SONIDOS DE LA DIÁSPORA
(Introducción instrumental)
Lydia Platón (LP): Itinerarios Sonoros, el Caribe de cerca y de lejos es un viaje por el mundo de los sonidos, su nacimiento y sus prácticas. Te invitamos a que nos acompañes a escuchar sobre proyectos artísticos, música, poesía, vida cotidiana y los debates de la escucha aquí y ahora en Puerto Rico, en el Caribe y más allá de nuestra geografía.
(Instrumental)
LP: ¿A qué suena Puerto Rico cuando uno se va? ¿A qué suena nuestra casa cuando la dejamos? Exploramos respuestas a estas preguntas en entrevista de Juan Otero Garabís con Kwame Coleman y Miguel Zenón, compositores interpretes del jazz.
Kwame Coleman (KC): Hello. My name is Kwame Coleman. I'm a musician, composer and now producer. I've been working on a few electronic projects and I'm also a musicologist and professor at New York University at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, but for me personally sound is almost like the air we breathe.
It's around us at all times and we kind of need it to some degree. I mean, for those of us who can perceive sound, you know, for those of us who are not deaf it gives us a sense of where we are, our environment and our place within it. It informs us about ourselves and I mean that specifically, you know, the sounds of our neighborhood, the sounds of our household, the sound of the voices of our loved ones, our friends. You know, these are the kind of things that, I don't know, they're the ways through which we... how we perceive reality, right. Like our sense of reality part of it is crafted through sound.
Music is just organized sound. On some level some person or many people that just decided to at some level of organization, sometimes very, very loose; sometimes very, very detailed to sound itself.
Yeah, well, I mean there have been many people over the centuries who have really understood nature sounds as a kind of music. But then you get into that strange philosophical distinction of, okay, is it organized or not because what, you know, in European philosophical and esthetic history there's understanding that a composer is a singular author who writes music, right, who uses notation. But that's a very relatively narrow definition because there have been music makers across the world for centuries as well who do it in different ways; people who keep traditional songs, people who design songs after, for instance bird song, after the sounds of nature as well, people for whom music is a part of nature itself. It's like a human contribution to the sound of the wind, of the trees blowing and these sort of things.
I don't know if there's any one clear distinction but what I can say is that what human beings can do is provide some kind of design or organization to the sound that may exist around us already. And one of the most simple ways we can do it is just by organizing it in relation to time. So, John Cage is one of the American composers that comes to mind who at some level, you know, his probably most famous piece of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of piano where the piano sits at an open piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds and the audience kind of sits there fidgeting, uncomfortable, not knowing what to do. But the idea of being there for these four minutes and thirty-three seconds, what are the sounds that happen in the moment.
Although the sounds are of the people fidgeting in the chairs, the people coughing, the sound of the truck outside going past the concert hall, the sound of the pianist at the piano maybe turning the pages or not or sitting on their hands depending on, you know, how people perform the keys these days. I mean, the relationship between sound and music can be a very, I don't know, very intimately linked or very highly abstracted.
(Jazz music)
Me personally, you know, since this was my first album, local music, I wanted it to come from a place that I knew very well and for me that's Harlem, New York where I grew up. It came at a time which the apartment that I grew up in it's, you know, unfortunately a typical New York Story, you know. The family was being kind of pushed out because of gentrification basically. I had to confront this idea that this community that I always felt was my home, that I could always return to, may not be my home anymore. And what does that mean for me? What happens when you can't rely on your home being home anymore, where you're forced to leave?
And unfortunately, this is a question that, you know, many people around the world today are confronted with, you know, through natural disaster, right. What happens when your home is no longer there anymore or part of it it's not longer there? What happens when political forces push you to have to leave the place that you've grown up in, that you identify with because it's dangerous for you to stay, etcetera?
So, that put me into thinking about this concept of locality, of the local. What does that mean for me personally? And one of the ways in which I found an answer was through sound and so I just decided to spend an entire summer and more going around my community and recording with a handheld recorder the sounds that made me feel at home. So those sounds were people in the street, older men playing dominoes, young kids playing basketball, the sounds of the churches because Harlem has a high density of churches all around, and just the sounds of the community that, you know, if I was forced to leave and I did have to leave I could basically.... in a sense the album was for me, right. I could play my album and be like, oh, okay, there's home. I mean, I can always go back to Harlem but, you know, it's different when you don't have like your physical roots there, a building to return to for instance.
But then there's a more ephemeral notion where home is a place that you carry with you to some degree, right. So it's a very kind of abstract sense of home, but, you know, ultimately home can't be reduced to four walls and a roof.
