JAM: August/September 2001 Issue: Storyville

AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ
By Scott Yanow
Miller Freeman, 212 pages (paper), $17.95

Way back in the teens of the last century, Jelly Roll Morton talked about "the Latin tinge" in jazz music -- which he, of course, claims to have invented. W.C. Handy used a habanera rhythm in "St. Louis Blues," and ever after, various Latin beats have been incorporated into American popular song as well as jazz. Duke Ellington famously used them in his own compositions as well as those contributed by Juan Tizol. The big swing bands all rendered Latinate songs of the day such as "Green Eyes," and the bands of Stan Kenton and Woody Herman took the infectious beats to a serious jazz level.

The definitive Afro-Cuban jazz, however, was created in the mid-1940s by Dizzy Gillespie when he added conga player Chano Pozo to his big band. With the collaboration and inspiration of figures such as Mario Bauza and Machito, Gillespie managed a special fusion of bebop and the polyrhythms of Africa as they emerged through Cuba. Some called it "Cubop."

From that point forward, all forms of Latin rhythm were absorbed into the language of jazz -- and scores of Caribbean and Latin American musicians made their way into American jazz. Gillespie, of course, remained a prime mover, continuing to play the music and, equally importantly, discover talent all around the world and feature the exciting new players in his groups. There hardly breathes a jazzman today who has not dipped into a Latin beat, one way or another. Meanwhile, of course, Latinos -- led by major figures such as Tito Puente -- were cooking up in their own special things, in their homelands as well as in communities in the US of A. The music is so pervasive and diverse today that awards are given out not only for Afro-Cuban jazz, but Brazilian and other Latin jazz subcultures.

The primer Scott Yanow offers us here briefly tells the history of the music and its development, then goes on to give short biographies and discographies of dozens and dozens of Latin musicians -- straying well out of the jazz path to include pop-band leaders such as Xavier Cugat and Desi Arnaz. He gives us the greats we know about, such as Perez Prado, Mongo Santamaria, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, David Sanchez and Chico O'Farrill, plus scores more of lesser notoriety, many of whom have a lot to offer if we're to accept his ratings of their recordings. (I took a quick sampling of the discs in the idiom that I have come to know and couldn't find much argument with him, so I'll trust him to a large extent on the stuff I haven't heard.)

He also includes a section featuring bio data and evaluations of selected works of North American players -- everyone from Gene Ammons to Dave Brubeck to McCoy Tyner and more -- who made Latin-oriented albums or even a few tracks. (Somehow he missed one of my favorites, Tadd Dameron, who did a dynamite Afro-Cuban cut with Fats Navarro and Wardell Gray backed by Chino Pozo's bongos.)

The book is then rounded out -- or padded out, as it were -- with Q & A interviews with Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, Cuban saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera and bandleaders Jane Bunnett and Susie Hansen. It's an odd mèlange in this context, and not especially brilliant or enlightening as musician interviews go, though D'Rivera has a few interesting moments.

In his introduction, Yanow defines Afro-Cuban jazz as "the mixture of jazz improvisations with Cuban and African rhythms," then goes on to eschew the more inclusive term "Latin jazz" for various reasons, but the body of the book contradicts that rather narrow definition. The artists he writes about and the music he evaluates are really far broader in scope and concept, despite his claim to the contrary. The musicians come from all over the Americas and from many ancestries -- one of his heroes, Cal Tjader, was born in the US of Scandinavian parents. More importantly, the many rhythms they incorporate go beyond specific Cuban or Afro-Cuban patterns, as you'll find on almost any page.

Apart from the question here of terminologies, the book comes up short in its musical definitions. Yanow, who has published extensively on jazz, limits his specific characterization of the music to instrumentation and rhythm alone -- and even there could have given us at least another paragraph or two about those often complex and stimulating patterns. To my ear, however, there also are a lot of distinctive harmonies involved in Afro-Cuban or Latin jazz, which ought to be noted even in what is clearly an introductory book for lay readers. I would like to find as well some discussion of the differences -- if any exist -- in the Latin players' approach to improvisation. Perhaps there are some -- perhaps not. That's just one kind of question that could have been posed to the players in the interviews or taken up in the text.

