deserved.
But the final exponent of Negro music
should be the Negro himself. Today it is ad­
mitted that he is, so far as the execution or
performance of this music is concerned; but
it is doubtful whether the Negro has yet be­
come an undisputed master in the creative
composition of music based on his native
racial idiom and tradition. So Negro music
today needs some bitter tonic of criticism as
well as its sweet mead of praise.
One of the handicaps of Negro music to­
day is that it is too popular. It is tarnished with
commercialism and the dust of the market­
place. The very musicians who know the folk­
ways of Negro music are the very ones who
are in commercial slavery to the Shylocks of
Tin Pan Alley, in artistic bondage to the
American musicans have discovered too late
ready cash of our dance-halls and the
to preserve it in any great way.
vaudeville stage. They have no time for com­
It fell to the lot of the Negro, whom slavery
position of a serious kind, and little chance to
domesticated, to furnish our most original
study great music for inspiration.
and influential folk music, and because of its
On the other hand, our musicians with for­
contagious spread and popularity, to lay the
foundation for native American music. Cer­ mal training are cut off from the people and
tainly for the last fifty years, the Negro has the vital roots of folk music, and live uncrea-
been the main source of America's popular tively in the cloisters of the conservatories,
many of them under the palling taboos of
music, and promises, as we shall see, to
music "respectability." Only lately have
become one of the main sources of America's
some of them learned to openly study and
serious or classical music, at least that part
admire the folk music sources of what is most
which strives to be natively American and
original and promising in Negro music. . . .
not derivative of European types of music.
So while we look at the past of Negro
Certain strains of folk music,—Irish and
music, creditable and interesting as it is, we
Old English, have lingered in our mountain
must have constantly in mind its future, if it is
country and the backwoods, and are still im­
to realize its promise and successfully com­
portant as musical sources. But the Negro's
pete for the honor of being the basis of the
music has gradually swept the field. In doing
great national music that America will some
this, it has overcome a double handicap, for
day produce.
both music and the Negro were generally
Jazz and the Modern Spirit.—
despised. America did not become song­
For better or worse, jazz is, however, the
conscious until the age of Stephen Foster,
spiritial child of this age. Phases of it will
who was the Joel Chandler Harris of Negro
disappear with the particular phase of civili­
music, breaking its dialect bonds and
zation which gave birth to it; but some per­
smoothing it out palatably for the general
manent contributions to music and art will
American ear.
have been made. More than that, jazz will al­
How Musical is the Negro?
ways be an important factor in interpreting
But the Negro is American as well as
the subtle spirit of our time, more so after it
Negro. He has his musical short comings. If
has passed into history. One naturally won­
Negro music is to fulfill its best possibilities,
ders, why it is that jazz has become so charac­
Negroes must become musical by nurture
teristic an expression of the modem spirit.
There are many interpretations; each per­
haps with its share of the truth. George An-
theil, himself an important modernistic com­
poser, stresses jazz as a gift of "primitive joy
and vigor." "Negro music," he says, "ap­
peared suddenly (in Europe) after the great­
est war of all time ... it came upon a bank­
rupt spirituality. To have continued with
Slavic mysticism (Russian music was the
great vogue when the World War broke out),
would in 1918 have inducedc us all to com­
mit suicide. We needed the roar of the lion to
remind us that life had been going on for a
long while and would probably go on a while
longer. Weak, miserable and anaemic, we
needed the stalwart shoulders of a younger
race to hold the cart awhile till we had gotten
the wheel back on. . . . The Negro taught us
to put our noses to the ground, to follow the
scent, to come back to the elementary princi­
ples of self-preservation."
Then, there is the theory of emotional
escape, seemingly contradicting this first
theory of emotional rejuvenation. Jazz,
according to these theorists, was a marvelous
antidote to Twentieth Century boredom and
nervous exhaustion, a subtle combination of
narcotic and stimulant; opium for the mind, a
tonic for the feelings and instincts echoing the
quick nervous tempo and pace of the hectic
civilization of ours, which had originally
caused that neurasthenia and disillusion­
ment. It would be a curious fact if jazz really
was a cultural anti-toxin, working against the
most morbid symptoms of the very disease of
which it itself was a by-product. Many com­
petent observers think it is.
In some important way, jazz has become
diluted and tinctured with modernism.
Otherwise, as purely a Negro dialect of emo­
tion, it could not have become the dominant
recreational vogue of our time, even to date,
the most prolonged fad on record. More
importantly, jazz in its more serious form, has
also become the characteristic musical
speech of the modern age.
Beginning as the primitive rhythms of the
Congo, taking on the American Negro's
emotional revolt against the hardships and
shackles of his life, jazz became more than the
Negro's desperate antidote cure for sorrow.
It incorporated th typical American restless­
ness and unconventionality, embodied its
revolt against the drabness of commonplace
life, put pagan force behind the revolt against
Puritan restraint, and finally became the
Western World's life-saving flight from
boredom and over-sophistication to the
refuge of elemental emotion and primitive
vigor.
This is the credit side of the jazz ledger,
against which the debit side we have already
mentioned must be balanced, according to
one's judgment and temperament and taste.
Both detractors and enthusiasts must admit
the power and widespread influence of jazz.
It is now part Negro, part American, part
modem; a whole period of modern civiliza­
tion may ultimately be best known and un­
derstood as "The Jazz Age."
"Well-Watered Roots."
Can anything more be done with the folk
music than merely to preserve it? It seems
that there can. We forget that the roots divide
as they go deeper. While one strand of our
musical heritage leads us back to the planta­
tion and the delta and the few surving folk­
lore deposits of the South, another strand
leads to the Negro elements in the West In­
dies and Central America and still another to
the common tap-root source in Africa.
Nothing more important could have been
undertaken than the research project, since
discontinued regrettably, of the African mu­
sician, Ballanta Taylor, who after study of the
spirituals at St. Helena Island off the Carolina
Coast then went back to his native West
Coast Africa to hunt for similarities with the
tribal folk music there. He found differences,
of course, but also some vital similarities. The
Negro musician of the future must study
African music, and perhaps African culture
generally. . . . Then, too, nearer home there
are those rich fields of West Indian native
music—and a flourishing school of Afro-
Cuban and Brazilian composers fully aware
of the possibilities of a new Negro music.
The Afro-Cuban Composers
In the last few years there has developed a
brilliant school of composers, . . . who have
been using native antillian and African ele­
ments in their music. Though some come
from Mexico, Central America and Brazil,
they are known as the "Afro-Cuban School."
Much is to be expected especially of those
young geniuses of this group,—Amateo Rol­
dan and Garcia Caturla. Caturla says: "The
so-called Afro-Cuban native music is our
most original type of folk song and is a mix­
ture of African primitive music with early
Spanish influences. It employs many percus­
sion instruments which have been developed
in Cuba and are to be found nowhere else in
the New World, although they have their
origin in primitive African instruments." . . .
"But indigenous instruments," he continues,
"both melodic and percussion, should not be
used to obtain an easy local color, but with
the purpose of widening their significance
beyond the national boundaries.
In fact the serious music of Central and
South America, but particularly Cuba, Mex­
ico, Haiti and Brazil, are saturated with Afri­
can idioms and survivals, which only need
further study to stimulate and nourish the
Negro elements in the North American
musical tradition. In this connection, then, the
Negro contribution to American music be­
comes doubly significant and may in time be­
come doubly effective.
One great advantage resides in these new
idioms. They are more strongly racial and
are free of the cultural distortions of the
plantation tradition; that is,, they have no
minstrel taint. A healthier primitivism and a
more dignified tradition are valuable today
when we are trying to develop the deeper
possibilities of our music. Fortunately this
trek back to the African sources has struck
the American Negro composer and the
American stage. 7