I think I wanted it to be part of those sounds and somehow interact with it. It was almost like what can three musicians say to the sound that we recorded or I recorded. How can we be in dialogue with it, right? So not necessarily be in the background or the foreground but be conversational with it, almost comment on it in a way. Why? I don't know. It just felt like the right move because I didn't want to just capture the sound from the street and have it exist by itself. I wanted to also engage with it and maybe comment on it, not just be an observer but be a participant, that sort of thing.
In growing in Harlem and partially in the Bronx as well the music around me growing up and the music in my household I sometimes really closed the links, sometimes a little different, generationally in speaking, right. So the music that was both outside the home and inside the home was the music from the Caribbean, specifically the music from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and especially Cuba.
My father is a musician and he played for many years in a salsa band in New York called La Sureña and they played basically typically New York City salsa which was during the 70's, very much styled after the Cuban son montuno, right, and its kind of evolution and it was because of that, because my father was one of the main composers for the band, we had a lot of Cuban records like Arsenio Rodriguez. We had Miguelito Cuni, Benny Moré, we had you name it, like all of the big Cuban stars of the 40's, 50's and going into the 60's. Right before the Revolution we had and even some post revolutionary stuff.
But then, of course, there was the music of Puerto Rico. La Sonora Ponceña, there was, of course, Cortijo, Ismael Rivera, and these were the sounds that were like, you know, the sounds of my family. And every time I hear that music I think of my household. It's almost as though, and this is the power of sound for me, that I'm hearing like Maelo's voice for me is like hearing my uncle's voice. Benny Moré's voice is like that for me as well, and then, of course, in addition to the music of the Caribbean there was also jazz in my household. So another voice that I grew to love was Sara Vaughn.
And then apart from just the human voice the instrumental voice as well, so my father being a pianist one of the first records, like an LP that I remember falling in love with, was by the pianist Ahmad Jamal. The famous album that he recorded called Live at the Pershing which was recorded in Chicago in the 50's, maybe early 50's, I can't remember, but growing up and listening to Live at the Pershing, Ahmad Jamal, as a young pianist, it made such a big impression because he plays the piano in such an elegant and simple way. I mean, he uses these flourishes, right, where he plays a lot of notes, very impressively, very virtuosically, but those moments are few and far in between on this recording. It's almost like someone who is having a very thoughtful conversation with the other musicians and with you.
You know, it's like when you hear a very good speaker. They don't have to speak very quickly and so oftentimes they don't speak very quickly because the idea is have you follow along and that's kind of how he approaches the piano where his playing is very deliberate, very point by point. I just remember hearing this recording and saying, wow I really want to play the piano like that. So that was the music inside my house. Outside the house, of course, there was rap, there was freestyle at the time, which was really big among the nuyorican community and the black community in the Bronx and Harlem. And then the older I got the more I started exploring stuff on my own so I started to explore more the music from Africa, particularly in Nigeria. That led me going into afrobeat and falling in love with Fela Kuti and what he did with his large ensemble, the music of South America, Brazil in particular; then of course of the kind of Spanish language music from Colombia, in particular, somebody like Oscar de León.
So, yeah, you know, I just went everywhere, and then eventually electronic music because, of course, you know, from techno going forward this is the sounds that we are existing in, I was very curious about how people made sounds using maybe not live instruments but only a computer or only some kind of hardware. So yeah, all that stuff kind of got mixed up and I think that's why on the album I use synthesizers but also acoustic piano. The bassist uses electric base and upright base. It's just really meant to speak to the multiplicity of sound and music that exists around us today because I think at a very basic level I just didn't want to put out a "jazz record", whatever that might mean, because I wanted to speak more to, you know, for me, I... I was born in 1984, you know, so, being born in the 80's and growing up in the 80s, and 90s and early 2000's, acoustic music, electronic music, jazz, techno, house, freestyle, salsa, samba, timba, like all of that stuff had to be in there somehow, reggaeton to some degree, although I don't know if you can find reggaeton in the album. But it's all there somehow and that was the idea.
You know, there's been this idea, at least in European music aesthetics, up to a point to have instruments reflect the voice because the human voice was always central, right. So if you think about a flute, you know, for instance, like even in, you know, the philosoph... in the works of Plato, like Plato's Republic, you know, Plato focuses on the flute and he says, you know, we can't have flautists out here who play these really attractive, alluring melodies because it may distract people, right, they may get wound up in the beauty and maybe not focused on whether or not the musician is playing well or, you know, using noble melodies and these sorts of things. So this idea that like even an instrumental voice can be just as persuasive, just as enticing as the human voice because we all know that feeling when we hear someone singing and it just captures our attention, sounds like we become enraptured in the moment.