Large parts of the book are written in an oversimplified, sometimes very klunky style, granted it is aimed at a lay audience. It lapses here and there into advertising-ese, as in the sappy conclusion to his short historical chapter:

"The future looks bright for this danceable, inventive and fun music in the 21st century!"

Fortunately, there's enough accumulation of fact and detail to more than compensate for its stylistic shortcomings.

-- Don Rose

BOSSA NOVA
by Ruy Castro
Translated by Lysa Salsbury. 372 pages. A Cappella books.

Special to JAM
By Doug Auwarter

In 1992, during my second trip to Brazil, I purchased a wonderful book titled Chega de Saudade by Ruy Castro. This book chronicles the adventures and misadventures of the people who created bossa nova. It's a very amusing, often wry, sometimes even tragic look at the music and culture of Rio de Janeiro in the late '50s and early '60s and offers much insight into this much loved and misunderstood music. It has finally been translated into English and I recently had the opportunity to compare the translation with the original.

The translated version is called Bossa Nova -- The Story of the Music That Seduced the World. The translation, done by Lysa Salsbury of Great Britain, is good, though not without problems. One is the practice of translating the names of indigenous Brazilian musical instruments into names of instruments familiar to North Americans. The cavaquinho (a small 4-string guitar) becomes a "ukulele," an instrument superficially similar, but vastly different in sound and playing technique. Likewise, pandeiro becomes "tambourine," an instrument that is equally different. There is a glossary at the end, and it would have made far more sense to leave these words in Portuguese and include them in the glossary, as there are no English equivalents. However, the worst problems occur when meanings are shifted in such a way that errors are made with factual information. One such occurrence had Aloysio de Oliveira (who co-wrote "Dindi," among others) not even playing the guitar. The sentence "Ele não teve a habilidade no violão, mas teve muito mais experiência" should have read "He didn't have the skill on the guitar, but had much more experience." Instead it read, "He couldn't play guitar…" This is the man who was Carmen Miranda's musical director for her entire professional career. He certainly played guitar, but wasn't familiar with the bossa nova style when he returned to Brazil after Ms. Miranda's death. Had the book been proofread by an expert in bossa nova, these problems could have been eliminated.

Aside from the translation, there are omissions from the original publication. The original discography has been updated, and greatly shortened, to what is available in the US market . This is problematic as several large stores in Brazil are accessible through the internet and ship internationally. Also, many out-of-print albums are re-released in Japan and are similarly available through the internet. This information would be very useful to even a casual collector. The worst omission, however, is the many posters, advertisements, photographs and album covers which help make the original so delightful. This artwork was a big part of the period, much like the psychedelic posters that were a big part of the late '60s, and is described at length in the book. Wouldn't it be great to see some examples of this? Also, few Americans have seen photographs of anyone associated with this music with the exception of Jobim and João Gilberto. As much verbiage is given describing various aspects of the appearance of all the participants, it is a mystery why it was deemed appropriate to omit so many of these great photos.

The book is, nevertheless, a fascinating account of how this music, which has become an integral part of jazz, came to be. It sets the record straight on many account, including the idea held by some Americans that bossa nova was invented by Stan Getz, with a little assistance from Antonio Carlos Jobim. In fact, the account in this book of those US recordings of "The Girl From Ipanema" and "Corcovado" was amusing, and quite different from what was reported by Donald Maggin in the Getz biography, Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz. Getz was having a hard time with his first attempt at playing this music with Brazilians, and was even asking Gilberto to change his guitar comping rhythms, which greatly irritated Gilberto. Jobim, ever the peacemaker, had an assistant run and get a bottle of scotch to help loosen things up, and everything began to run much more smoothly. (There's even more to the story. Read the book!)

This is but one example of the hundreds of anecdotes in this chatty and engaging book. It is highly recommended to anyone who wants to scratch beneath the surface of "The Girl From Ipanema" and get to the real heart of the matter. One bonus for local readers is that our friend Karrin Allyson is mentioned in the epilogue as being a contemporary American singer who is known for including bossa nova in her jazz repertoire.

Doug Auwarter is a drummer and percussionist and a longtime member of the Sons of Brasil.

RETURN TO AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2001 MAIN INDEX

© Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors 1996-2001. All rights reserved.