Thv Mighty Sparrow
by C.L.R. James
The Mighty Sparrow, legendary poet of the people
Photo: Marco Kalisch
[Tames has this to say of Sparrow: "I found
Sparrow the most alert and the most intelli­
gentperson 1 met in the Caribbean. He had a
great mastery of West Indian speech, and as
for his music—I thought it was remarkable. I
used to talk with him, and I even used to go
and hear him record. . . . We were very
friendly. I said once that they should have
asked sparrow to write the national anthem
that Trinidad was going to have. He would
have written a proper national anthem, in
words and music. ... '1
A native West Indian talent. Bom and bred in
the West indies and nourished by the West
Indies. What he lacks is what we lack, and if
we see that he gets it, the whole nation will
move forward with him: Francisco Slinger,
otherwise known as the Mighty Sparrow the
most remarkable man I have met during four
year in the West Indies.
Sparrow is a Grenadian who lived as a
youth in Grenada. Obviously he was bom
with an exceptional gift for music, for words
and for social observation. If he had gone to
America he would have sung (and compos­
ed) American songs, like Brook Benton, Ben
E. King, Sam Cooke and many others. Not
one of them, not one, surpasses him in any­
thing that he does. He came to Trinidad and
found in Trinidad a medium, the calypso, in
which his talents could have full play.
Where have we won creative national dis­
tinction in the past? In two spheres only, the
writing of fiction, and cricket. Cricketers and
novelists have added a new dimension, but to
already established international organi­
sations. Not so the Mighty Sparrow, and here
he is indeed mighty. His talents were shaped
g by a West Indian medium; through this
medium he expanded his capacities and the
medium itself. He is financially maintained by
the West Indian people who buy his records.
The mass of people give him all the en­
couragement that an artist needs. Although
the calypso is Trinidadian, Sparrow is hailed
in all the islands and spontaneously
acknowledged as a representative West In­
dian. Thus he is in every way a genuinely
West Indian artist, the first and only one that I
know. He is a living proof that there is a West
Indian nation.
I do not propose any critical review of his
music. This is work for a trained musician.
There is only one quality which I wish to
elaborate here.
In the famous "Jean and Dinah", Sparrow
immortalises the attitude of the ordinary peo­
ple to the Americans at the base:
It's the glamour boys again
We are going to rule Port-of-Spain
No more Yankees to spoil the fete. . . .
If that is not a political statement, then, after
thirty years of it. I don't know what politics is.
He relates how the Yankee dollars have
brought some ancient performers once more
into the ring, and then:
But leave them alone, don't get in a rage
When a Yankee drunk he don't study
age
For Whether she is twenty-four, twenty-
five or eighty
I am sure it would not interest a drunken
Yankee
For when you drink Barbados nectar
is doesn't matter How old she is
As long as the Yankee get what is his.
Sparrow is uninhibited about what he sees.
He doesn't get in a rage. But he views the
world with a large detachment. His irony and
wit are the evidence.
In strict politics he shows an extraordinary
sensitivity to public moods, with the same
ironical detachment; this time, however, not
merely as an observer but as one of the peo­
ple. He begins by rejoicing at the victory of
Dr. Williams in 1956:
For we have a champion leader
William the Conqueror.
But he believes that the victory of the PNM
has raised the taxi fares and the price of milk.
He sings "No, Doctor, No". He philosophises
on the curious behaviour of politicians in
general but this verse was omitted in a later
edition, so I shall leave it where it is. How­
ever, he says that he still supports PNM
though he will see how things go: he has in re­
serve his piece of mango wood.
Then follows his superb "You Can't Get
Away from the Tax". He tells the public that
they must accept. He expresses popular re­
sentment at "Pay As You Earn", but in the end
his father sells the revolutionary axe to pay
the income tax. Despite the pervading irony
he is performing a public service. He is mak­
ing the unpleasant palatable with with and
humour.
Then Sparrow expresses perfectly the at­
titude of the ordinary man to PNM in 1959:
Leave the damn Doctor
He ain't trouble all you
Leave the damn Doctor
What he do he well do.
Not too long ago, Sparrow becomes
aware that things are not going well. He
blames the Opposition. What is notable is his
sense of the political confusion in the country:
The island as you see
Suffering politically
Because the present Government
Have some stupid opponent
Oh, Lord, man, they ignorant . . .
Causing they own self embarrassment.
I believe here he faithfully reports public sen­
timent. Things are in a mess and the reason is
that the Opposition are objecting to
everything.
Finally there is his magnificent "Federa­
tion" calypso, a triumph. I was in the tent the
night he returned and first sang it. When it
became clear what he was saying, the audi­
ence froze. Trinidad had broken with the
Federation. Nobody was saying anything
and the people did not know what to think, far
less what to say. At the end of the last verse on
that first night Sparrow saw that something
was wrong and he added loudly: "I agree
with the Doctor". But the people of Trinidad
and Tobago only wanted a lead. Sparrow di­
vined their mood, for henceforth he became
increasingly bold and free. When he sang at
the Savannah he put all he had into it and the
public made a great demonstration. They
wanted, how they wanted somebody to say
something, and Sparrow said something. He
attacked Jamaica and Jamaica deserved to
be attacked. But Sparrow said what people
wanted to hear. "We failed miserably."
He went further:
Federation boil down to simply this
It's dog-eat-dog, and survival of the
fittest.
The scorn, the disappointment he poured in­
to those words did for the whole population,
what it wanted done and could not do for
itself. The response of the public was greater
than anything I have ever heard in the West
Indies.
But Sparrow is a very clever man. Note the
insoluble ambiguity of the last verse. He was
singing before a Trinidad audience for whom
a political position on federation had been
taken.
Some may say we shouldn't help part it
But is Jamaica what start it.
There he introduces the all-important
question: was Trinidad right to leave, and he
says that after all it was Jamaica which started
this leaving business. He does not comment
himself, but he has registered that some Trini-
dad people are against Trinidad leaving.
Now comes a masterpiece of political state­
ment.
Federation boil down to simply this
It's dog-eat-dog, and survival of the
fittest
Everybody going for independence
Singularly
Trinidad for instance
And we'll get it too, boy, don't bother
But I find we should all be together
Not separated as we are
Because of Jamaica
What does this verse mean? I have asked a
score of people and nobody can say for cer­
tain. Let us look at it. The dog-eat-dog in­
cludes everybody, and is savage enough.
Then the lines which say that everybody is
"going for independence Singularly Trini­
dad for instance", can be related to dog-eat-
dog. But he says quickly that we in Trinidad
will get it. Which does not modify the ferocity
of dog-eat-dog by a single comma. But
Trinidad will get it. There must be no doubt
about that so he puts in an encouraging
"don't bother". Then comes the mysterious
But I find we should all be together
Not separated as we are
Because of Jamaica.
I can mean "I think we should all, all of us in
the British West Indies, be together, and not
separated as we are because Jamaica left us".
But it could easily mean, “I think that we who
remain behind should all be together and not
be separated as we are because Jamaica
left".
What do I think? I think first that politically
the statement is a masterpiece. But I can go a
little further. I cannot ignore the savage con­
tempt of dog-eat-dog, and I find the musical
tone of "Everybody going for indepen-
dence/Singularly/Trinidad for instance" very
revealing. If Sparrow liked that move
politically, or if he thought that his public lik­
ed it, he would have written and sung dif­
ferently. There I have to leave it.
There is more to Sparrow, much more.
There is that comic episode of the Governor
who was crazy, and changed the law for a
lady, the lady in the short little shorts. There is
the same amused and ironical detachment as
when he is describing the social tastes of the
Yankees.
At times he explodes. In "Leave the Damn
Doctor", there suddenly stands out this verse:
They makin' so much confusion
'Bout race riot in England
They should kick them from Scotland
Yard
We have the same question in Trinidad
That can mean a lot of things.
Then comes this skilful and ferocious verse:
Well, the way how things shapin' up
All this nigger business' go' stop
I tell you soon in the West Indies would spring only from a feeling that similar
It's please Mr. Nigger please. sentiments were rife among the younger
generation". Hed reflected a second and
The ways of an artist are his own. You can then said, "I see what you mean." And I had
only judge by the result. I once told him that I no doubt that he saw exactly what I meant:
thought his "Gunslingers" was a picture of that an artist draws or paints single episode
violent and rebellious sentiments simmering which he sees in front of him, but that he has
in the younger generation. He said he didn't chosen it or shapes it from pervading senti­
think of it that way. Everybody was going ments of which he is not necessarily con­
around saying, “Make your play" and on that scious.
he built up the whole. This is an old problem. Another more pointed instance of his atti­
I told him: “I ac cept what you say. But that tudes is his calypso on the marriage of Prin­
would not alter the fact that such a calypso cess Margaret. It is most brilliantly done and
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 for comic verse this one stands high on my make a fuss about it. What to my surprise I
list: discovered in Jamaica among the ordinary
people was a deep regard for the British
Long ago in England Royal Family, combined with nationalism.
You couldn't tough the princess' hand How widespread that is among the ordinary
Unless, well, you able people in Trinidad I do not know, but Spar­
Like the Knights of the Round Table row's song on the marriage was the song of a
If you want she real bad man whose inner conceptions of royalty had
You had to beat Ivanhoe or Sir Galahad received a violent shock.
Mount your horse with your spear in For a young man he shows an exceptional
hand maturity and detachment in the way he views
Who remain alive that's the princess' the life around him. As he grows older he can
man. become a guide, philosopher and friend to
the public. Some of his songs are very im­
Again: proper, but the West Indian audience takes
them in its stride, and I could mention some
Some people real lucky world-famous novelists who excel Sparrow
Take for instance Anthony in impropriety. But what attracts and holds
me is his social and political sense, and his
And again: independence and fearlessness. Such men
are rare. At critical moments he can say, to
If the Princess like you the people or on their behalf, what should be
Boy, you ain't have a thing to do. said. Will Rogers was such a one in the
United States. But I am afraid for Sparrow,
That single word, "Boy", is loaded. mortally afraid. Such a man should be left
alone to sing what he likes when he likes; he
And here in my view is an example of the should be encouraged to do so. But West In­
real social value of Sparrow. I didn't know dian governments help those who praise
what he was getting at until after conversa­ them and can be as savage and vicious as
tions in Jamaica with ordinary citizens. Now I snakes to those who are not helping them to
have been a republican since I was eight win the next election.
years old. An Englishman, William Make­ I used to listen to Sparrow before I came
peace Thackeray, taught it to me. But the here and was very much impressed with his
British people respect and some even love records. As soon as I saw and heard him in
the Royal Family, and we revolutionists don't person, felt his enormous vitality and
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gathered some facts about him I recognised
that here was a man who comes once in fifty
years. In November 1959 I was invited to
speak at UCWI on "The Artist in the Carib­
bean". I want to refer to how I approach the
question. I spoke of art in general through the
ages of Cezanne, of Shakespeare, of Michel­
angelo; of the Greek city-state, of the cities of
the Middle Ages. I made it clear that while I
spoke about Cezanne and Michelangelo,
historical figures. I was not going to express
any opinions about West Indian painters
because I have no qualification for doing so.
Then I moved straight to Beryl McBurnie
and Sparrow, West Indian artists playing for
West Indian audiences. To that university
audience, after a passage on our novelists
and the need to get them home, I said finally:
"When our local artists can evoke the
popular response of a Sparrow, the artist in
the Caribbean will have arrived."
Everything that I really think about the
West Indies, not only its art, is contained in
that lecture and particularly in that sentence.
Sparrow has it in him to go much further
and take the West Indian nation with him. He
is fully able to carry a full-length West indian
show first all over the West Indies and then to
London and New York. He could write most
of it, words and music. Of that I am ab solute-
ly confident. And if he were to spend some
time in England his satirical eye would not fail
to add to the gaiety of nations. But that
undertaking is not one to be lightly embark­
ed upon. And I am yet to find any educated
A litical circles (in Ghana among the people
♦ too( than these two West Indians, Marcus
Visual Arts Educational Programs
Association of Hispanic Arts, Inc. 200 East 87tti Street New York, N.Y. 10028
West Indians in the West Indies who are edu­
cated enough to put their education at the
disposal of the Mighty Sparrow. At any rate
Sparrow knows those who do not like him
and when he sings he doesn't mince words
about. He knows that "they" will do
"anything". He sticks to the people. Let us
hope that, difficult as it may become, he will
continue to be vox populi.
Note for 1962
I will go fully into it and devil take the hind­
most.
There is much more to Sparrow than I
have said above. Prejudice is eating away at
the vitals of West Indian progress, race preju­
dice, class prejudice stimulated and fortified
by race prejudice, and intellectual prejudice.
Sparrow is fighting it all gamely but he
doesn't know the full extent of what he is fight­
ing against and the allies he has.
Let us forget Sparrow for a bit. You have to
begin with Haiti, a West Indian island as we
are. After the successful revolution for Hai­
tian independence in 1802, the Haitian intel­
ligentsia tried for nearly a hundred years to
build a model of French Civilisation and cul­
ture in the West Indies. Their failure is of
great importance to us today. They produc­
ed some fine scholars and some gifted writ­
ers, but a civilisation, a culture of any kind,
far less French, that they failed utterly to do.
Recognising this failure to make themselves
French, they turned back home. What they
found and built up was the African heritage
which the Haitian peasants, more than all
others in the West Indies, had preserved. Dr.
Price Mars was the originator of this move­
ment and a world-famous sociologist he
became. His influence and the influence of
his followers last in Haiti to this day. Without
exaggeration it can be entitled "Africa in the
West Indies."
Future events were to show that this was no
accidental explosion of an individual person­
ality. A fedw years after Price Mars began,
Marcus Garvey, a West Indian from Ja­
maica, achieved the heroic feat of placing
Africa and Africans and people of African
fore him they were not there. They have
been there ever since. After Garvey follow­
ed George Padmore, a political organiser
and theoretician, and West Indians should
know that no names of non-Africans stand
higher in Africa today in intellectual and po­
Garvey and George Padmore. (You are
wondering what all this has to do with Spar­
row? If the strain is too much for you, go
back to the study of all those wars fought by
the British and French which fill up books
purporting to be West Indian history.)
Just before World War II another African-
oriented manifestation appeared in the West
Indies. Aime Cesaire, the Martinique polit-
ican and writer, in 1939 published the most
famous poem ever written about Africans.
He called it “Statement on a Return to My
Native Country." Although he is writing
about Martinique the main theme of the
poem is African. He says that the poverty-
stricken negroes of Martinique can only ar­
rive at full self-expression by recognising and
appreciating what they owe to their African
ancestry. In the poem Cesaire uses the word
Negritude, a very important word today. It
symbolises respect for the black man's past,
above all for his African contributions to
civilisation, without which he cannot make
any real progress personal or social.
Negritude is widely known throughout
Africa and Western Europe, and the debate
on it is hot, world-wide and continuous.
What emerges from all that is this, a
profoundly remarkable historical fact. The
recognition of Africanism, the agitation for
recognition of Africa, the literary creation of
an African ideology, one powerful sphere of
African independence, all were directly the
creation of West Indians. The exact propor­
tion of their contribution need not be esti­
mated. The undisputable fact is that able and
powerful West Indians concentrated their ex­
ceptional familiarity with Western thought,
expression and organisation on Africa and
Africans when these qualities were urgently
needed both in Africa and elsewhere. This ia
part of the history of the West Indies, a very
important part. But West Indians do not study
this.
Why they did this I shall not go into here.
What we have to note is that about 1950, five
years after the shaking-up the world got in
World War II, and following upon the mass
political upheavals in the West Indies in
1937-38 and its consequences, this African
orientation came to a pause. It was succeed­
ed, superseded I should say, by another
powerful orientation. First of all arose our
British West Indian novelists, a splendid
bunch. Two of them, Lamming and Naipaul,
have no superiors of their age and time. Our
writers have to live abroad to do their work.
But the greater part of their work and by far
the best of it is concerned with the West In­
dian peasant and the West Indian ordinary
man. What Price Mars, Garvey, Padmore,
Cesaire could not find at home, with the de­
velopment of history and the development of
the West Indies, our writers have found. Of
their world-wide significance there is no
space to speak here, but I believe it is des­
tined to be as famous as Negritude has
become.
In the same period we have the emergence
of West Indian cricketers who add something
new and particularly West Indian to cricket.
The position had to be fought for, some mag­
nificent West Indians were deprived of mak­
ing the contribution they could have made.
But it was done and a West Indian style has
been established.
Latest to join the new emergence is Derek
Walcott, a West Indian poet, not a writer of
some poems, but a poet who has made
poetry in the West Indies his vocation. He is
doing a tremendously difficult job and knows
what he is doing.
The year 1950, therefore, marks a defini­
tive change in West Indian thought and its ex-
pression. It is to this outburst of West Indian-
ism after 1950 that Sparrow belongs. With
him and the steelband the West Indian
masses have joined the new West Indian
procession. It is not his unusual personal gifts
that are decisive here, though without them
he would be nothing. It is that he is so ob­
viously a man of the people, using a people's
medium and cherished by the people as one
of their own. He is in reality a very curious
historical figure and one whose work and
influence deserve serious study. It can be
very instructive about the type of develop­
ment the West Indian nation is destined to
undergo. For in most nations the popular
music and the popular song come first, are
usually centuries old, and the artists and in­
tellectuals often build their national creations
upon these age-old roots. *
I am sure that it is not at all accidental that in
the very same decade that the West Indian
artists are finding West Indianism, the native
popular music and the native popular song
find their most complete, their most vigorous
expression and acceptance. Here I tread
very cautiously but I think I see that our own
historical existence and the kind of world in
which we live, are forcing upon us a rapid
combination of historical stages which took
centuries in the older nations. Ghana, Cey­
lon, india do not have the same premises.
They have a native language, native religion,
native way of life. We haven't. We are
Western, yet have to separate what is ours
from what is Western, a very difficult task.
Sparrow in the popular sphere is doing that
with a dedication, even an obstinacy which is
very exciting to see. He found a medium
already established. But he is making it a ge­
nuinely national expression and possession.
He is not educated in the ordinary sense
and I think, though I am not sure, that this
helps him in what he is doing. It is to me a
striking and magnificent demonstration of
West Indians finding themselves in all sorts of
fields, that the common people have produc­
ed the steelband and now as I have tried to
show, have found and support a local ballad
singer.
The fields he opens up are immense. Spar­
row's use of the language over and over
again makes memorable lines of ordinary
Trinidad speech. He represents, makes
known what the people really think, what
they really are and how they speak. Through
him the ordinary West Indian speech is given
its place and some good portion of it is very
effective and powerful speech. That part of
our nation is usually ignored or neglected
among us, because intellectually we are a
very backward people who have no concep­
tion of the greatest discovery of modem
times, the positive role of the masses of the
people in all phases of national development.
Sparrow is seeing to it that this aspect of our
contemporary life is not by-passed.
I may have given the impression that he is
primarily interested in politics. That would be
quite false. He is interested in life around him,
all aspects. I could write about his versifica­
tion, the subjects he chooses, his handling of
11