But you know, in European aesthetics, by the 19th century, that had changed now so that instrumental music now occupied a kind of primary place, you know, and partially that has to do with someone like Beethoven who's between the piano sonatas and symphonies and all these other works, was seen as someone who's elevated now the instrument past the point past what a human voice can do. Can get the piano, can get the orchestra to do things that the human voice can never do. So at least in European aesthetics there's been now that tension between you know, is the human voice central or is the instrumental voice central and where does the composer exist within that? So that's, that's kind of one corner of the relationship between voices, a human and instrumental. But you know, even instruments, electronic instruments, can't make music on their own. There's always a human involved.
So the human voice is always involved somewhere there maybe in an abstract way. So that's kind of my long answer to your question. The short answer is, the sound of someone's voice, I think, is a great deal... it provides a great deal outside of the visual of how we identify them and how we identify ourselves vis a vis them, then, right, which is to say, you know, sometimes people make the joke where depending on how someone speaks to you, you may even adjust the way you speak, right? So there's that joke when you hear people say, you know, like in office environments when someone is like very kind of like, enthusiastic in the morning and they say something like, "Hi, how are you," and you go, "Oh, I'm fine. How are you?". Hearing someone's voice, and identifying them by their voice is also part of how we identify ourselves, right. It's kind of like a vis a vis relational sort of thing. And the power behind that is such that, you know, you can identify someone and everything that they need to, you just by virtue of this sound.
Think about the sound of your mother's voice or your grandparent’s voice that it automatically brings you to a time and place. The power of the human voice can be that where it may even help shape or reconfigure how we ourselves are in a particular space in that moment. But it can also allow us to access these memories that, you know, have been stored in our brains for some time, like, again, hearing your grandparent’s voice, if they've passed away almost brings you back to the moment, the moments that you shared with them in ways that maybe reading their writing or maybe even seeing a picture can't quite do. You know, there's a way in which that voice resonates within us that brings us back... maybe this is just me. I mean, I can't speak for everyone, but for me, you know, hearing these sounds can bring me back to a moment more in a much more intense way than any other kind of medium like a picture. Pictures don't do that much for me, but sound can do that.
(Music and recording)
JUAN OTERO GARABIS (JOG): Now, Kwame, tell me what do you think about noise?
KC: Well, noise is all around us as you can hear, but you know, noise is one of those very tricky I would say philosophical issues, right, which is to say that what's the difference between music and noise, sound and noise, like what goes into making something noise. And I think it's a very subjective sort of thing, which is to say that noise, simply a sound that we don't want or sound that we find interrupted or undesirable. So what might be noise for someone might be music for someone else. Classic example is when you live next door to someone who's playing their music, to them in their space it's music. For you in the next apartment over it's noise. But maybe you like that. Some people... usually people seem not to like that sort of thing.
But I don't know, I think noise is, you know, there's a way to even make noise into music. It just kind of depends on your perspective, you know, and how you listen to it, I'd say.
JOG: There's a lot of people that say that Spanish speaking people are very noisy people. What do you think about that?
KC: I would just say, you know, from my experience, my Puerto Rican and Dominican family, these are people who live life very audibly, right, which is to say that maybe what's normal is not a very quiet life because life itself is very noisy. I think controlling noise is, can sometimes be a very culturally specific thing. You know, and for people who grew up in maybe very regimented or religious or otherwise conservative backgrounds, you know, noise is one of the first things that has to be controlled. But for people who grew up in situations that are little more permissive, a little more culturally open, you know, the idea that, you know, the sounds that you regularly make in life needs to be made quiet may not be true. So, maybe that's a way to kind of understand, you know, Puertoricanness, this Dominicanness, Latinidad and Caribbeanness, you know, living life audibly.
(Music)
I think one of the most important and relevant sounds that anyone from the island or anyone who has connections to the island via family automatically identifies with so much a part of Puerto Rican folklore. It's maybe the most Puerto Rican kind of nationalist symbol more than anything, and that's the coquí, right. So now we see the coquí on T-shirts and all that stuff but really it's the sound, the song of the coquí that speaks to Puerto Rican identity in a way that is unique. "Coquí, coquí," right. It's been the subject of songs even, right. People have mimicked the coquí on instruments even so, what more of a kind of symbol of Puertoricanness do we have apart from the coquí? You know, I'm not even sure. I mean, the flag, right, the Puerto Rican flag, and all of its many permutations it's kind of a symbol in a way, but depending on who's waving and for what there can be many different meanings there.
The coquí, I think, the sound of the coquí kind of brings us to maybe this kind of fictionalized or romanticized Puerto Rico, you know, this kind of idyllic island. Many of us know that it has not been this idyllic Island since European colonization but maybe, you know, those moments in Puerto Rico when you are, you know, when it is turning into evening, la madrugada, right, and the coquies first start coming out and you feel the stillness of the island or the enchantment, you know, and this is why they call it the Enchanted Island. I think that speaks to that kind of experience of island living and that particular island more than any other symbol that I can think of immediately, and it has everything to do with the sound of this one frog that is unique to the island although I hear that there are coquí now in Hawaii. Is that true? I'm not sure.