	Search our site:		AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ By Scott Yanow Miller Freeman, 212 pages (paper), $17.95 Way back in the teens of the last century, Jelly Roll Morton talked about "the Latin tinge" in jazz music -- which he, of course, claims to have invented. W.C. Handy used a habanera rhythm in "St. Louis Blues," and ever after, various Latin beats have been incorporated into American popular song as well as jazz. Duke Ellington famously used them in his own compositions as well as those contributed by Juan Tizol. The big swing bands all rendered Latinate songs of the day such as "Green Eyes," and the bands of Stan Kenton and Woody Herman took the infectious beats to a serious jazz level. The definitive Afro-Cuban jazz, however, was created in the mid-1940s by Dizzy Gillespie when he added conga player Chano Pozo to his big band. With the collaboration and inspiration of figures such as Mario Bauza and Machito, Gillespie managed a special fusion of bebop and the polyrhythms of Africa as they emerged through Cuba. Some called it "Cubop." From that point forward, all forms of Latin rhythm were absorbed into the language of jazz -- and scores of Caribbean and Latin American musicians made their way into American jazz. Gillespie, of course, remained a prime mover, continuing to play the music and, equally importantly, discover talent all around the world and feature the exciting new players in his groups. There hardly breathes a jazzman today who has not dipped into a Latin beat, one way or another. Meanwhile, of course, Latinos -- led by major figures such as Tito Puente -- were cooking up in their own special things, in their homelands as well as in communities in the US of A. The music is so pervasive and diverse today that awards are given out not only for Afro-Cuban jazz, but Brazilian and other Latin jazz subcultures. The primer Scott Yanow offers us here briefly tells the history of the music and its development, then goes on to give short biographies and discographies of dozens and dozens of Latin musicians -- straying well out of the jazz path to include pop-band leaders such as Xavier Cugat and Desi Arnaz. He gives us the greats we know about, such as Perez Prado, Mongo Santamaria, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, David Sanchez and Chico O'Farrill, plus scores more of lesser notoriety, many of whom have a lot to offer if we're to accept his ratings of their recordings. (I took a quick sampling of the discs in the idiom that I have come to know and couldn't find much argument with him, so I'll trust him to a large extent on the stuff I haven't heard.) He also includes a section featuring bio data and evaluations of selected works of North American players -- everyone from Gene Ammons to Dave Brubeck to McCoy Tyner and more -- who made Latin-oriented albums or even a few tracks. (Somehow he missed one of my favorites, Tadd Dameron, who did a dynamite Afro-Cuban cut with Fats Navarro and Wardell Gray backed by Chino Pozo's bongos.) The book is then rounded out -- or padded out, as it were -- with Q & A interviews with Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, Cuban saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera and bandleaders Jane Bunnett and Susie Hansen. It's an odd mèlange in this context, and not especially brilliant or enlightening as musician interviews go, though D'Rivera has a few interesting moments. In his introduction, Yanow defines Afro-Cuban jazz as "the mixture of jazz improvisations with Cuban and African rhythms," then goes on to eschew the more inclusive term "Latin jazz" for various reasons, but the body of the book contradicts that rather narrow definition. The artists he writes about and the music he evaluates are really far broader in scope and concept, despite his claim to the contrary. The musicians come from all over the Americas and from many ancestries -- one of his heroes, Cal Tjader, was born in the US of Scandinavian parents. More importantly, the many rhythms they incorporate go beyond specific Cuban or Afro-Cuban patterns, as you'll find on almost any page. Apart from the question here of terminologies, the book comes up short in its musical definitions. Yanow, who has published extensively on jazz, limits his specific characterization of the music to instrumentation and rhythm alone -- and even there could have given us at least another paragraph or two about those often complex and stimulating patterns. To my ear, however, there also are a lot of distinctive harmonies involved in Afro-Cuban or Latin jazz, which ought to be noted even in what is clearly an introductory book for lay readers. I would like to find as well some discussion of the differences -- if any exist -- in the Latin players' approach to improvisation. Perhaps there are some -- perhaps not. That's just one kind of question that could have been posed to the players in the interviews or taken up in the text. Large parts of the book are written in an oversimplified, sometimes very klunky style, granted it is aimed at a lay audience. It lapses here and there into advertising-ese, as in the sappy conclusion to his short historical chapter: "The future looks bright for this danceable, inventive and fun music in the 21st century!" Fortunately, there's enough accumulation of fact and detail to more than compensate for its stylistic shortcomings. -- Don Rose BOSSA NOVA by Ruy Castro Translated by Lysa Salsbury. 