narrative. But I prefer to hope that others will
do it. Most usefully, Mr. Derek Walcott has
recently given us his reflections on the West
Indian poet and the English language
(Trinidad Guardian, 18 June 1962). I hope
that the whole will be published. He under­
stands the significance of the calypso, the
troubles of all poets in our age and much else
of importance to us, but all that I shall leave
you to find out for yourself from him. I want to
make urgent reference to only one point. The
quotation is long but I don't want you to miss
a word:
"For if we accept that poetry has its
origins in the myth of the race, in the hered­
ity of the folk imagination, then the poet in
the West Indies, exiled from a mythically
fertile past, must first explore his origins
before he can purify the dialect of the tribe.
And those origins are not only political but
ancestral, they are subdued in the blood
and he must provoke them to speak. The
language in which they speak will be the
one he has learnt by imitation, and it is one
of immense flexibility and power, but the
feelings must be his own, they must have
their roots in his own earth."
The English language has its roots in a
country very different from ours. In the most
profound sense of the word it is not our lan­
guage, particularly their poetry is not a
model for our poets. But Mr. Walcott has
learnt that he has to master a poetic language
12
which is the creation of men who are using
their own language in their own country.
Then he has to use whatever he has worked
out to express poetically the deepest feelings
and instincts of a very different environment.
The process is more complicated than I have
stated it here. But in any case it is a special
West Indian problem. What makes it worse,
the West Indies have little of the past histor­
ical experience which the painter in Mexico
for instance finds ready to hand. We have not
had much of a past of our own, and what we
have had we know little of.
What Sparrow is doing is to make alive, to
develop and to establish what the ordinary
people of the West Indies are now doing. Bet­
ter late than never. For the first time in their
lives modern engineering technique and a
certain amount of political freedom make this
possible. And that they have found a man,
one of, their own to devote great powers to
this immensely to their credit, and to the
advantage of all of us. I hinted to UCWI that
they should pay attention to his work. I had in
mind his use of language, and his musical use
of traditional cadences, musical tones, inter­
vals and transitions. If you listen to his very
early records you will hear much that he has
since worked over and developed into mas­
terpieces. Thus you can hear in "Race Track"
the original ideas which finally blossomed in­
to "Jean and Dinah". It would be most in­
teresting to know, and only a trained music­
ian can tell us this, what are the purely music-
al changes by which he develops the early
statement of an idea into its maturer form. In­
formed but sympathetic criticism of his words
and his music can be of great value not only
to Sparrow himself but to the more traditional
type of poet and popular composer.
Today I do not know one popular com­
poser whom I find more attractive, more
inventive and with a finer sense of correspon­
dence between words and music and mean­
ing. * But though I would welcome critical
studies, I would say that above all Sparrow
must be left along to find his own way, using
whatever is done, ignoring it or denouncing
it as he pleases. Behind him, and Mr.
Walcott's analysis, there emerges a fact and
direction that summarises the whole West In­
dian position as I see it, politics, economics,
art, everything. That was the main point of
my lecture at UCWI in 1959 on "The Artist in
the Caribbean". We have to master a
medium, whatever it is, that has developed in
a foreign territory and on that basis seek and
find out what is native, and build on that. It is
obvious that our present race of politicians
are too far gone ever to learn that. But there
are signs that this truth is penetrating
younger people. It is the West Indian truth
that matters above all. Perhaps Sparrow will
make a calypso on it. j gg j
Excerpted from a collection ofessays entitled "The Future
In the Present; Selected Writings" by C.L.R. James; first
published in Great Britain in 1977and reprinted in 1980
by Lawrence Hill <2 Co., of London.
Mario Bauza still ''cookin "
MARIO BAUZR
By David Jackson
On Saturday, October 16, 1982, as part
of the Visual Arts Research and Resource
Center Relating to the Caribbean's "Expres­
sions '82" festival, Mario Bauza teams up with
pianist Bill Taylor at Town Hall, in a one night
only recreation of the jam sessions that were
once regular features at Birdland, Down­
beat, and the Ebony Club, and other jazz
clubs from Kansas City to New York. Special
guests on the bill include trombonist Curtis
Fuller, Candido on congas, saxophonist Pa-
quito D'Rivera, trumpeter Joe Newman,
singer Graciela, pianist Jorge Dalto, and
Machito on maraccas and helping out with
the vocals.
"Jam sessions" generally took place on a
working musician's off-hours, in clubs like
Birdland, Downbeat, the Ebony, as well as
places like Harlem's Minton's and Monroe's
Uptown. Numerous musicians would assem­
ble in the places and take turns extending
their improvisational skills playing dozens of
choruses, attempting to "cut" (show up) the
other musicians. Often these sesseions would
last literally for days. Mario Bauza and Billy
Taylor recognize the value of the institution
of the jam session, as a setting where peers
came together to play for the "joy of it," and
to release themselves from the restrictions of
a big-band format and the time limits of re­
cordings. This spirit of friendly, even intimate
competition allowed a musician's worth to be
equated with ability and not the salary
received.
The economic orientation of the entertain­
ment industry, and the closing of many of the
clubs that had been hospitable to informal
jam sessions, virtually destroyed the jam ses­
sion as a musical institution, so Mario Bauza,
and Billy Taylor, will bring the past alive, and
reconstruct, if only for one night, a setting
where once again serious musicians can sep­
arate themselves from the "no talent guys."
The Visual Arts Research and Resource
Center Relating to the Caribbean deserves a
round of applause for providing older fans
and new audiences with the opportunity to
reconsider the rich and varied musical
career of Mario Bauza, a truly remarkable
gentleman, whose creative efforts have al­
tered the course of American music.
Most people think that "fusion" music be­
gan with Miles Davis' In A Silent Way and Bit­
ches Brew, recorded in the late 1960s-early
1970s, which in term inspired Tony Williams'
Lifetime, the Mahavishnu Orchestra,
Weather Report, Return to Forever, Herbie
Hancock and many lesser imitators. But ac­
tually most musical genres that have devel­
oped in the United States over the past forty
years should be considered as "fusion"
music, from Western Swing to country &
western to Cubop (Latin jazz).
Machito's Afro-Cubans are generally
credited with popularizing the Cubop sound,
a fusion of jazz harmonies and Latin rhythms,
that set standards for jazz and Latin musicians
for close to 20 years, from the beginning of
the $940s to the end of the 1950s. The Afro-
Cubans are the most influental group in the
development of Latin jazz. That's true. But the
sound itself can be traced back to the dream
of an Afro Cuban trumpet player-arranger-
composer, Mario Bauza, whom history will
remember as one of the seminal figures in
American music. "It is a tribute to his musical
ingenuity and foresight," jazz pianist Billy
Taylor has said about Bauza, "that so many of
his innovations have become a permanent
part of the contemporary musical
vocabulary."
Bom in Cuba, Mario Bauza came to the
U.S. in the late 1920s, after having played
bass-clarinet with the Havana Philharmonic
and clarinet in various nightclub groups.
Soon after arriving here he recorded with
Antonio Machin's Cuarteto Machin — not on
reeds but on trumpet, which he learned in
two weeks by listening to recordings of Phil
Napoleon and Red Nichols. In 1931-32 he
worked as a saxophonist with Noble Sissies
Orchestra, then playing the Park Central
Hotel. Bauza continued to play and began to
appear at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom as a
trumpeter with Hi Clark's band before mov­
ing to Chick Webb's orchestra as lead trum­
peter in 1933. A year later he became the
band's orchestral director. Mario Bauza's
eight-bar passages can be heard on the 1934
recording of Chick Webb's classic "Stomp­
ing at the Savoy," along with Webb on
drums, Elmer Williams (tenor saxophone)
and Pete Clark (clarinet) and trumpeters
Reunald Jones and Sandy Williams.
Bauza stayed with Webb until 1938, dur­
ing which time he was partly responsible for
the discovery of Ella Fitzgerald, then, after
short stints with Don Redman and Fletcher
Henderson, he joined Cab Calloway in
1939.
Cab Calloway's big hit of 1931, "Minnie
the Moocher," was backed by a piece called
"Doin' the Rhumba," one of the earliest Latin-
jazz numbers. In 1938 he recorded "The
Congo-Conga," after supposedly watching
Xavier Cugat at the Waldorf and deciding
that the next step was to play Cuban music.
Calloway brought in Mario Bauza to give his
music the right Latin-tinge. Bauza was the
man who persuaded Calloway to hire young
Dizzy Gillespie, a trumpeter with a deep
appreciation of Cuban rhythms.
"Mario was doing a lot of arranging for
Cab," says Gillespie, "and he gave me some
fine ideas." Sitting side by side in Calloway's
band, Bauza and Gillespie traded musical
notions and, along with drummer Cozy Cole,
worked up a few specialties of their own. By
early 1940, the Calloway band could justly
be considered the finest of its day; it remain­
ed so for the next two years. Its personnel for
most of this time was Mario Bauza, Dizzy Gil­
lespie, Lamar Wright (trumpet), Tyree Glenn
(trombone, vibraphone), Keg Johnson,
Quentin Jackson (trombone), Jerry Black
(alto saxophone), Leon Ghu' Berry, Walter
The legendary Mario Bauza, 1942, in his heyday
at "La Conga" 13

Machito, Graciela, Bobby Capo, Mario Bauza, backstage, in the forties
La Conga — 1944
Machito and Mario at the Bauza Tribute, Linc-In Center, Aug. 1980
'Foots' Thomas .(tenor saxophone), Benny
Payne (piano), Danny barker (guitar), Milton
Hinton (string bass) and William 'Cozy' Cole
(drums), with Buster Harding and Buck Ram
providing most of the arrangements. On his
off days, Bauza had a little Cuban band of his
own to play one-night jobs and Gillespie sat
in with him now and then.
Mario Bauza left Calloway's band in 1940
(to be replaced early in 1941 by another
trumpet soloist, Jonah Jones) because he
wanted to form a Latin band to compete with
the black and white jazz bands, keeping the
14 Cuban rhythms and adding a lot of jazz ele-
ments, especially jazz harmonies. He joined
with his brother-in-law Frank Grillo,
"Machito", forming Machito's Afro-Cubans.
Machito had come to New York in 1937,
singing with a string-and-percussion group,
Las Estrellas Habaneras, and violinist Alber­
to Iznaga's Orquesta Siboney, besides
recording eight sides with Xavier Cugat. The
band that he formed in 1940, with mario
Bauza as musical director and lead
trumpeter, featured a front line of three sax­
ophones and one or two trumpets, and a
Cuban rhythm section.
“Our idea was to bring up music to the
J/j
Graciela — Town Hall, Sept. 1981
Machito, the legend today
standard of American orchestras," Bauza has
said. "So I brought a couple of the guys that
arranged for Calloway and Chick Webb to
write for me. I wanted them to give me the
sound—to orchestrate it." Calloway ar­
ranger John Bartee and Bauza worked toge­
ther many nights writing material for the new
group, and the band was in rehearsal several
months before its first appearance. The
woodshedding paid off, because Bartee and
Bauza developed the sound that was to be­
come a guiding light for black and white jazz
musicians and Latin musicians interested in
cross-cultural influences.
In the 1940's Hollywood did a lot to make
Latin music popular in America, with a large
number of musicals built around specifically
Latin-oriented plots. Carmen Miranda,
Xavier Cugat and Desi Arnaz, stereotypes
aside, greatly advanced the spread of Latin
rhythms and melodies into American culture,
and were indirectly responsible for the
acceptance of Afro-Cuban jazz, or Cubop.
By 1950, even their competitors were put­
ting Machito's Afro-Cubans at the head of the
Cubop bands in the U.S., and they were in
continual demand at a dozen or so ballrooms
in and around New York City. "We're play-
ing Cuban music," Bauza said in 1952, "and
we always will." This commitment to Cuban
music notwithstanding, Machito's band built
up a large jazz following accompanying Flip
Phillips and Charlie Parker on recordings
and Howard McGhee and Brew Moore at
the Royal Roost nightclub on Broadway.
Later, the band was featured at Birdland.
Dizzy Gillespie remained a good friend of
Mario Bauza, and had sat in with the Machito
band a couple of times in 1942-43, when it
was playing the Park Plaza. This association
with Bauza and Machito influenced Gillespie
to use Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo in his
big band of 1947. By 1948 an "Afro-Cuban
Suite," composed by Pozo and Gillespie, was
a regular part of the band's repertoire. Pozo
also recorded several Cuban-flavored
numbers with Fats Navarro, a fine trumpeter
from Key West, Florida, who died young.
The more successful tunes were "Lady Bird,"
"Jahbero," and "Symphonette."
Gillespie's band recorded the two-part
“Cubano Be" and “Cubano Bop," written by
George Russell for RCA in 1947. The perfor­
mance highlights superb conga drumming
by virtuoso Pozo. A few day later, the excit­
ing "Manteca" featured further brilliant work
from Pozo. The band also recorded a good
version of "Minor Walk."
Mario Bauza was the one who turned Gil­
lespie on to Chano Pozo, as well as to a guy
named Chiquitico who played bongos with
Gillespie briefly in '47. Pozo was killed in
Harlem in 1948.
Charlie Parker made some recordings
with machito's Afro-Cubans, after producer
rvuuuuinjuuin
"Black music generates more dollars for Black people than
any other industry in America; we should use our music in the
same way that the Arabs use their oil."
1
?»■
Norman Granz took him to a rehearsal at the
Palladium dance hall to hear them. In 1948
Parker and the Cubans cut "Mango
Mangue," which the late jazz historian Mar­
shall Stearns called the "most successful Latin
jazz." Machito's band and Bauza's involve­
ment with Parker, Gillespie and other jazz
people made them cultural heroes for New
York ,hipsters and bopsters. Of all the jazz
cats he played with, Mario Bauza says that
the dates with Dexter Gordon (who never re­
corded with the band) were by far the most
exciting and rewarding in "sheer swing and
jazz joie de vivre."
Mario Bauza stayed with Machito's Afro-
Cubans until 1976, when he and singer
Graciela (his sister-in-law) left to form their
own orchestra. In 1975 Bauza and Arturo
O'Farrill produced Dizzy Gillespie y
Machito: Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods, for Nor­
man Granz's Pablo Records. This was the last
major collaboration between Bauza and
Machito. However, Machito did join with
Graciela, soprano vocalist Xiomara Alfaro,
percussionist Julito Collazo and other friends
and relatives, to pay tribute to Bauza at a
special concert in his honor at Lincoln Cen­
ter's Damrosch Park on August 17, 1980,
produced by the Visual Arts Research and
Resource Center Relating to the Caribbean.
The outdoor concert featured a special or­
chestra assembled by mario Bauza to per­
form his compositions that chronicled a
professional career spanning more than 50
years.
In September of 1981 the Visual Arts Cen­
ter again brought Mario Bauza and Dizzy
— Dick Griffey
"Solar Empire Strikes Gold"
Black Enterprise, July 1982
Gillespie together, along with vocalist Grac­
iela and an orchestra which included Daniel
Ponce on congas, and saxophonist Paquito
D'Rivera, to pay "Tribute to the Great Chano
Pozo," in a dynamic Afro-Cuban jazz concert
at Town Hall. Although Gillespie is known as
a leader in the formation of the revolutionary
jazz style called Bop, he delighted the au­
dience with his sharp humorous wit, and
brought the house to its feet when he started
dancing the Mambo, which was the major
dance of the 1940s. Bop, with its complex
rhythms and intricate harmonies, did not
move most folks to dance, so it seems from his
graceful footwork, that Dizzy learned more
than an appreciation for Cuban rhythms by
hanging out with Mario Bauza and Chano
Pozo. The highlight of the evening came with
Bauza, Gillespie and the band cooking up a
storm on the classic "Manteca," with Daniel
Ponce assuming Chano Pozo's role as soloist
on congas and bongos.
Mario Bauza's quest for the integration of
Afro-Cuban music and American jazz spans
several decades. The Visual Arts Research
and Resource Center Relating to the Carib-
ben has presented him in three concerts to
date, acknowledging the importance of his
work. But his legacy is housed, not so much
in the videotapes of the concerts, or on rec­
ords, or in some university archives, but ra­
ther inside his head, in his memory. Let's
hope someone fully explores his vast per­
sonal resources soon, and brings out an
extensive portrait of the man and his
dramatic role in the history of jazz and Latin
music.