(Music)
Miguel Zenón (MZ): (English bellow) Yo soy Miguel Zenón. Soy músico, saxofonista, compositor nacido en Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico y actualmente residiendo en Nueva York.
(Música)
MZ: El sonido es como un tipo de mensaje que puede significar muchas cosas dependiendo de la persona. Yo ahora muchas de las cosas las identifico con música porque soy músico pero inicialmente pues era como un tipo de mensaje. Podía ser cualquier cosa. Podría ser algún tipo de vibración o algún tipo de melodía, algún tipo de cadencia rítmica organizada o desorganizada, ese tipo de cosas.
Tu sabes, yo desde pequeño siempre me identifiqué con la música, no como ahora sino como un sonido organizado. Vamos volviendo a lo mismo. Siempre estuve rodeado de ella entre mi familia y la calle y eso, pero me atraía mucho la idea de la música como capas, no, como que tu tienes una capa que significa una cosa. Puede ser ritmo. Otra capa puede ser armonía o melodía y como una combinación de esas cosas puede creer algo mas, ese tipo de cosas. Siempre me atrajo eso.
Para mi, fíjate, la cuestión... ahora ya que lo pienso en un punto de vista musical, la cuestión musical folklórica para mi es como que algo que identifica... me relaciona con Puerto Rico mas porque me he metido bien de lleno ahora después de viejo, como quien dice, pero también porque mientras mas me expongo a sonidos y música de otros tipos de lugares me doy cuenta de que cada lugar tiene una cosa bien particular, bien especial y de Puerto Rico. Es bien único hasta cierto... dentro de cierto punto. Y me identifico mucho con esa idea de por el sonido del pandero, sonido del barril, el sonido del cuatro, la organización de ciertas cosas, musicalmente hablando, como se complementan, como se organizan, ese tipo de cosas.
En términos de incorporar los yo, yo no me dejo llevar... digo, sí me dejo llevar por el sonido, pero es mas... yo lo veo mas desde el punto de vista de identificar elementos que sean esenciales dentro de un ámbito musical o un género. Cuando yo escucho, por ejemplo la plena o la bomba o la música típica, jíbara o lo que sea, hay unos elementos bien particulares que hacen que la bomba, por ejemplo, sea diferente de la tumba francesa o de garifuna de Belize. Se puede... aunque vienen de la misma vertiente o que hacen que la música típica suene diferente que el... ¿Cómo es que le llaman a eso en Cuba? La cuestión del punto guajiro, eso.
Es como que hay ciertas cosas que lo identifican específicamente como que es de Puerto Rico. Esto yo lo hago con cualquier... con toda la música, pero con la música de Puerto Rico en general dentro de lo que he hecho de investigación y eso para incorporarlo dentro de mi música, lo que he hecho es tratar de identificar esos elementos y, por ejemplo en vez de hacer algo que suene como un seis chorreao yo utilizo elementos que son particulares del seis chorreao a diferencia del seis fajardeño, aguinaldo cagüeño, etcétera; y entonces utilizo esos elementos para escribir una pieza mía, pero siempre utilizando el seis chorreao, los elementos esenciales del seis chorreao como el punto de partida.
Y hasta cierto punto pues quizás tu escuchas la pieza y no vas a escuchar un seis chorreao, pero yo sí lo escucho. Y el punto para mi no es necesariamente que suene folklórico, sino que la inyección o la base de la música venga desde ese punto de vista.
Yo hice un proyecto que trabajó con la plena. Lo que yo hice fue irme desde el punto de vista de los panderos y pensar en los panderos que tradicionalmente... bueno, hace años se usaban dos, ahora tradicionalmente siempre se usan tres, como el centro de la música. Como que era lo que de verdad identifica el sonido de ese género. Y entonces cuando empecé a escribir la música, pues obviamente utilizaba el ritmo y trataba de incorporar células rítmicas que fueran bien autóctonas como decir de ese género, pero también pensé en la idea del tres, de esos tres personajes que son los panderos en este género. Y cuando escribí la música siempre escribía con el número tres en mente, que eso es en términos musicales pues pueden ser tresillo. Pueden ser figuras de tres. Pueden ser triadas. Puede ser una tercera aumentada. Puede ser muchas cosas. Y a la hora de yo escribir la música pues escribí con eso en mente. Ese va a ser como mi motivo principal.
Y pues quizás tu escuchas la música y no lo oyes, pero yo al escribirla pues siempre la estoy escribiendo con un... es como una serie de reglas, como un sistema, porque uno cree un sistema alrededor de algo que viene de algo folklórico.