372 pages. A Cappella books. Special to JAM By Doug Auwarter In 1992, during my second trip to Brazil, I purchased a wonderful book titled Chega de Saudade by Ruy Castro. This book chronicles the adventures and misadventures of the people who created bossa nova. It's a very amusing, often wry, sometimes even tragic look at the music and culture of Rio de Janeiro in the late '50s and early '60s and offers much insight into this much loved and misunderstood music. It has finally been translated into English and I recently had the opportunity to compare the translation with the original. The translated version is called Bossa Nova -- The Story of the Music That Seduced the World. The translation, done by Lysa Salsbury of Great Britain, is good, though not without problems. One is the practice of translating the names of indigenous Brazilian musical instruments into names of instruments familiar to North Americans. The cavaquinho (a small 4-string guitar) becomes a "ukulele," an instrument superficially similar, but vastly different in sound and playing technique. Likewise, pandeiro becomes "tambourine," an instrument that is equally different. There is a glossary at the end, and it would have made far more sense to leave these words in Portuguese and include them in the glossary, as there are no English equivalents. However, the worst problems occur when meanings are shifted in such a way that errors are made with factual information. One such occurrence had Aloysio de Oliveira (who co-wrote "Dindi," among others) not even playing the guitar. The sentence "Ele não teve a habilidade no violão, mas teve muito mais experiência" should have read "He didn't have the skill on the guitar, but had much more experience." Instead it read, "He couldn't play guitar…" This is the man who was Carmen Miranda's musical director for her entire professional career. He certainly played guitar, but wasn't familiar with the bossa nova style when he returned to Brazil after Ms. Miranda's death. Had the book been proofread by an expert in bossa nova, these problems could have been eliminated. Aside from the translation, there are omissions from the original publication. The original discography has been updated, and greatly shortened, to what is available in the US market . This is problematic as several large stores in Brazil are accessible through the internet and ship internationally. Also, many out-of-print albums are re-released in Japan and are similarly available through the internet. This information would be very useful to even a casual collector. The worst omission, however, is the many posters, advertisements, photographs and album covers which help make the original so delightful. This artwork was a big part of the period, much like the psychedelic posters that were a big part of the late '60s, and is described at length in the book. Wouldn't it be great to see some examples of this? Also, few Americans have seen photographs of anyone associated with this music with the exception of Jobim and João Gilberto. As much verbiage is given describing various aspects of the appearance of all the participants, it is a mystery why it was deemed appropriate to omit so many of these great photos. The book is, nevertheless, a fascinating account of how this music, which has become an integral part of jazz, came to be. It sets the record straight on many account, including the idea held by some Americans that bossa nova was invented by Stan Getz, with a little assistance from Antonio Carlos Jobim. In fact, the account in this book of those US recordings of "The Girl From Ipanema" and "Corcovado" was amusing, and quite different from what was reported by Donald Maggin in the Getz biography, Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz. Getz was having a hard time with his first attempt at playing this music with Brazilians, and was even asking Gilberto to change his guitar comping rhythms, which greatly irritated Gilberto. Jobim, ever the peacemaker, had an assistant run and get a bottle of scotch to help loosen things up, and everything began to run much more smoothly. (There's even more to the story. Read the book!) This is but one example of the hundreds of anecdotes in this chatty and engaging book. It is highly recommended to anyone who wants to scratch beneath the surface of "The Girl From Ipanema" and get to the real heart of the matter. One bonus for local readers is that our friend Karrin Allyson is mentioned in the epilogue as being a contemporary American singer who is known for including bossa nova in her jazz repertoire. Doug Auwarter is a drummer and percussionist and a longtime member of the Sons of Brasil. RETURN TO AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2001 MAIN INDEX © Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors 1996-2001. All rights reserved.