"CONCERTS"
Friday, October 8, 1982, 8 p.m.
SYMPHONY SPACE, 95th and Broadway
Ballet Folklorico Dominican© from the
Dominican Republic — "Meringue", "Ga
Ga", "Zapateo" and more — its only New
York appearance this season.
Roberto Borrell y su Kubata from Cuba
— Afro-Cuban music and dance, "Yoruba",
“Abakua", and "Rumba".
Louis Celestin, Tabou Combo, and
Miriam Dorisme and Paulette St. Lot
from Haiti — an exceptional dancer and
drummer, an orchestra with powerful
melodies and extraordinary'rhythms cap­
turing the spirit of contemporary Haiti, and
two of the country's foremost singers.
Saturday, October 9, 1982 at 8 p.m.
SYMPHONY SPACE, 95th and Broadway
The Mighty Sparrow from Trinidad — the
King of Calypso accompanied by the Trini­
dad and Tobago Steel Band.
Negrura, Inc. from Puerto Rico — Julio Axel
and two drummers, Pepin and Papo
Clemente, bringing together a potpourri of
music, dance and poetry.
Ballet Folklorico Dominican© from the
Dominican Repubic.
Friday, October 15, 1982, 8 p.m.
TOWN HALL, 123 West 43rd Street
Astrud Gilberto, "The Girl from Ipanema"
with an appearance by Loremil Machado
and his Dancers — hipswinging Samba
and graceful Capoeira.
Saturday, October 16, 1982, 8 p.m.
TOWN HALL, 123 West 43rd Street
Cuba's legendary Mario Bauza joins with
New York's Billy Taylor in a one day
recreation of the jam sessions that put
Birdland, Downbeat and the Ebony Club on
the map! An absolute must for Cubop and
jazz, enthusiasts and students of American
16 and Latin popular music!
EXPRESSIONS '82
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
A cultural extravaganza celebrating the rich
and vibrant cultures of Africa, Brazil, Cuba,
the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica,
Puerto Rico, Trinidad and the United States.
"EXHIBITIONS"
Opening date, Friday, October 22, 1982
VISUAL ARTS RESEARCH AND
RESOURCE CENTER RELATING
TO THE CARIBBEAN
408 West 58th Street
A multi-media exhibition, including tapes­
tries, drawings, and photographs, repre­
senting Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil
— curated by Manuel Touron.
Open to the public.
Opening date, Thursday, October 28, 1982
HOSTOS COMMUNITY COLLEGE
475 Grand Concourse, Bronx
An, exhibition focusing on THE AFRICAN
PRESENCE IN THE AMERICAS - currated
by Manuel Touron.
"CONFERENCES"
Wednesday, October 6, 1982, 7-10 p.m.
JOHN JAY COLLEGE
Lecture Hall, First Floor 1133N
445 West 59th Street, off Tenth Avenue
THE ORISHA TRADITION IN AFRICA
AND THE AMERICAS, Professor Robert
Farris Thompson, African Studies Depart­
ment, T. D. College, Yale University.
Thursday, October 7, 1982, 7-10 p.m.
JOHN JAY COLLEGE
Lecture Hall, First Floor 1133N
445 West 59th Street, off Tenth Avenue
RELIGIOSIDAD POPULAR DOMINI-
CANA, Fradique Lizardo, Founder and
Director of Ballet Folklorico, Republica
Dominicana
Wednesday, October 13, 1982, 7-10 p.m.
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF
NATURAL HISTORY
Central Park West at 79th Street
Lecture by Hon. Rex Nettleford of Jamaica
on "Caribbean Cultural Identity"
Thursday, October 14, 1982, 7-10 p.m.
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF
NATURAL HISTORY
Central Park West at 79th Street
CARIBBEAN REALITIES, NEW YORK
CITY: Panel Presentation moderated by
Marta Moreno Vega, Executive Director
of VARRCRC. Panelists include: Mario
Bauza, Lavinia Williams, Raymond
McKethan, and Federico Pagani.
Wednesday, October 20, 1982, 7-10 p.m.
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY
Pope Auditorium, Lincoln Center Campus
63rd Street and Columbus Avenue
LIVING LEGENDS: PORTRAITS. A special
presentation honoring Pierre Fatumbi
Verger, author of Orixas.
Thursday, October 21, 1982, 7-10p.m.
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY
Pope Auditorium, Lincoln Center Campus
63rd Street and Columbus Avenue
LIVING LEGENDS: PORTRAITS. A special
presentation honoring Chief Awosope,
The Araba of Ile-Ife.
Admission free to all conferences.
EXPRESSION '82 PROGRAM
SYMPHONY SPACE
Friday, October 8, 1982
8:00 p.m.
ROBERTO BORRELL Y SU KUBATA (Cuba)
TABOU COMBO (Haiti)
(15 minute intermission)
1 BALLET FOLKLORICO DOMINICANO (Dominican Republic)
J Master of Ceremony: Jose Alberto
Saturday, October 9, 1982
8:00 p.m.
MIGHTY SPARROW and THE TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO STEEL BAND
(Trinidad and Tobago)
NEGRURA, INC. (Puerto Rico)
(Intermission)
BALLET FOLKLORICO DOMINICANO (Dominican Republic)
Master of Ceremony: Monique Clesca
TOWN HALL
Friday, October 15, 1982
8:00 p.m.
(BRAZILIAN NIGHT)
LOREMIL MACHADO AND HIS AFRO-BRAZILIAN DANCE COMPANY
(Intermission)
ASTRUD GILBERTO, 'The Girl From Ipanema"
Master of Ceremony: Uka Tanya Payan
Saturday, October 16, 1982
JAM SESSION AT BIRDLAND: Revisted
8:00 p.m.
MARIO BAUZA'S BAND
BILLY TAYLOR TRIO
(Intermission)
JAM SESSION: Billy Taylor, Mario Bauza
with Special Guests:
Graciela, Machito, Candido, Curtis Fuller.
Jorge Dalto, Paquito D'Rivera, Joe Newman
Master of Ceremony: Felipe Luciano
EXPRESSIONS '82 STAFF
MARTA MORENO VEGA . . . ....................................... Producer
GUS FLEMING...................... .................. Production Manager
LAURA GAGO MORENO . . . ...................... Business Manager
DUANE L. JONES .................. ..................... Artistic Coordinator
DAVID JACKSON.................. ....................................... Publicist
MANUEL JUAN TOURON. Exhibition Curator and Designer
VARNEY SINH........................ ............. Administrative Assistant 17
 EXPRESSIONS '82 direction of Mr. Argeliers Leon and his wife
EXPRESSIONS '82 SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Maria Teresa Linares de Leon. While in
FUNDING SOURCES - PUBLIC Division De Bellas Artes Collaborating Individuals: Institutions
Biographical Sketches of Cuba he also studied choreography with
New York City Department of Colsulado Dominicano En Nueva York Henry Frank Artists and Panelists Professor Ramiro Guerra (whose group later
Cultural Affairs Special Thanks: Rafael Trinidad Robert Farris Thompson — Yale University became the famous Ballet Folkloric Cubano),
New York State Council on the Arts Marianne De Tolentino Elsa Tio — Fundacion Puertorriquena De and was a dance instructor at the Teatro Na­
National Endowment for the Arts Brazil Las Humanidades — Puerto Rico cional de Cuba, and the Arts Instructors
Brazilian Consulate in New York School of Mariano. In 1963 Lizardo contin­
Association of Spanish Arts
FUNDING SOURCES - PRIVA TE Fundacao Cultural De E. Da Bahia ued folklore studies with Professors Luis
Special Thanks: Elsa Ortiz Robles
Special Thanks: Geraldo Machado Felipe Ramon y Rivera and Isabel Artez at
Consolidated Edison Elba Cabrera
Genescio Da Costa the National Conservatory of Music and
Chemical Bank FDIC Melody Moreno
Poetry of Santo Domingo. He coordinated
Meet the Composer Rums of Puerto Rico and directed a Folkloric Festival celebrating
Special Thanks: Mauricio Redondo Drummer Louis Celestin performing his famous
"banda" dance of Haiti. Photo: Marco Kalisch the Restoration Council Centennial of the
Canales Dominican Republic, with the participation
FUNDING SOURCES - INTERNA TIONAL
COOPERA TING INSTITUTIONS Special Thanks: Fernando Campos has participated in numerous concerts in
Trinidad and Tobago Latin New York:
Trinidad and Tobago Tourist Board John Jay College — New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Can­
Puerto Rican Studies Department Special Thanks: Izzy Sanabria ada, and other parts of the world.
BWIA International
Special Thanks: Kimi Christopher, T.T.T.B. Special Thanks: The Center, in addition, acknowledges the
Tom Hill, BWIA Migdalia De Jesus Torres Garcia general support provided by the Roberto Barrel! y Su Kubata PAULETTE SAINT LOT is one of the best
Puerto Rico Fordham University — Puerto Rican Institute Phelps-Stokes Fund known Haitian folk singers. She sings with the
Special Thanks: Maria Torres Del Valle ROBERTO BORRELL
Institute De Culture Puertorriquena — Special Thanks: Board of Trustees Ibo dancers of Haiti, a Haitian folk dance
Division of Cultural Promotion American Museum of Natural History — Lawrence Chang Roberto Borrell is creator, founder of tradi­ group for which she is the choreographer,
Special Thanks: Victor M. Gerena Education Department, Division of Normine Thompson tional Dance Company in Cuba, Washington director, and founder. Among many other
Dominican Republic Caribbean Programs Avon Corporation and New York entitled Roberto Borrell y Su places she has performed at the American
Estado De Relaciones Exteriores — Special Thanks: Malcolm Arth Exxon Corporation Kubata. Mr. Borrell was dancer with El Con- Museum of Natural History, the Academy of
Division De Asuntos Culturales Ismael Calderon New York Community Trust (L. A. W. No. 2) junto Folklorico Nacional De Cuba, musical Music, Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Gar­
director of the Orquesta Union Cienfue- den, the Kennedy Memorial Theatre in
guera; instructor of dance and percussion. Washington, D.C., and Place des Arts in
He is also percussionist with the following Montreal, Canada.
groups: Orquesta del Cabaret Ali Bar, Las
Vegas, El Nacional and others. £
MIRIAM DORISME is another outstanding
Haitian folk singer. In addition to French and
Creole, she sings in African languages as
well, and has performed with Ms. Saint Lot in
New York, D.C., and Canada. The songs she
i
Members of the Ballet Folklorico Dominicano
and the other singer perform are extracted
mostly from ritual songs of the Voodoo of 72 invited groups from the interior. He is
religion. the founder and director of the Ballet Folk­
. . . We cannot afford to allow our music to remain a surro­ lorico Dominicano. The dance company fea­
tures an array of its country's dances in their
gate for white American psychosexual illusions. A time is coming performances, including the "Merengue",
when we will have to develop a music that will have the same "Ga Ga", and "Zapateo", and have per­
formed throughout the Caribbean, in New
strong relationship to our mystical nature and conception of the York, Paris, Madrid, Rome, and other Euro­
universe as religious songs of the nineteenth century and our Tabou Combo pean cities.
daily life in Africa's past; a religious music will evolve that we TABOU COMBO gave their first public per­
formance on August 25, 1967, at Tele-Haiti JULIO AXEL LANDRON
won't be ashamed to dance to, as we continue our motion for in their native Haiti. They are widely re­ Artistic Director of NEGRURA, INC.
survival and liberation. If this music is stolen and imitated, we will garded to be the most popular miori jazz Julio Axel Landron started his career as in­
group among the Haitians. Tabou Combo is terpreter of Afro-Puerto Rican poetry nine
understand it as stealing our religion and abusing it. We should the best known outside of the Haitian com­ years ago while continuing his career as an
then respond accordingly. munity of all the many Haitian groups. They actor, professional model and acting
have done numerous recordings and given teacher. Under the auspices of the Institute of
concerts all over the United States as well as
—Ron Wellbum in Canada, most of the Caribbean islands,
and in Europe. The group is based in New
"The Black Aesthetic Imperative" York City.
Haitian songstress Miriam Dorisme'at VARCs first
Caribbean Expressions Festival, the Delacorte
1970 Theater Central Park, 1979
LOUIS CELESTIN is a percussionist and the Photo: Adal Maldonado
best Haitian "Banda" dancer. He is given the
pseudonym of the King of Banda, a hilarious FRADIQUE LIZARDO was born in 1930, in
Vodun ritual dance honoring Guede, the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and
deity of death. In this dance there is a great holds degrees in physical and natural
deal of hip-twisting and abdomen-rolling by sciences, and philosophy and letters. He
the dancer who is often dressed in black. As a taught at the School for Official Folkloric
drummer, Celestin has played with the Ibo Dances in Santo Domingo from 1956 to '58,
dancers of Haiti, the Charles Moore dance and attended a dance course at Teatro Na­ JulioAxel Landron of Negrura, Inc.,»from
18 group, and other folkloric companies. He cional de Cuba in Habana in 1961, under the Puerto Rico Photo: Marco Kalisch 19
 Puerto Rican Culture, the group presents a
program of poetry, percussion and dance
which reflects the true image, influence and
impact of the Black Puerto Rican. Supporters
of the group include Isabel© Zenon Cruz, the
well known Puerto Rican writer.
Loremil Machado and his Afro-Brazilian
Dancers Photo: Marco Kalisch
LOREMIL MACHADO was bom in Bahia,
Brazil. He was the middle son in a family of
ten — he was the boy who danced. At twelve
he began to study Capoeira at the Academia
De Capoeira under the direction of Mestre
Norival. Capoeira is a unique African deriv­
ed Martial Art that blends dance and self­
defense. In addition to Capoeira, Loremil
began to study his own Afro-Brazilian dance
at the Escola De Ballet Teatro Castro-Alves.
And while still a teenager performing with
Grupo Folklorico Afonja his outstanding
work led him to the role of principal dancer
for Viva Bahia touring Africa, Europe and
Asia. One year later, Loremil Machado
received an invitation to teach Capoeira at
the Royal Ballet and the Abraxas Club in
London, England. In 1975, he arrived in
New York City to perform in the Off-
Broadway play Parto, followed by Joe Papp's
production of The LeafPeople on Broadway
and Ed Bullin's I Am Lucy Terry. In less than
a year, he was not only performing on and
off-Broadway, but also giving master classes
in Capoeira to the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Loremil has been teaching Afro-Brazilian
dance at the Clark Center since 1976. He
was the co-fdhnder of The Capoeiras of
Bahia, and has recently moved on to
create his own dance company which has
performed throughout the U.S.
Capoeira. Developed in the 16th and 17th
centuries among African slaves in the Brazil­
ian state of Bahia, Capoeira fighting was a
weapon against slavery, a substitute for ac­
tual arms and a method of self-protection.
The old African method of fighting with the
feet was used; with this skill, groups of slaves
were able to escape and set up and defend
independent republics in the jungle called
20 quilimbos, probably the first black revolu-
tionary enclaves in South America. After the
abolition of slavery, Capoeira became a mar­
tial art form. The Portuguese outlawed this
practice, but Capoeira was revived in the
20th century and has become an unofficial
national sport.
ASTRUD GILBERTO
Astrud Gilberto was bom in Bahia, Brazil
but grew up in Rio de Janeiro. In her late
teens she met and married Joao Gilberto, the
creator of bossa nova and Brazil's most
popular entertainer. Gilberto strongly in­
fluenced his young wife's vocal style but she
soon developed her own approach to music,
incorporating not only the music of Brazil but
American jazz as well.
In 1963 she made her first recordings; The
Girl from Ipanema, recorded in conjunction
with Joao Gilberto and Stan Getz, was in fact
her first professional engagement. When the
record was released in 1964 it took the music
world by storm, quickly becoming a number
one hit in the United States and many other
countries. It won Grammy Awards in many
categories including Record of the Year and
created a great demand for public appear­
ances by Miss Gilberto and her associates.
She toured for a short time with Stan Getz
and then began touring with her own group.
In the years that followed she appeared
throughout the world in the best concert halls
and nightclubs. She has been particularly
well received in Europe, the Far East and, of
course, South America.
Astrud Gilberto
ROBERT FARRIS THOMPSON is a pro­
fessor at Yale University, and author of Black
Gods and Kings and African Art in Motion.
He contributed a piece, "Abatan: A Master
Potter of the Egbado Yoruba," to the anthol­
ogy Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art,
edited by Daniel Biebuyck, and has written
extensively on African, Afro-Latin music and
dance, and black culture in general, for
Saturday Review, African Arts, African
Forum, and other publications. A native of
Texas, he is a babalow (Yoruba priest) and
member of African-based secret societies.
PROFESSOR REX M. NETTLEFORD
The Hon. Rex Nettleford, O.M. is Pro­
fessor of Extra-Mural Studies at the Universi­
ty of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, where
he directs the University's Adult Education
Programme for the Commonwealth Carib­
bean territories which support the UWI, and
heads the Trade Union Education Institute.
He has taught Politics in his University's
Department of Government as well as Poli­
tics and Culture in the UWI's Institute of Mass
Communication.
His parallel career as a creative artist is re­
flected in his long and extensive work in the
field of art and culture. He was for many
years Chairman of the Institute of Jamaica
charged with the overall implementation of
cultural policy in Jamaica and Cultural Ad­
viser to the Prime Minister from 1972-1980.
He is Founder, the current Artistic Director
and Principal Choreographer of, as well as
dancer in the National Dance Theatre Com­
pany of Jamaica. He has led several overseas
cultural missions from Jamaica since 1963 to
North America, Europe, Australia, Latin
America and Africa.
He has had experience in the field of
development as founding Governor of the
Board of the Canada-based International
Development Research Centre, and Chair­
man of the 44-nation Commonwealth Arts
Organization. He is also a member of the
Inter-American Committee on Culture
(CIDEC) OAS, and has acted as Expert/
Consultant on (Culture) to the Government
of Ghana 1962, FESTAC 76 (African Festi­
val), CARIFESTA 76, and UNESCO. He is a
Trustee and founding member of the Asso­
ciation of Caribbean Universities and Re­
search Institutes (UNICA).
He has lectured extensively on Caribbean
political development in many countries in­
cluding India, the Philippines and Israel. He
is the author of several books and articles,
editor of CARIBBEAN QUARTERLY as well
as a radio and television political analyst in
his native Jamaica. He was educated in Jam­
aica at the University of the West Indies,
where he read History (Honours) and Ox­
ford where he pursued post-graduate studies
in Politics as a Rhodes Scholar.
Rex Nettleford Photo: Marco Kalisch
LAVINIA WILLIAMS is a world-renown
dancer, teacher, traveler, and performing
lecturer. Her classes incorporate African and
Caribbean influences. She was a member of
Katherine Dunham's original dance com­
pany, and toured throughout the U.S. and
Europe as a Dunham Dancer. Miss Williams
teaches at the Alvin Ailey School.
■7
11
17
Lavinia Williams Photo: Marco Kalisch
was an Ifa priest and a chief among the
hunters of Oyo. Mr. Abimbola's father and
brother started his training in divination and
chanting of oral literature in his childhood.
His brother, a devotee of Sango, the Yoruba
thunder and lighting divinity, also groomed
him for a career as a traditional Yoruba poet.
Mr. Abimbola presently is Professor and
Head of Department, University of Ife, Ile-Ife,
Department of African Languages and Liter­
atures. He was recently appointed by the
Ooni of Ife to the position of Awise (the one
who speaks with Ase), spokesman for the Ifa
priest of Ife.
Pierre Verger
PIERRE FATUMBI VERGER is a French-
born, Brazil-based anthropologist and author
of Orixas. He has been actively researching
Yoruba culture since the late 1950's, and has
done extensive photo documentation of
Yoruba rituals and ceremonies in Nigeria,
and was initiated as a babalawo while in the
West African country. In addition to Orixas,
he has written Notes sur les Orisa (Dakar,
I.F.A.N., 1957), Notes surle Culte des Orisa
et Vodun (Dakar, I.F.A.N., 1957), and
"Grandeur et Decadence du Culte d'lyami
Osoronga (Ma Mere la Sorciere) chez les
Yoruba," for the Journal de la Societe des
Africainistes (1967). Presently living in
Bahia, Brazil, he recently helped found a
museum on the Candomble, the Yoruba-de­
rived Orisha cult that claims millions of
Brazilians as practitioners.
The Araba of Ife
. CHIEF AWOSOPE, the Araba of Ile-Ife, is
the highest ranking religious leader of the
Yoruba people of Nigeria. The Araba is to the
Yorubas what the Pope is to Catholics, and
the city of Ile-Ife, Nigeria is, according to the
Yoruba creation myth, established on the
spot where the Orisha Orisania created the
earth on the command of God, Olodumare
(or Olorun). The Araba is close to 80 years
old, and started training for the priesthood
before his tenth birthdate. Pre-initiation train­
ing for a would-be Yoruba priest takes any­
where between ten and twenty years, de­
pending on his age when he started the train­
ing and the eagerness of his master to impart
knowledge to him. Post-initiation training
takes at least another five years, It is after
these long years of perseverance that a man
like the Aruba can settle down as a confident
expert of the Yoruba system. But the training
does not st6p with post-initiation training. In
fact, like modem academic training, the edu­
Wande Abimbola cation of someone like the Araba of Ile-Ife is a
life-long process. The training of Yoruba
WANDE ABIMBOLA priests is one of the supreme examples of the
Wande Abimbola was bom in lydb at traditional academic trainihg among all
Oyo, Western State of Nigeria. His father African people.
21