Desde el punto de vista mío la idea es que mucha de la música que yo escribo, especialmente cuando trabajo con cosas que vienen del folklor, en este caso del folklor de Puerto Rico o de los sonidos de la música de Puerto Rico, no están basadas en una impresión... no están tan basadas en una inspiración que viene del momento. Como que no es que yo me siento y de momento escucho una melodía y aunque si hay un poco de eso, pero hay mas ideas concretas basadas en... quizás... a veces ideas que no son musicales. Otras veces son musicales, como la idea de esto de los tres panderos, por ejemplo. Aunque sí son instrumentos, no es una idea musical de por si.
Pues yo busco la manera de trasladar esa idea que en este caso es un número o lo que sea, a un idioma musical. Y entonces poder usar ese idioma musical para escribir música. Pero generalmente cuando me siento a escribir la música tengo una idea ya bastante clara de lo que voy a hacer. No es como todo basado en la inspiración como quien dice. Sí hay, pero hay de los dos lados. Hay un lado que es bastante sistemático, como que yo creo como un sistema y utilizo ese sistema para que la pieza se escriba.
La música que trabajo generalmente viene desde un punto de vista bastante jazzístico. Cuando improvisamos, cuando tocamos, interactuamos, la instrumentación, pues es bastante jazzístico en su forma clásica. No utilizo mucho instrumentos electrónicos, por ejemplo. Casi todos los instrumentos son acústicos, etcétera. Pero la raíz de lo que estamos haciendo es bien, es bien folklórica no jazzística, por ejemplo. Entonces hay una combinación de los elementos de escribir la música y muchos de los elementos que utilizamos especialmente en el ámbito rítmico, lenguaje rítmico que utilizamos, no es jazzístico.
Entonces hay como una combinación de ambas cosas. Quizás el lenguaje de improvisación, armónico, a hora de interactuar, pero a la hora quizás de componer, de interactuar rítmicamente pues viene de otro lugar. Y es una combinación de ambas cosas. Entonces nosotros cuando tocamos juntos, por ejemplo cuando yo toco con mi grupo y estamos trabajando estas cosas yo no lo pienso necesariamente diferente que si estuviera tocando un tema de jazz, a la hora de tocar. Pero sí estoy consciente de que, bueno, la raíz rítmica es diferente, quizás pues tengo que incorporarme de ese lado o hacer unos ajustes, pero por el otro lado lo estoy pensando igual que si estuviera tomando un tema tradicional de jazz.
(Música)
Yo no crecí con el jazz. El jazz para mi es nuevo. Es nuevo en el sentido de que llegó a la mitad... en un periodo que era como que la mitad de mi vida donde ya yo había estudiado música, ya tocaba, ya era músico como quien dice profesional, desde joven, y la gran mayoría de la música que toqué fue música bailable, salsa, merengue, música tradicional, plena, bomba, música campesina, música popular.
Ahora que yo lo pienso, mirando hacia atrás, la gran mayoría de esa música, de la música que yo tocaba, tenía elementos que se encuentran en el jazz. Por ejemplo, el elemento de la improvisación es un elemento que es básicamente universal. Existe en todos los estilos de música. Lo que lo diferencia del uno al otro es como quien dice como un lenguaje. Yo pienso que cuando yo tocaba salsa no puedo tocar un solo que suene como Charlie Parker porque no es el lenguaje. Pero el instrumentista utiliza el lenguaje del cantante. A la hora de tu tocar en vez de hacer (sonido de música), algo así (sonido de música) que tocaría Maelo o Cheo, entiende. Entonces yo cuando identifiqué que cada estilo pues tiene su lenguaje me hizo la visión mucho mas fácil porque yo me podía concentrar en ese lenguaje específico a la hora de tocar un estilo específico.
Yo lo veo como desde un punto de vista de respetar ambas tradiciones por igual. Respetar ambas tradiciones. Pues en el disco de plena lo que se iba a hacer de plena iba a ser como es, y lo que se iba a hacer de jazz pues iba a ser como es. En el caso del disco de Alma Adentro también cuando arreglamos esos temas o los tocamos si vamos a tocar Olas y Arenas yo quiero que si alguien conoce el tema lo escuche, no que esté escondido. Pero, dentro de eso, nosotros también estamos haciendo lo de nosotros.
(Música)
Nueva York es la gente corriendo, el tren, ruido por todos lados, también mucha música, pero otra cosa, otro tipo de... otro tipo de... como otra esquina, quizás menos percusivo y mas amplificado. Como que yo lo siento mas o menos como algo como así. Yo llevo en Nueva York como veinte años básicamente. Veinte años llevo en Nueva York. De principio se me hizo bien difícil meterme dentro de lo que era la ciudad, especialmente la velocidad a la ciudad. Es bien rápida, todo el mundo corriendo, bien agresivo, pero ahora estoy totalmente new yorker. Como que lo extraño si no lo tengo. Inclusive, si voy a ciudades grandes extraño eso de Nueva York.
Yo pienso que mucho tiene que ver con el entorno. Por ejemplo, esta área aquí donde estamos es donde esta la gran mayoría de los clubes de jazz y yo algo que hago mucho, ya no tanto pero antes lo hacía, era que yo me venía aquí al village y iba de club en club. Veía un set en uno o par de temas, me iba al otro, escuchaba dos temas, acá escuchaba tres temas. No se, eso es como... para mi era como que empaparme en lo que estaba pasando, como que estar metido dentro de lo que le llaman la escena, no, la escena de lo que está pasando aquí, porque para mi y bueno quizás otras personas difieren pero para mi el jazz es Nueva York.
El jazz, esta música, es aquí. Quizás nació en otro sitio, se desarrolló en New Orleans u otros lugares, pero ahora mismo el presente de la música y desde hace mucho tiempo es aquí. Entonces si uno está aquí uno quiere aprovechar eso.
Los músicos que uno admira, a lo que está pasando en el momento, se está haciendo aquí.
Yo estudié en la Libre de Música y cuando me metí ahí en la escuela pues inicialmente pues era el saxophone y unas cosas de chamaco, y me metí mucho en la música popular, música del rock, ese tipo de cosas, heavy metal, lo mismo, el hip hop, lo que estaba escuchando la gente en la radio. Cuando empecé a tocar empecé a tocar profesionalmente salsa y tal, pues entonces ahí pues me empezaron a pasar, "Mira, escucha este disco de Cuba Irakere, Los Van Van, NG. Entonces eso fue como que mi primera salida así como que algo que no fuera música americana, ese tipo de música. Y después conectado a eso llegó el jazz, por ejemplo, y ya el jazz pues abrió puertas porque no era solo en Estados Unidos. Lo que se hace en Latinoamérica, se hace en Europa, y como que eso me abrió el oído a irme a otros lados.
Pero inclusive, cuando estaba metido dentro de la salsa casi todo lo que escuchaba era salsa vieja. Era Fania, por ejemplo, esa época. Después Willie Colón, Rubén Blades, Maelo... Maelo desde chiquito, pero Héctor Lavoe, ese tipo de cosas. Entonces eso pues también me trajo al presente porque cuando yo estaba tocando que era cuando la salsa de los 90 estaba en su apogeo, cuando estaba Gilbertito y tenía sus grupos, esa gente tenía sus grupos. Alex De Castro, Gilbertito, Tony Vega, Victor Manuelle saliendo, empezando. Entonces pues todo eso estaba como ahí. Era como que la música popular en ese momento era la salsa, que como todos mis amigos eran músicos... mis amigos de la escuela todos eran músicos. Cuando nosotros íbamos a escuchar un grupo de salsa no íbamos a bailar, íbamos a escuchar el grupo.
LP: Al preguntarle a Miguel sobre la relación entre su disco Identities are Changeable y el libro de Juan Flores, The Diáspora Strikes Back nos dijo:
MZ: De ese libro sale el proyecto, básicamente. Cuando yo leo el libro y yo lo empiezo a leer yo digo, wow, pero es que esto podría ser como una idea, no, como que hacer esto pero incorporarlo alrededor de algo musical. Esta misma experiencia en el libro pues no es netamente puertorriqueño. Hay gente de todos lados pero yo decía, contra esto está interesante y yo tengo familia aquí en Nueva York también que crecieron acá. Mi hermano creció acá. Mi hermana nació aquí, pero son, tu sabes, son boricuas.
Yo crecí viendo eso. Son como yo pero no, entiendes. Como que son como eso pero no, otra cosa.
("To say that you're a new yorker and to say that you're puertorican doesn't necessarily have to contradict. A lot of people think that way, but I don't believe that. I think more and more people are realizing that you can be more than one cultural self at the same time.")
Y hablando con Juan hubieron ciertas cosas que el dijo, pues como tu sabes que has escuchado el disco. Muchas de las frases como incluyendo el título, pues son frases de el. Entonces muchas de esas frases fueron las que como que me dieron la dirección, empezando con el libro pero después hablando con el directamente porque, bueno, el lo ponía de una manera tan articulada y tan clara que ahí fue que yo dije, okay, yo lo que voy a hacer es esto. Yo voy a crear una narrativa por tema.