BILLY TAYLOR
The diploma reads "Dr. William E. Taylor",
but to the new appreciative audiences he's
brought to the wonders of jazz, it's Billy
Taylor.
"I was the first to make the statement that
jazz is classical music," he has said. "I don't
consider it Black classical music, but Ameri­
can classical music. Black music has contri­
buted much more to the culture of this coun­
try than many of us realize. All of the popular
music had its origins in the same kind of musi­
cal experience that gave us the spirituals, the
blues and of course, jazz."
A versatile jazz pianist, composer, ar­
ranger, teacher, and even an actor (Taylor
appeared as "Wesley" in The Time of Your
Life), Taylor has written more than 300
songs, a dozen books on the art of jazz piano,
and made over 30 recordings (he has re­
ferred to some of them as "the best kept
secrets in jazz").
Taylor has become one of the elder states­
men of jazz, serving as a member of the Na­
tional Council on the Arts, the New York
State Commission of Cultural Resources, the
board of ASCAP (the American Society of
Composers and Publisher), and the New
York City Cultural Council. Since its begin­
ning in 1965, he has served as President and
principal fund-raiser of "Jazzmobile", a pro­
gram that brings name artists and their music
into the inner cities of more than 15 Ameri­
can towns.
A gifted lecturer, Billy Taylor also has
brought jazz into classrooms in high schools
and colleges all over America. Recently, he
received his doctorate in musicology from
the University of Massachusetts and he has
taught and lectured at such schools as the
Manhattan School of Music, C.W. Post Col­
lege, Columbia, and Yale University.
Born in Greenville, North Carolina, Billy
Taylor began his music career at the age of
seven in Washington, D.C. After graduation
from Virginia State College, he came to New
York and began playing piano with the Ben
Webster Quartet.
Taylor thus found himself in the middle of
the New York jazz-be-bop revolution of the
forties and fifties, performing with Billie Holi­
day, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Roy
Eldridge, Charlie Parker, and other greats.
He then traveled around the world with his
music, ultimately establishing a record at
Birdland for the longest run in its history — an
unbroken streak* as soloist, leader of trios,
quartets, quintets, and sextets, with some of
the most famous jazz groups.
In the 1960's, in addition to his nightclub
dates and concert appearances, Billy Taylor
became a popular disc jockey on Harlem's
WLIB. A few years later, he became general
manager of WLIB, one of New York's only
Black-owned radio stations. He was a charter
member of the Inner City Broadcasting Cor­
poration, as well as the Black Communica­
tion s Corporation. He also has his own cor­
poration, Billy Taylor Productions, which
22 produces radio and television commercials,
records and concerts.
In 1969, Billy Taylor became the first Black
music director of a major television series,
The David Frost Show. His name and music
became familiar to a whole new audience, as
"O.K., Billy!" became the cue with which
Frost began each program.
Taylor's own compositions include "Suite
for Jazz Piano and Orchestra," commissioned
by Maurice Abravanel and premiered by the
Utah Symphony; and "I Wish I Knew How It
Would Feel to Be Free," which has become
one of the theme songs of the civil rights
movement.
Billy Taylor
As founder and president of Jazzmobile,
the pioneer organization which conducts
weekly workshop clinics in Harlem and lec­
ture/demonstrations in public schools, Billy
Taylor is responsible for bringing such jazz
greats as Duke Ellington, Cannonball Adder-
ley and Dizzy Gillespie to the doorsteps of
fans who might be unable to attend perfor­
mances in concert halls. Dr. Taylor acts as
consultant and advisor to music schools,
civic and cultural groups and serves as men­
tor to jazz organizations across the country.
More than any other single individual, Billy
Taylor is credited with elevating the art of
jazz to new heights of recognition and appre­
ciation. The College of Fine Arts of Howard
University has honored Dr. Taylor by estab­
lishing the Billy Taylor collection of original
manuscripts, tapes and recordings, photo­
graphs and miscellaneous writings which are
housed in the Center for Ethnic Music.
Taylor runs the gamut from solo piano reci­
tals to performances with symphony orches­
tras. His professional career began not long
after college when the young Billy Taylor
moved to New York City. Two days after his
arrival he was playing piano with the Ben
Webster Quartet on the famous 52nd Street,
opposite the legendary Art Tatum Trio. It
was an impressive beginning.
Later he worked with Dizzy Gillespie's first
band and acquired invaluable experience
with such jazz greats as Roy Eldridge, Wilbur
DeParis and Sid Catlett. Billy's versatility was
established as he joined Cozy Cole's group,
replacing Benny Goodman's band in Billy
Rose's Broadway show, "The Seven Lively
Arts," as pianist for Machito's mambo band,
as accompanist for Kenneth Spencer at Cafe
Society Uptown, and as featured pianist with
the Sam Stewart Trio. An extensive eight
month tour of Europe followed with Billy as
featured piano soloist with Don Redman's or­
chestra. Returning to the States, he formed a
piano-organ duo with Bob Wyatt. The pair
played the Royal Roost and was featured in
"Holiday on Broadway", a concert package
which starred Billie Holiday. Billy was invited
to take an all-star jazz group to play the Hai­
tian National Exposition and after four weeks
on the island he returned to take a new
quartet into Cafe Society Downtown. He
worked a short time with Billy Daniels, did a
solo act at Bop City and then played the Ice­
land Restaurant with Artie Shaw fronting his
quartet.
Billy Taylor then proceeded to establish
the record for the longest run at Birdland —
an unbroken continue as soloist, leader of
trios, quartets, quintets, sextets and as
featured soloist with all-star groups which in­
cluded Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles
Davis, Kai Winding, Jo Jones, Lester Young,
Oscar Pettiford, Lee Konitz, Stan Getz, Milt
Jackson, Art Blakey, Slim Gaillard, Roy
Eldridge, Charlie Shavers, J.J. Johnson,
Terry Gibbs and almost all of the other top
flight jazzmen who played that famous em­
porium.
It came as a surprise to no one when Billy
Taylor won the first International Critics
Award for Best Pianist in the poll sponsored
by Downbeat magazine. His credentials are
impressive but his music is more so. An in­
novator in the wedding of Latin rhythms and
jazz, Billy Taylor's piano reflects the in­
fluences of Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Debussy,
Ravel and Bach and is warmed by the lyrical
side of Ben Webster and Eddie South. His
clearly articulated melodic lines are accom­
panied by tonal clusters and are punctuated
with harmonic passages of orchestral pro­ Saul Sosnowski
HtfAfflERiCA
portions. Billy can build a polyphonic solo 5 PUEBLO COURT
into an evening climax by employing the GAITHERSBURGH, MD. 20878 - U. S. A.
contrapuntal style of Bach while maintaining
a firm rhythmic foundation. Understandably,
a number of young pianists have been in­ Libros de Ediciones Hispamerica
fluenced by Billy Taylor.
Billy Taylor's "Suite for Jazz Piano and Or­ Maria Luisa Bastos, Borges ante la critica argentina: 1923-1960, 356p., U$S8.00.
chestra" was commissioned by Maurice Hernan Vida, Literatura hispanoamericana e ideologia liberal: Surgimiento y
Abravenal and was premiered, with the com­ crisis, 120 p., U$S4.00.
poser at the piano, by the Utah Symphony in Saul Sosnowski, Borges y la Cabala; La busqueda del Verbo, 120 p., U$S3.50
the Morman Tabernacle. He has written Oscar Hahn, Arte de morir (poemas), 186 p., U$S5.00.
some 300 songs including the famous "I Wish Rose S. Mine, editor, Latin American Fiction Today: a symposium, 98 p.,
I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free," U$S9.95.
which was selected by the New York Times Beatriz Pastor, Roberto Arlt y la rebelion alienada, 120, U$S7.95.
as "One of the Great Songs of the Sixties."
More than thirty different recordings have
been made of this hit by such artists as Nina
Simone, Harry Belafonte, Lena Home, Solo­ HISPAMERICA
mon Burke, Mary Travers, John Denver and revista de literatura
Leontyne Price, and it has become the theme
song of public school choruses and church
choirs and was performed by the exciting TARIFAS DE SUSCRIPCIONES
pop group "Cold Blood" in the 20th Century
Fox film "Fillmore". Taylor's original music is Bibliotecas e instituciones: U$S 21.00
heard on segments of "Sesame Street", "The Suscripciones individuales: U$S 15.00
Electric Company", and on countless TV and Patrocinadroes: U$S 30.00
radio commercials. He was written special (Excepcion: Ano I, nos. 1-2-3 U$S 25.00)
material for Ethel Smith, Charlie Parker, Tito
Puente, Edmundo Ros, Slim Gaillard, Eddie
South and many other top entertainers.
Billy Taylor has written twelve books on
jazz and jazz piano playing. Published by
Charles Hansen and reprinted many times,
they may be found in music stores through­
out the country. Of a less technical nature are
STONY HILLS
various articles written by Taylor for Cue,
Downbeat, and the Saturday Review of Liter­
ature magazines and for the book, "Esquire's
World of Jazz." news & reviews of the small press
"Hi, this is Billy Taylor and this is jazz." That
simple lined opened the radio shows which . maintains the clear thought and valuable informa­
did so much to open up the jazz scene in New tion similar reviews sorely lack.” — Home Planet News
York. Taylor was a disc jockey on WLIB,
later becoming program director and gen­
eral manager of that station. He was the first
black artist to host a daily show on a major
New York radio station, WNEW, and is cur­
rently hosting special music programs and
interviews for Mobil Oil heard over EBC, the
National Educational Network. Taylor was Interviews, Poetry, Reviews, News, Photos...
producer and host of “The Billy Taylor
Show," a half-hour weekly jazz program Coming Up: A look at nuclear power & now
which ran for one year on Channel 47 in
New York. He is a contributing editor, a
SMALL PRESS NEWS
Single copy: $2.00
member of the production team as well as an a monthly newsletter of small
on-camera performer on two weekly shows Subscription: $4 press information & commen­
— "Black Journal", which is viewed nation­ tary, edited by Diane Kruchkow
ally on PBS and "Sunday", which is seen in — “the I.F. Stone of the small •
the New York area on NBC's Channel 4. In Still available: #10 - THE BEATS, with
the TV series "The Subject Is Jazz", Taylor de­ Holmes, Huncke, Tytell, Joans. Charters. press.” (Downeast Librarian)
monstrated the technical aspects of jazz and McNally, Nicosia & others — $5/year.
the evolution of the art form. Through the
radio and TV media, Billy Taylor has become
Weeks Mills
the country's leading spokesman for jazz, Anti-Reaganomics Offer: $12 will get you 2 years of Stony Hills
New Sharon, ME
which he considers to be America's classical and 1 year of Small Press News.
04955
music. 23
 DANCE MUSIC IN THE
FIFTIES
By Robert Farris Thompson
reprinted from
Saturday Review, March 11.1961
F. Scott Fitzgerald began the the tradition
of labeling decades by dance music when he
called the Twenties the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald
was being more intuitive than musicological
but the term fit. Jazz was indeed the dance
music of flappers and philosophers. But what
of the Fifties? Can we determine its specific
symbol? for the popular music of that decade
was as baffling as it was vast. Even in the days
when Zelda Fitzgerald was shouting "My hips
are going wild!"—presumably to the rhythm
of jazz or near-jazz—there were a few rival
musics. The tango, for example. But the Fif­
ties were much more competitive. Glancing
quickly at the leading contenders we find
rock-and-roll (c. 1955-59), mambo (the en­
tire decade), hillbilly (the entire decade), cha-
cha-cha (1953-59), merengue (1954-59),
rhythm-and-blues (the entire decade), and
calypso (1956-57).
Competition for the title of "Dance Music of
the Fifties" has resembled a steeplechase, a
sort of musicological Grand National, with
calypso the dark horse and heavy betting on
rock-and-roll. Therefore, it seemed appro­
priate to arrange the race according to pre­
cedents established by Jazz Age. These were
the principal barriers:
1. Evidence of a fresh musical language.
2. Evidence of an accompanying
choreography, improvised and exciting.
3. Proof of a world impact.
4. Unusual quality.
At least five entries tackled this course, but
by December, 1959, two alone remained.
Hillbilly's performance, for example, was
brave but ill-fated. Hillbilly or country music,
a nasal ain '/-flavored style of singing that add­
ed zest to the radios of the rural night, traced
ultimately back to the ballads of Elizabethan
England. It established an urban impact dur­
ing the Fifties, prompting Jacques Barzun to
dub the genre "city-billy music." The down­
fall of this delightful quasi-rural music came
toward the end of the race. As the musical
mascot of the American G.I., hillbilly travel­
ed the world and took root in West Germany
where hillbilly Gasthauser were legion. In
Japan hillbilly and rockabilly singers were
the sensation of adolescent Osaka, Kobe,
and Tokyo despite the hazards of transliterat­
ing the non-Japanese "1" into "r." Thus "Love
Me Tender" as sung at Tokyo's Kyoritsu
Theatre became "Rub Me Tender." But
hillbilly had not fathered a cycle of dances, as
had jazz in the Twenties, swing in the Thirties.
With hillbilly eliminated, eyes search out a
dark horse. But calypso craze (roughly Sep­
tember, 1956, through August, 1957) was
altogether too brief to qualify.
Merengue was a stronger challenger than
calypso because it enjoyed the practical sup­
port of New York's teeming Puerto Rican
24 population. Via the Puerto Ricans, merengue
(actually the national dance of the Dominican
Republic) diffused into the USA at large and
Arthur Murray was soon busy teaching non­
Latin Americans how to cope with its gimpy
style. But merengue was a nearly 100-year-
old form and thus could not fairly be assigned
to any one decade.
With the elimination of merengue only
rock-and-roll and Afro-Cuban remained.
The two genres took the first obstacle with
egual aplomb. Both were essentially new
dance musics, native to the Fifties, both came
from blooded stock.
Rock-and-roll, of course, stemmed from
the rural blues of Afro-American music. Jazz
historian Marshall Stearns has signalized
blues singers Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lead-
belly, Sonny Terry, Blind Willie Johnson, and
Big Bill Broonzy as marking the transition
from rural and urban blues to what he calls
"proto-rock-and-roll." In the Twenties and
Thirties blues shouted over a roaring rhythm
base sold widely in Negro neighborhoods
under the rubric of "Race Records." Trade
papers in 1952 started—under pressure—to
call the form "rhythm-and-blues" and finally
around 1955 the name changed to rock-and-
roll.
What made rock-and-roll a new music?
The answer lay in its blending process. With
the rise of Elvis Presley in the winter of
1955-56, country music, gospel singing, and
Tin Pan Alley merged for the first time with
rhythm-and-blues. Overlapping call-and-
response singing, triplets, fast boogie-
woogie patterns, honking tenor saxophones,
self-consciously sexy lyrics, and exagger­
ated afterbeats coalesced in a thousand re­
cording sessions and for better or worse a de­
vastating new sound was bom.
Mambo, musically the most interesting
form of the Afro-Cuban music of the Fifties,
like rock-and-roll traced back to folk antece­
dents. The Twenties were the golden age of
son, a rural music from the east of Cuba that
channeled African percussion and a simple
rondo form into Havana in 1916. Musicians
on tres guitars adorned the execution of their
sones with fiercly swinging staccato phrasing
that was passed down from musician to musi-
Tito Puento as he appeared in 1979 at VARC Caribbean Expressions Festival
cian, from instrument to instrument, to turn
up finally in the bass and piano improvisa­
tions of Antonio Arcano's band. In 1940 Ar-
cano dominated the Cuban dance band
world. Hot son-tempered variants spanned
the Forties, from the flute of Arcano to the
trumpet of Arsenio Rodriguez's "devil music"
to the saxophones of Perez Prado. By 1945
the trend was called "mambo," a word bor­
rowed from Afro-Cuban cult vocabularies.
The most exciting development of the
mambo took place in the Fifties. Perez Prado
popularized the rhythm on a heroic scale in
Mexico City (1950-53) with an orchestral
mambo that crossed the brass of progressive
jazz with staccato mambo "riffing" on sax.
The jazzy Prado mambo demanded — and
got — dance-floor pyrotechnics. Meanwhile,
in New York City, Tito Puente, Machito, Tito
Rodriguez and other "Latin" bandleaders
worked out concise, well-integrated blends
of swing, bop, sweet music, and mambo. In
the process a new United States music
emerged, a fusion of Havana and Spanish
Harlem, as native to the Fifties as
Cinemascope.
Cha-cha-cha was “born" in Havana
around 1948 when an ambitious young com­
poser named Enrique Jorrin streamlined the