(Música)
Esa canción específicamente, the Second Generation Lullaby viene de esta relación con mi familia acá. Como te mencioné todos se vinieron para acá. Toda la familia de mi papá casi todos se vinieron para acá, mis primos, todos estaban acá. Entonces como que yo tenía ese lado de la familia que era mi familia en Nueva York. Mi hermana Patricia que es la menor eventualmente pues tiene un hijo que es el niño que se presenta en la canción. Y yo me acuerdo... yo todavía no tenía hijos, no había nacido mi hija cuando eso, pero me acuerdo pensar lo diferente que iba a ser la experiencia de ellos comparada con la de mi sobrino porque ellos se criaron, por ejemplo en un hogar que solo se hablaba español, que venían ya con esta conexión directa de Puerto Rico, pero ya al haber ese otro paso mas pues como que te alejas un poco y parte de lo que yo hablaba con ella en esa entrevista, en la entrevista de que hablamos en la canción, era como ella iba a tratar de pasar esa... traspasar su experiencia a su hijo o no. ¿Cuál iba a ser su camino? Pero vamos a ver, ¿qué puede pasar? El mismo lo va a forjar, como con mi hija es igual.
Ella va a forjar su identidad dependiendo de lo que le llama la atención, el camino que trace en la vida, ese tipo de cosa. Uno puede como poner tu inyección aquí y allá pero no lo puedes forjar tú.
LP: Itinerarios Sonoros es una producción de la Calle Loiza, Inc. y Radio San Juan con el auspicio de la Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades. Producido y dirigido por Lydia Platón y Mariana Reyes con la colaboración de Priya Parrotta, Nalini Natarajan y Juan Otero Garabís. La dirección técnica estuvo a cargo de Ambar Suarez Cubillé y Julio Albino. Síguenos en Soundcloud, Facebook, Twitter e Instagram como Radio San Juan.
SOUNDS OF THE DIASPORA
(Instrumental Introduction)
Lydia Platón (LP): Itinerarios Sonoros, the Caribbean close-up and from afar is a voyage through the world of sounds, their birth and their practices. Join us to hear about art projects, music, poetry, everyday life and listener debates here and now in Puerto Rico, in the Caribbean and beyond our geography.
LP: What does Puerto Rico sound like when one leaves it? What does our home sound like when we leave it behind? We’ll explore these questions as Juan Otero Garabís interviews jazz composers and musicians Kwame Coleman and Miguel Zenón.
Kwame Coleman (KC): Hello. My name is Kwame Coleman. I'm a musician, composer and now producer. I've been working on a few electronic projects and I'm also a musicologist and professor at New York University at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, but for me personally sound is almost like the air we breathe.
It's around us at all times and we kind of need it to some degree. I mean, for those of us who can perceive sound, you know, for those of us who are not deaf it gives us a sense of where we are, our environment and our place within it. It informs us about ourselves and I mean that specifically, you know, the sounds of our neighborhood, the sounds of our household, the sound of the voices of our loved ones, our friends. You know, these are the kind of things that, I don't know, they're the ways through which we... how we perceive reality, right. Like our sense of reality part of it is crafted through sound.
Music is just organized sound. On some level some person or many people that just decided to at some level of organization, sometimes very, very loose; sometimes very, very detailed to sound itself.
Yeah, well, I mean there have been many people over the centuries who have really understood nature sounds as a kind of music. But then you get into that strange philosophical distinction of, okay, is it organized or not because what, you know, in European philosophical and esthetic history there's understanding that a composer is a singular author who writes music, right, who uses notation. But that's a very relatively narrow definition because there have been music makers across the world for centuries as well who do it in different ways; people who keep traditional songs, people who design songs after, for instance bird song, after the sounds of nature as well, people for whom music is a part of nature itself. It's like a human contribution to the sound of the wind, of the trees blowing and these sort of things.
I don't know if there's any one clear distinction but what I can say is that what human beings can do is provide some kind of design or organization to the sound that may exist around us already. And one of the most simple ways we can do it is just by organizing it in relation to time. So, John Cage is one of the American composers that comes to mind who at some level, you know, his probably most famous piece of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of piano where the piano sits at an open piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds and the audience kind of sits there fidgeting, uncomfortable, not knowing what to do. But the idea of being there for these four minutes and thirty-three seconds, what are the sounds that happen in the moment.
Although the sounds are of the people fidgeting in the chairs, the people coughing, the sound of the truck outside going past the concert hall, the sound of the pianist at the piano maybe turning the pages or not or sitting on their hands depending on, you know, how people perform the keys these days. I mean, the relationship between sound and music can be a very, I don't know, very intimately linked or very highly abstracted.
(Jazz music)
Me personally, you know, since this was my first album, local music, I wanted it to come from a place that I knew very well and for me that's Harlem, New York where I grew up. It came at a time which the apartment that I grew up in it's, you know, unfortunately a typical New York Story, you know. The family was being kind of pushed out because of gentrification basically. I had to confront this idea that this community that I always felt was my home, that I could always return to, may not be my home anymore. And what does that mean for me? What happens when you can't rely on your home being home anymore, where you're forced to leave?