structure of the danzon, a warhorse among
Cuban dances, leaving only its sixteen-bar
introduction and adding a highly palatable
alternation of flute passages and unison
vocals. The cha-cha-cha sped north to New
York in early 1954 where its flutes, luiro
(gourd percussion instrument), and lack of
syncopation were eventually absorbed
within a mambo framework.
How do they fare on the second lap of the
competition? Both stimulated the creation of
fresh choreography. Around 1953, accord­
ing to dance historian Art Silva, a new dance
popped up among West Coast teen-agers:
the Bop. The Bop bore a fascinating resem­
blance to both the Charleston and the Trini­
dadian King Sailor and found the inspiration
for its extroverted movement in the heavy
off-beats of rock-and-roll. The Bop became
the rock-and-roll dance par excellence (hav-
ing nothing to do with the jazz music of -the teen-age dancers, teen-age record consum­ seriously impaired the guality of rock-and-
ers. For the first time in history most of the roll. On the other hand, as thoughtfull a jazz
same name). During the period 1955-57 a
globe was presented with a sharply age- critic as Nat Hentoff could find in rock-and-
peak in Bop dancing was achieved in Dallas.
Rock-and-roll blared incessantly in Dallas graded set of songs. But this was the fact roll an "answer to the psychological needs of
which seemed to jeopardize rock-and-roll's a disturbed generation and not a conspiracy
nightclubs—The 3 to 12 (now closed),
pretensions to the musical leadership of the of payola." What rock-and-roll lacked in
Louanne's, the It'll Do—where young collegi-
Fifties. For the Jazz Age was based on a mar­ guality it furnished in extroversion.
ates improvised the Rabelaisian chore­
ket including but not largely restricted to Brought to our shores by the Puerto
ography of the Texas Bop (banned, they say,
adolescents. Only when rock-and-roll was Ricans, complementing a global epoch as
in Memphis). Uproarious dance cycles sur­
sung by artists of the stature of Joe Turner, the first large-scale merger of North-
faced, to the delight of the young and the hor­
ror of the old, and doubtless the most in­ Ray Charles, La Vem Baker or Ruth Brown American song and dance with the melodic
did its market widen and include collectors rhythms of Latin America, penetrating our
famous was "The Freeze," which seemingly
past the age of discretion. Mature Negro vo­ culture deeply, Afro-Cuban over the past
pantomined an out-of-control pneumatic
calists kept rock and roll in the running. decade became part of the American way of
drill.
life. Mambo and cha-cha-cha were the dance
Negro New York fashioned rock-and-roll There was nothing age-graded about the
music of the Fifties.
choreography of its own. The Fish was a international conquest of mambo and cha-
Certain elements, perhaps nationalist, per­
sensuous animal dance and the Slop cir­ cha-cha. From the "night-long mambo party"
haps retardataire, will doubtless resist the in­
culated the parties of young Harlem. Girls of Britain's Princess Alexandra to the coffee­
clusion of Afro-Cuban as a native idiom on
performing the Slop pulled their skirts up to houses of Tokyo where intellectuals dis­
the grounds that it does not reflect our culture
knee level and switched their posteriors to sected the latest cha-cha-cha of Naoteru
as did jazz or swing, Charleston or Lindy. But
and fro.
Misago, young and old participated in the since the Puerto Ricans and naturalized
A head-on collision of a variety of dance
Afro-Cuban scene. In Bogota, Columbia, an Cuban-Americans (American citizens all)
traditions Cuban, Puerto Rican, and United
avantgarde writer styled his works mambo- were responsible for the bulk of the mambo
States Negro sired the American mambo.
letras, while in the USA the marvel of the Cat­ blending in New York and Puerto Rico pro­
For the first time in United States history peo­
skills were the cha-chaing grandparents. By per (at all times on American soil), strongly
ple were gyrating to the beat of a genuine
1959 Afro-Cuban had even invaded the seconded by American Italians, Jews, and
international hybrid. The blending process
adolescent heartland of rock-and-roll and Negroes, and since the mortar of their mix­
was not so much caused by the great Puerto
teen-agers began to cha-cha on Dick Clark's tures were pure Americana-swing, bop,
Rican influx of 1945-60 as intensified by it.
American Bandstand. Afro-Cuban, like Lindy, and tap—it seems reasonable to char­
Actually, the mixing had started at least a
modern jazz, bridged the generations acterize their work as an American hybrid,
year before the migration began, a double
everywhere. borrowing from Cuba many traits but
synthesis, in Spanish Harlem and on the
Rock-and-roll falls at the final hurdle. No elaborated into final form in our largest city.
island proper. Bilingual New York Puerto
one could deny the skill and charm of Elvis If the American Negro gave us jazz, our new­
Ricans (Pedro Aguilar, Joe Vega, Tommy
Presley or the taste and economy of Joe Tur­ est minority, the American latino, gave us
Diaz), either bom in the city or taken there at
ner. But the best of the rock-and-rollers seem­ mambo and cha-cha-cha. At the Palladium
an early age, merged jazz dance and Afro-
ed powerless before the triumphant vulgarity (and elsewhere) during the Fifties Joe Vega
Cuban traditions, which they knew with
of the genre at large. Songwriters who mamboed with two religious medallions
equal intimacy. Thus, while Tito Puente (him­
manipulated their clients cynically with class­ jangling together inside his shirt—one Jewish
self New York bom) scored swing-influenced
room com, disc jockey whose promotion of (a gift from his favorite partner), the other
saxes over hot Afro-Cuban guajeos on piano
recordings was based on fraud and bribery, Roman Catholic. It was a splendid symbol of
and bass, Aguilar and Vega cross-fertilized
and shirtless musicians performing while pro­ the interaction of minorities at the heart of the
mambo with tap. Lindy, Charleston, and
ne were all too typical of the forces which mambo world.
shimmy. They had learned their jazz danc­
ing, for the most part, at the Harlem Savoy.
Review
Meanwhile in Puerto Rico, whose Constitu­
tion duly notes as a "determining factor in
life" the coexistence of the "two great
cultures of the American Hemisphere," a
handful of youngsters led by Andy Vasquez
embraced American motion picture preci­
sion dancing (a la Fred Astaire and Gower
Champion) at the same time that they im­
mersed themselves in the bodily quicksilver
of Afro-Cuban. When Vasquez and his peers
Latin American Literature and Arts
joined the great migration north and arrived
at the Palladium Ballroom on Broadway, the
two coeval Puerto Rican trends—jazz dance
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islands—came together under one roof.
Published three times a year. Back issues available.
Cultural ferment was inevitable
Near the end of the Fifties rock-and-roll
stumbled and almost fell. It was not that rock-
and-roll had not established a world impact. NAME
In Communist East Germany, in fact. The Big
Beat was so popular among teenagers that ADDRESS
the Ministry of Culture felt constrained to
counterattack with an ersatz proletarian
dance called the Lipsi. In West Germany,
A publication of the Center for Inter-American Relations
Britain, and Japan the patterns of rock-and- 680 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10021
roll actively were identical: teen-age singers, 25
 "The Ebb and Flow of
Bebop: fl Concise
Personal History"
By Raymond McKethan
What is bebop?
First of all, the term "bop" had been used in
the Black community in reference to fighting
someone, as in "I'm gonna bop you in your
mouth."Today the expression "bop" still sur­
vives in the usage of "ditty-bop" for teenager,
or "he bopped on down the street." For me
the word, in all of its usages, has always car­
ried with it a connotation of "one who resists."
The musical term "bebop" was first used in
reference to Black American classical music
played by a handful of musicians in Harlem,
N. Y.C. primarily at Minton's Playhouse in the
early 1940's. Musicians had employed the
words "re-bop and be-bop" when they
mouthed or "Scatted" the 8th notes in a mu­
sical phrase to each other. Bebop then be­
came used to describe the result of the refine­
ment of the smaller combo structure that Col­
eman Hawkins vanguarded. Key musicians
who helped to form this music were: Charlie
Christian, Buddy Fleet, Thelonius Monk,
Charlie Mingus, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell,
Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clark,
Art Blakey and Max Roach.
The dance bebop was done by Blacks in
the Harlem community center dances,
1950-1959. In 1959 Charlie Parker was thir­
ty years old and most of the Harlem youth
dancing to 78 rpm records of his were six­
teen to twenty-one years old. The dance be­
bop is in fact a highly syncopated Lindy-hop.
Just as the sister dance of the Lindy is the fox­
trot, the sister dance of bebop is "Walkin' the
Floor."
Perhaps because Black American classical
music was first played predominantly in
whore houses, it was called "Jazz." At any
rate, it was definitely a case of the right thing
done in the wrong place. The right place
might have been in the early African-Chris­
tian churches. The balance of the right thing
done in the right place was finally reached on
an institutional level in the U.S.A, when the
Savoy ballroom in Harlem opened in 1926.
This ballroom became key to the further con­
structive development of the Black American
classical idiom.
The principal bebop musicians were
rebels. They were basically all well-seasoned
big-band musicians and when they came to­
gether at Minton's Playhouse they deliberate­
ly put together;, something "Whitey can't
steal!" These bebop musicians were tired of
remaining poor while white musicians who
poorly imitated them became rich as a result
of doing so. Many lesser black musicians in
craft hurt the bebop musicians by also im-
nitating them without studying and learning
the structure of the music and dance by
misrepresenting this form.
Bebop music is the refinement of big band
Black American classical music just as the
dance bebop is the refinement of the Lindy-
hop. Big band, most specifically, Black,
26 American classical music reached its peak in
the ballroom, the Savoy. Bebop should also
have been based in the Savoy or another
ballroom in Harlem such as the Renaissance,
for example, and not in the night clubs of
52nd Street.
1 had danced at community centers whether
Dizzy Gillespie — Town Hall, Sept. 1981
Photo: Marco Kalisch
After World War II, the excuse for disconti­
nuing "big bands" was that they were too
expensive to maintain. They no longer ap-
appeared in the community but were seen in
concerts in other countries, often on State
Department tours. In the late forties, the be­
bop quintets moved their base of operation
from the community to the clubs on 52nd
Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
They no longer connected directly with the
younger couples in the community who had
danced to their music on records. Of course,
by now we all know and have witnessed the
cultural suicide resultant of elders severing
themselves from the young of the com­
munity.
When the bop quintet left the communities
in 1947, Sonny Til and the Orioles had al­
ready prophetically recorded "It's Too Soon
to Know." Dr. Jive, Phil Gordon, the first Dr.
Jive, became a universal father figure for
Black youth, monitoring community court­
ships. He told where to go. Who to listen to.
When to dance. The Orioles were at the
vanguard of R&B singing groups who came
to the community and to whom the youth
danced en masse at dance halls. Harlem was
a community that showed the country how to
sustain itself. Just as the country had danced
to the Lindy-hop, begun in Harlem in the
30's, the country soon responded — via Dick
Clark and his American Bandstand from
which Black teenagers in Philadelphia were
barred until recent years—to the
phenomenon of the R&B singing groups in
the 50's. The music had become "Rock &
Roll." And Dick Clark was clearly not the
father figure of Black America.
Since the back-up bebop quintets had
gone to 52nd Street, the R&B singing groups
were accompanied by older musicians from
the Big Band Swing era. In 1958, however,
the Savoy was torn down. The singing
groups no longer had a place in the commun­
ity to perform where youth could dance.
Since the official Black church in America
had never condoned dancing as being in
harmony with God, Black youth in Harlem
they were run by the Catholic, the Jewish, or
the Board of Education. I was twenty-three
years old, in 1959, when strangely, most of
these centers closed. In a matter of mere
months, many young people in Harlem were
on drugs, it seemed to me. My friends were
among them. I remember it well. My father
was a minister and preached their funerals.
The night club was the old winebag and
bebop was the new wine! It could not hold.
When the bebop musicians took the right
thing, bebop music, to the wrong place, the
52nd Street night clubs, they cut their own
throats! Many of the best bop musicians be­
came heroin addicts and died prematurely.
Largely because of this poor example, I have
always thought, many of the black youth of
Harlem became addicts and died premature­
ly! Dope and bop became synonymous. The
Savoy ballroom was torn down in 1958 and
the Harlem community centers, P.S. 68, P.S.
43, P.S. 113, St. Charles Catholic Church
Center and St. Mark's Catholic Church
Center were closed to the Harlem youth in
1959.
The tripartite cultural matrix: big band, be­
bop quintet, and R&B singing once worked
for us—culturally, spiritually, economically.
The careful usage of our resources had work­
ed. When we turned our backs on this phe­
nomenon, I dare say even this cultural for­
mula, something vital to our survival died.
About The Author
Raymond McKethan, folklorist, dancer,
and "danceographer" (his term for one who
studies all he can about dance) originally
hails "from Harlem hospital via North Caroli­
nian parents. "He began his study ofdance at
the age of four with Roger Herbert, a family
friend who was also a bouncer at the Savoy,
Smalls Paradise, and the Park Palace Ball­
room. He attended P.S. 68 in Central Har­
lem. Years of sitting between his mother and
father every weekend at the Apollo served as
the basis of his early exposure to dance and
afforded him many models of ideals and
goals to work toward. Later, through his
familial tie with Roger Herbert, he was able to
gain access to the famed Savoy club of Har­
lem. There he came to know personally the
dancers, musicians, singers, and managers
who made musical history in the forties and
fifties. As a teenager, he once served as Tito
Puente's band boy's helper. It has been a life
goal of Raymond to see Black social dance
professionalized, taught, analyzed,
understood and preserved.
To the Close of the Fifties: A Personal Account of the Impact of Music
and Dance on Young Lives in Harlem.
(1947) "It's Too Soon To Know"—recorded
(c. 1947-1950) First "Dr. Jive", Phil Gordon,
becomes father figure for Black “
youth as disc jockey on WWRL.
(1950) 2nd "Dr. Jive", Tommy Smalls takes — (1955) Charlie Parker dies
over.
(1960) Dr. Jive goes off the air.
—By Raymond McKethan
(1926) Savoy Ballroom opens and becomes
center for all Southern-based Black
social dance in Harlem.
(1927) The Lindy-Hop becomes institu­
tionalized as symbolic of Black
Southern marriage in art form.
(1940) Machito and his "Afro-Cubans" band
organized in New York with Mario
Bauza as director. A vital Black
American/Cuban cultural link was
becoming established.
by the Orioles, marking the begin­
ning of major groups such as "The
Spaniels, The Harptones, The Soli­
taires, The Cadillacs, The Diamonds,
Black Cuban, Chano Pozo featured
in big band of Dizzy Gillespie at the
Apollo.
(1950)--------------------------------------- (c. 1950-1959) The "Bop", "The Mambo",-]
"Walkin' the Floor" danced by 16-21
Tito Puento of Puerto Rico signs his year olds at youth centers throughout
Tico Records contract and is pro­ Harlem: P.S. 113, P.S. 68, P.S. 43,
moted as King of the Mambo, a St. marks, St. Charles. Basketball
Cuban-based musical form. games followed by social dances
took place at the Renaissance Ball­
room, an institutionalized community
event for nearly two decades.
(1956) (1956) “He's Gone" by the Chantels of the
Bronx marks ascendancy of first ma­
(1957-1960) Promoter Alan Freed arbitrar­ jor all women's urban R&B group.
ily changes the name of "Rhythm and Lilian Leach and the Mellows of the
Blues" to "Rock 'n Roll." The seed is Bronx follow soon thereafter, becom­
sown for "cultural crossover" eco­ ing first prominent male group with a
nomically. female lead from NY.
(1958)----------------------------------------------- Little Anthony and the Im­
The Savoy Ballroom is torn perials from Brooklyn come to promi­
down. nence singing "Tears On My Pillow".
(1959) All major community centers
in Harlem closed, marking the end of
an era.
(Circa 1950-1959) Basketball games fol­
lowed by social dances took place at
the Renaissance Ballroom, an institu-
tionalized community event for near­
ly two decades.
27

'82 SUNSPLflSH REPORT
By David Jackson
In the mid-1970s many Jamaicans thought
it was not a good idea to promote reggae be­
cause it drew attention to the harsher and
problematic reality of the lives of so many of
the people in the island nation. With its mes­
sage of black alienation, urban poverty, po­
litical oppression, and protest, reggae con­
tradicted the enticing Jamaica Tourist Board
advertisements ‘ depicting the island as a
sultry, sensuous, sundrenched earthly para­
dise. The Jamaican government even bann­
ed reggae from the airwaves for awhile in the
'70s, or restricted it to airplay between mid­
night and dawn, but reggae steadily and un-
predictably gained such international recog­
nition that those at home once fearful or
scornful of it have come to acknowledge it as
a powerful social, cultural and economic
force to be reckoned with. Bob Marley and
the Wailers, Peter Tosh, Toots and the
Maytals, Jimmy Cliff, Burning Spear, Third
World and other reggae musicians exported
Jamaican culture to a larger more apprecia­
tive audience. The Jamaican Tourist Board
obviously recognizes this fact and now pro­
motes reggae as an attraction for tourists.
This was evident by their support of the re­
cent fifth Reggae Sunsplash, the international
music festival, which took place in Montego
Bay's Jarret Park from August 3rd to the 7th,
1982.
Although the majority of the more than
100,000 people who attended the four
nights of reggae concerts and two beach par­
ties at Cornwall Beach were Jamaicans, there
appeared to be approximately a couple
thousand tourists or visitors present, includ­
ing Americans, Germans, Japanese, British,
and folks from the other Caribbean islands.
But the 1982 Reggae Sunsplash was hardly
suited for the casual tourist only interested in
swimming in the aquamarine translucence of
the Caribbean Sea, or sipping Planters
Punch while lolling poolside in the midday
sun. The festival actually was a test of en­
durance to which only the most ardent, Spar­
tanlike reggae devotees, or masochists,
would voluntarily subject themselves — or a
curious journalist.
Reggae Sunsplash challenged the commit­
ment to the music of non-Jamaicans accus­
tomed to even the most minimal creature
comforts. There were a few thousands seats
available in the $20.00 (Jamaican money) re­
served section,T^ut most people had to stand
and mill around throughout the duration of
each night's concert, which generally ran
from about 8 P.M. to 6 or 7 A.M. the next
morning. It rained a couple of afternoons
during Sunsplash (Moonsplash actually), so
the ground was damp, and unless you had
some newspaper, a blanket, or bought foam
rubber cushions being sold at some of the
concessions, sitting on the field was not
appealing. Although there were those who
stayed up, and stood up, the whole time,
nevter showing signs of exhaustion or waning
28 enthusiasm, at about 3 A.M. each night a lot
of the crowd would begin to tire, and groups
of men, women and children slept amidst
mounds of garbage throughout the park.
The restroom facilities weren't adequate for
the number of people in the audience, and
many festival-goers relieved themselves
wherever they could. Jamaican police with
machine guns and dogs, and a restless, po­
tentially unruly crowd outside Jarret Park,
and pickpockets and other thieves on the in­
side, didn't help soothe anxieties. And there
were the usual technical problems and long
delays between some of the acts.
But reggae vias why the people came to
Sunsplash, and with close to fifty groups on
the bill there was more than enough music to
make up for any discomforts.
Twenty-five thousand turned out opening
night, Wednesday night, August 3rd, for a
history lesson in the development of reggae
that featured discourses by, among others,
Byron Lee and the Dragonnaires, one of Ja­
maica's major and long-lasting bands; the
two deejays who popularized the talk-over
"dub" record in the early '70s, U Roy and Big
Youth; the mesmerising Burning Spear (Win­
ston Rodney); and Toots and the Maytals.
The program also included Jamaican
favorites Cedric Brooks, Roy Shirley, and
John Holt, who are little known outside their
native land. Brooks opened the show with a
scintillating, action packed reggae display,
including songs as "One Draw" and "Mek Wi
Jam." Shirley delighted the audience with his
nostalgic presentation of apparent Jamaican
oldies but gdodies as "Endlessly" and
"Golden Festival." Holt brought sitting
listeners to their feet with "Sweetie Come
Brush Me," which was number one on the
Jamaican charts at the time of the festival; and
U Roy proved his mastery of dub music with
such hits as "Don't Care For Me At All," and
his two encore numbers, "Going Back
Home" and "On The Beach." But the first real
highlight of the evening was Big Youth, one
of the hippest and Dreadest reggae masters
around, who is legendary for his gold and
diamond studded teeth and motorbike
Wheelies as he is for his Rasta anthems
"House of Dreadlocks" and "Natty Cultural
Dread." With his band, The Archangels, Big
Youth rocked Jarret Park for 90 minutes,
electrifying the audience with his chanting,
recitation of Psalms, and songs like "Africa,"
"River Jordan" and "Every Nigger Is A Star."
A fashion show featuring outfits by Jamai­
can designers preceded the hour-long set of
Burning Spear, who equalled Big Youth for
dramatic action and hypnotic, passionate
techno-primal music. With a horn section
seemingly fusing martial music with Afro­
rock and Highlife riffs, and a guitarist gener­
ating beautiful electric syncopated reggae
energy, Burning Spear went through a series
of chants and songs extolling Rastafari. He
was one of the most political, nationalistic,
and innovative artists to appear at Reggae
Sunsplash, and is a shamanistic performer in
the same class as the late Bob Marley. Spear
was followed by Toots and the Maytals.
The Maytals are no longer Jerry Mathias
and Raleigh Gordon, who worked with
Frederick "Toots" Hibbert for close to twenty
years to make the group one of Jamaica's
prime vocal trios. A female duo backed up
the founding father of reggae in a two hour
conclusion to the first concert that included
some of the all-time great reggae numbers
such as "Pressure Drop," "Funky Kingston,"
and “Time Enough." At times Toots sounded
so much like Otis Redding and Sam Cooke,
two of his main influences, that if you closed
your eyes, it was easy to imagine that they
had been resurrected and were there per­
forming on stage. I've seen Toots put on a
better show in New York, but by the end of
his performance he had turned it into an
early morning holy roller, reggae sunrise
funk revival, goosing the audience with
shouts of ecstasy and his James Brown-
inspired dance steps.
Other performers who guided the Spirit­
ually thirsty to the well of black music over
the next three days of Reggae Sunsplash,
and let them take a long, cool drink of emo­
tional intensity and a synthesis of soul music
and African and Afro-Caribbean rhythms,
included Israel Vibration, a trio of harmoniz­
ing Rasta paraplegics; the zany Eak-A-
Mouse, best known for his hit ”Wha' Do Dem
(Virgin Girl)"; and the militant Mutabaruka,
whose song "Don't Stay In A White Man's
Country Too Long" reflected a strong sense
of pan-Africanism which is an integral part of
reggae, but wasn't too pronounced in much
of the music heard during the festival.
Mutabaruka introduced the tune by announ­
cing to the audience that the producers of
Sunsplash tried to discourage performers
from making whites present uncomfortable
with any overtly anti-white numbers.
Other personal favorites on the various
nightly programs were the group Chalice,
who mixed reggar, rock n' roll, and soul in a
very polished, pop-oriented presentation;
Papa Ritchie; Brigadier Jerry; Steel Pulse;
and Taj Mahal. I never lasted past 5:30 A.M.
after the first night, so consequently I missed
more than a few acts who from all reports
were exceptionally good, including the Blue
Riddim Band, a white group from Topeka,
Kansas, who allegedly can mimic the best of
the Jamaican reggae musicians, note for
note; and the Mighty Diamonds, who are said
to have left the crowd screaming for more
when they closed out the third day of the fes­
tival. Although I saw him standing backstage
talking with fans and looking shy but pleased
with himself, I missed seeing Yellow Man', the
young albino dub phenomena, on stage. He
had five hits on the Jamaica Top Ten during
Sunsplash. I bought his album Duppy or
Gunman right before I left Jamaica, and have
been listening a lot to the cuts "Natty Sat
Upon A Rock," "Lost Mi Love," and "Jamaica
Is A Little Miami," for their rhythmic vocals
and catchy lyrics.
At one of the press conferences the organi­
zers of sunsplash held, a journalist complain­
ed that the "bigger" reggae performers like
Third World, Jimmy Cliff, and Peter Tosh,
weren't on the bill. But, as Tony Johnson, one
of the producers, pointed out, Yellow Man is
the biggest reggae artist in Jamaica at the
present, and, besides, the festival was started
to promote the more indigenous talent, and
not as a showcase for internationally known
acts like Third World (who was on tour in
Japan at the time of Sunsplash).
I'm certain a lot of people were disap­
pointed that Third World couldn't be there
(I'm not one of them), or that Stevie Wonder
didn't turn up like he did in 1981 and joined
TW and Rita Marley in a sentimental tribute
to Bob Marley. Wonder's guest appearance
with Third world and the Widow Marley may
have been the crowning of last year's Sun­
splash, but the distinction for the most out­
standing performance for '82 goes to Steel
Pulse, England's fastest rising reggae group.
Steel Pulse—consisting of David "Lion
Heart" Hinds, lead singer and rhythm guitar­
ist, Selwyn Brown, keyboards, Basil Gab-
bidon, lead guitarist, bass player Ronnie Mc­
Queen, percussionist Phonso Martin, and
Steve "Grizzly" Nesbitt on drums—has
evolved from being a "cover" band, imitat­
ing the Wailers, to an almost ideal dialectic
group, expanding the pop potential of Jamai­
can-based reggae sounds, while creating a
new music which confronts the special pro­
blems facing black Britons. With a sustained
rock guitar sound wailing away in the
background, harmonies, overlapping with
Hinds's lead vocals, and styles adopted from
other kinds of music, Steel Pulse are icon­
clasts taking reggae in a different direction.
Although the members of the group claim
to be Rastas, and a lot of their press rambl­
ings is traditional, black separatist Garvey
propaganda, the lyrics for most of the
original compositions don't include too many
neo-religious metaphors; focusing instead on
social realist themes like the racist National
Front, the British counterpart to the KKK, or
black revolutionary martyrs like George
Jackson and Steve Biko. Steel Pulse isn't the
only British reggae group protesting racism
in Britain in their music. The Cimarons's
"Rock Against Racism," Linton Kwesi
Johnson's "Dread Beat An' Blood," and the
Blazing Sons's "Chant Down National Front"
(and the leftwing documentary Blacks Britan­
nica) are other examples of agitprop material
that has been produced in England steadily
since 1978.
David Hinds has "charisma," what the
British critic George Melly once described
as, “. . .a form of magic halo emanating from
objects, people or places which give them
power and above their measurable
qualities." And the group as a whole has
great stage presence, with their colorful
Afro-Samauri harem girl outfits and idiosyn­
cratic dread hairstyles. But as I watched them
perform, I couldn't help thinking that their
protest lyrics, and those of so many other
reggae entertainers, are the very thing that
will perhaps eventually make reggae obso­
lete someday. Granted, there are several
kinds of reggae music, including romantic
ballads and zany boastful rockers dub rap,
but so much of it is black protest oriented that
I'm afraid reggae will suffer the same fate as and the Hudson River Revival, which is one
the black social realism literature of the of the cleanest festivals I've ever attended. I
1960s, and the civil rights and anti-war folk was really bothered by all the trash and gar­
music of the '60s. That is, reggae is so bage at Sunsplash, so much so that it took
"topical," that once the situations and circum­ away from my enjoyment of the music
occasionally. While some of the festival­
stances that the musicians deal with in their
lyrics change, or don't change but folks get goers may have been taken with the exotic,
tired of hearing about it, the music will lose local-color, "backward," developing nation
most of its present audience who are motivat­ quality of the Sunsplash setting—with Ital
ed by consumer trends, fads, styles and food and T-shirts concessions, I found it bor­
marketing strategies, regardless of how ing and depressing at times.
much they say they aren't. Reggae will have I shouldn't be so hard on the poor festival, it
to keep changing and modifying itself, other­ wasn't that bad. But I wouldn't go again un­
wise the only reggae that will be heard 20 less the producers make some serious
years from now will be on "reggae nostalgia" changes in staging and maintenance. Fortun­
shows like the 60s blues revival, and the pre­ ately, this year's Sunsplash was videotaped
sent soul music oldies revues. So far "propa­ by the KRS Group out of Washington, D.C.,
ganda" is the main reggae motif. If Steel and audiences in Europe, Africa, and Asia,
Pulse doesn't get sidetracked by all their pan­ will have an opportunity to purchase eight
African rhetoric, they might just save the one-hour music programs, without all of the
music from a narrowly defined concept, and shortcomings of the actual event. Five
make it more searching and individualistic, 90-minute specials will be created for
more art-oriented. American cable TV systems in addition to a
Not only is reggae “parochial" in outlook, "Best of Sunsplash" compilation program.
but I discovered at Sunsplash that Jamaicans The KSR group brought together an im­
aren't cosmopolitan when it comes to other pressive set of credentials to carry out its goal
forms of black music. Taj Mahal, the Ameri­ of producing "the best reggae TV show ever
can bluesman and African diaspora ethno­ made." Technical staff and equipment was
musicologist, put on a fantastic show at the provided by the London-based Trilion Com­
festival, doing Howlin' Wolf imitations, reg­ pany, whose credits include concerts by
gae, and blends of Calypso and African-in- Black Uhuru, Burning Spear, Bob Marley at
spired fusion music highlighting the trinida- the Rainbow, and Stevie Wonder in Nairobi.
dian steel drum, saxophone, guitar and vo­ The directional and camera staff included a
cals. His was the only wide ranging pan-Afri­ "Mission Impossible" crew from across the
can set of the entire festival. The audience not country: including Stuart Reid, Line Pro­
only didn't know who Taj Mahal was, which is ducer for "Sunsplash '82," who is most noted
something you consider that Taj was one of for his long-standing cable TV series, "Black
the first black Americans to record reggae Time," featuring some of the top jazz and
several years ago, but they didn't seem to get popular artists on the New York City scene.
off on his blues material too much either. He
appeared to be slightly angered by the lack
of recognition, and he performed his songs
with a bitter sweet vengeance. Denice
Williams, the American pop singer known
for songs like "Free" and "Gonna Take A
Miracle, was received well enough by the
crowd, so I can't say their response to Taj was
motivated by any apparent anti-Afro-
American sentiments. I think intellectuals
make a strong case for pan-African unity, but
the regular people are still pretty much lock­
ed into liking what they like, meaning what
they know. The organizers of Reggae
Sunsplash would do well to add more types
of black music from throughout the diaspora
on next year's bill, be it calypso, African ju-ju
music, or Brazilian Samba, to take away the
garney taste of sameness. There was some
talk of adding some Brazilian artists next
time, and more black American acts.
The organizers need to add other kinds of
gg
music just so the festival doesn't become so
predictable that people will not be interested
in attending it in the future, especially foreign
travelers. They also need to go around to va­
rious festivals and see what ideas they can
borrow to make their production more in
keeping with standards set by the likes of
Carifesta, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage
Festival, the Smithsonian Institution's Folklife
festivals, the Caribbean Expressions festivals 29
 fl GALLERY OF THE DRUMS: SPOTLIGHT CUBA
■.

"All of the music of Africa and its instru­

ments are the base, the foundation of the tra­
ditional and contemporary music of Cuba.
The importance of Cuban music is that 80% ■ 'j*, \\
of it is influenced by the musical structure of
African music. It has the same musical pat­
tern, dance, and song functioning simultane­
ously. For example, the SON and
GUAGUANCO. The music of the "son" not
uMI * \i
only includes percussion instruments, it also
has instruments which reflect other cultures
like the guitar and trumpet, etc. The
"guaguanco", however, uses solely percus­ r .v
sion instruments. Even though the names and
rhythms are different, they are derived from
the same base and represent different bran­
ches of the same tree. For this reason, Cuban V
music almost in its entirety—whether tradi­
tional, popular or contemporary—is integrat­ V
*
ed principally by African Traditional music at
its base."

—Roberto Borrell
Photos courtesy of Library Jose Marti of Havana, Cuba.
Bata Set—3
(a) lya — ritual ceremonial drum, low pitch lead drum. The lya drum leads the progression of songs,
always played in between the other drums, played sitting down. Mostly used in Havana, Matanza and
Oriente in Cuba.
(b) ltotele — (right), responds to the call of the lya. Of the three, the most complicated to learn and play.
Medium pitch.
(c) Okonkola (left), highest pitch, maintains the rhythm.

There are different rhythms and chants that are played for each divinity (Orisha).

Trinidad Torregrosa, constructing a Yuka drum.

The Congo rhythm is the same, constant. There are changes in tthe chants to the varied divinities. These
drums are also used for Palo-Makuta which are also Congo rhythi
j .Jims. To play these drums, sticks are used.
THE JOURNAL
Played standing. Mostly used in Havana and Matanza.

OF
Roberto Borell (on drums) y Su Kubata, Drummer,
Eddy Alfonso, demonstrates Roberto 's firm belief
that all drummers must know how to dance.
■Aijp Tambor Yuka (Congo influence)
(a) Caja (one of set of three)

EDITOR'S NOTE:
Afro-Cuban ritual music derives from the
NEGRO HISTORY
Yoruba of Nigeria and the Congos of West
Africa brought to Cuba as slaves. The drum
is central to the ritual traditions ofAfrican cul­
Founded by Carter G. Woodson on January 1, 1916
tures. The responsibility, skill, and precision
of the drummer are fundamental to the com­
munication process in ritual ceremonies.
Throughout the development of popular Individual Subscription — $25 per year
Latin music the influence of the ritual drum
and rhythms has been felt. That influence Institutional Subscription — $30 per year
owes much to the strength and survival of
African belief systems and traditions. Unlike Advertising Rates Furnished Upon Request

1
other Latin cultures, Cuba and Brazil have
been able to maintain, protect, and nurture
their African retentions. Afro-Cuban ritual For further information on subscription and advertisements:
music became a force in the United States in
the early 1950s, the period when drummers JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY
initiated in the traditional music first came
Tambores (complete set) Yuka here. Unquestionably, the impact of that mu­ Box. 721, Morehouse College
(a) Caja — Played always in the middle, lowest pitch sic is being strongly felt in America's urban
(b) Cachimbo — to the right, medium pitch, Atlanta, Georgia 30314
30 centers. The spread of our African retentions
(Contra Tiempo del Ritmo), upbeat.
(c) Mula — to the left, highest pitch. Olooke cannot be stopped, so long as the drum is
Akete'
alive. 31
 from page 3
October 30, 1980
Dear Marta,
I wanted to express, ifbelatedly, my heart­
felt thanks to you, Laura, Melody and the
staff of VARRCRC for your assistance and
support in bringing La Familia Cepeda and
Molly Ahye's Dance Company of Kairi Oya
to Washington. Certainly the program was a
smashing success for all concerned. We
turned away over 300people that night. The
standing-room-only audience attested to the
appeal of both groups to Washingtonians,
and they cheered and shouted their approval
in standing ovations following each perfor­
mance.
Warm regards,
Amina Dickerson
Program Director
Museum ofAfrican Art
Smithsonian Institution
September 11, 1980
Dear. Ms. Vega:
lam encouraging all of my associates, stu­
dents, relatives and friends to attend the var­
ious events in your Center's Caribbean Ex­
pressions Festival. Your September confer­
ences and performances are the most com­
prehensive and in-depth presentation of the
total Caribbean experience (both ■ in the
region and in the diaspora) that I have seen.
You and your staffare to be commended for
your constant endeavors and successes in
connecting and presenting our multidimen­
sional and multilinguistic culture to New
Yorkers and others in a very authentic and
exemplary manner.
Thank You.
Cooperatively,
(Prof.)Magarita A. Samad-Matias
College ofNew Rochelle -
New Resources, Brooklyn Campus
June 30, 1981
Dear Dr. Sims,
We have now received the copy of Caribe
(Dec., 1980 issue) together with the Exhibi­
tion Supplement both of which we are very
happy to add to our Caribbean Collections.
Please accept our thanks.
Yours sincerely,
SamuelB. Bandara
Librarian III 9
Gifts and Exchanges
Uni versify at the West Indies
Mona, Kingston, Jamiaca
July 11, 1980
Dear Ms. Vega:
I have recently received the Caribbean
Exprssions Mini-Festival publicity materials
and would like to thank you for listing the
Jamaica Arts Center as an educational re­
source. lam positive that this year's Festival
will be as tremendously successful as last
32 year's.
Also, as a point of information, I have re­ January 5, 1982
cently been appointed a Charles H. Revson Dear Marta:
Future ofNew York City Fellow for the 1980/ The Visual Arts Research and Resource
1981 Columbia University academic year. I Center Relating to the Caribbean is pro­
have elected to use the fellowship for a
viding opportunities for scholars who are in­
humanities project project related to the terested in and traditional leaders who are . . . Negro Music is the closest approach America has to a folk
African Diaspora. As you can imagine, lam
extremely grateful for the existence of the
"keepers of" the African culturalrenditions in music, and so Negro music is almost as important for the musical
the New Worldto meet, to exchange percep­
Caribbean Center. tions and to document information hereto­ culture of America as it is for the spiritual life of the Negro.
On behalf of the Jamaica Arts Center as fore unavailable. Furthermore, the Center is
well as our constituency, we wish you the
providing opportunity for people of color to
best in your future endeavors. speak about themselves, about their similar­ —Alain Locke
Sincerely, ities and their differences, an opportunity "The Negro And His Music"
Vivian M. Warfield rarely available, in an international forum
such as the world conferences on the Orisa 1936
Executive Director
Jamaica Arts Center tradition.
In closing, I wish to reiterate that the Visual
Arts Research and Resource Center Relating
Dear Mrs. Marta Moreno Vega,
to the Caribbean is providing an essential
lam a fourth grade student. My class is stu­ service in its efforts to document the, ex­
dying different cultures of the world. Would perience of the children of Africa in the
you be able to send me any materials? Diaspora.
Thank you verymuch. Sincerely,
Sincerely,
Prof. Angela Jorge
Louisa Tsvi Covener
Richmond Hill Bilingual-Bicultural Studies Program
College at Old Westbury
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