And unfortunately, this is a question that, you know, many people around the world today are confronted with, you know, through natural disaster, right. What happens when your home is no longer there anymore or part of it it's not longer there? What happens when political forces push you to have to leave the place that you've grown up in, that you identify with because it's dangerous for you to stay, etcetera?
So, that put me into thinking about this concept of locality, of the local. What does that mean for me personally? And one of the ways in which I found an answer was through sound and so I just decided to spend an entire summer and more going around my community and recording with a handheld recorder the sounds that made me feel at home. So those sounds were people in the street, older men playing dominoes, young kids playing basketball, the sounds of the churches because Harlem has a high density of churches all around, and just the sounds of the community that, you know, if I was forced to leave and I did have to leave I could basically.... in a sense the album was for me, right. I could play my album and be like, oh, okay, there's home. I mean, I can always go back to Harlem but, you know, it's different when you don't have like your physical roots there, a building to return to for instance.
But then there's a more ephemeral notion where home is a place that you carry with you to some degree, right. So it's a very kind of abstract sense of home, but, you know, ultimately home can't be reduced to four walls and a roof.
I think I wanted it to be part of those sounds and somehow interact with it. It was almost like what can three musicians say to the sound that we recorded or I recorded. How can we be in dialogue with it, right? So not necessarily be in the background or the foreground but be conversational with it, almost comment on it in a way. Why? I don't know. It just felt like the right move because I didn't want to just capture the sound from the street and have it exist by itself. I wanted to also engage with it and maybe comment on it, not just be an observer but be a participant, that sort of thing.
In growing in Harlem and partially in the Bronx as well the music around me growing up and the music in my household I sometimes really closed the links, sometimes a little different, generationally in speaking, right. So the music that was both outside the home and inside the home was the music from the Caribbean, specifically the music from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and especially Cuba.
My father is a musician and he played for many years in a salsa band in New York called La Sureña and they played basically typically New York City salsa which was during the 70's, very much styled after the Cuban son montuno, right, and its kind of evolution and it was because of that, because my father was one of the main composers for the band, we had a lot of Cuban records like Arsenio Rodriguez. We had Miguelito Cuni, Benny Moré, we had you name it, like all of the big Cuban stars of the 40's, 50's and going into the 60's. Right before the Revolution we had and even some post-revolutionary stuff.
But then, of course, there was the music of Puerto Rico. La Sonora Ponceña, there was, of course, Cortijo, Ismael Rivera, and these were the sounds that were like, you know, the sounds of my family. And every time I hear that music I think of my household. It's almost as though, and this is the power of sound for me, that I'm hearing like Maelo's voice for me is like hearing my uncle's voice. Benny Moré's voice is like that for me as well, and then, of course, in addition to the music of the Caribbean there was also jazz in my household. So another voice that I grew to love was Sara Vaughn.
And then apart from just the human voice the instrumental voice as well, so my father being a pianist one of the first records, like an LP that I remember falling in love with, was by the pianist Ahmad Jamal. The famous album that he recorded called Live at the Pershing which was recorded in Chicago in the 50's, maybe early 50's, I can't remember, but growing up and listening to Live at the Pershing, Ahmad Jamal, as a young pianist, it made such a big impression because he plays the piano in such an elegant and simple way. I mean, he uses these flourishes, right, where he plays a lot of notes, very impressively, very virtuosically, but those moments are few and far in between on this recording. It's almost like someone who is having a very thoughtful conversation with the other musicians and with you.
You know, it's like when you hear a very good speaker. They don't have to speak very quickly and so oftentimes they don't speak very quickly because the idea is have you follow along and that's kind of how he approaches the piano where his playing is very deliberate, very point by point. I just remember hearing this recording and saying, wow I really want to play the piano like that. So that was the music inside my house. Outside the house, of course, there was rap, there was freestyle at the time, which was really big among the nuyorican community and the black community in the Bronx and Harlem. And then the older I got the more I started exploring stuff on my own so I started to explore more the music from Africa, particularly in Nigeria. That led me going into afrobeat and falling in love with Fela Kuti and what he did with his large ensemble, the music of South America, Brazil in particular; then of course of the kind of Spanish language music from Colombia, in particular, somebody like Oscar de León.
So, yeah, you know, I just went everywhere, and then eventually electronic music because, of course, you know, from techno going forward this is the sounds that we are very curious about how people made sounds using maybe not live instruments but only a computer or only some kind of hardware. So yeah, all that stuff kind of got mixed up and I think that's why on the album I use synthesizers but also acoustic piano. The bassist uses electric base and upright base. It's just really meant to speak to the multiplicity of sound and music that exists around us today because I think at a very basic level I just didn't want to put out a "jazz record", whatever that might mean, because I wanted to speak more to, you know, for me, I... I was born in 1984, you know, so, being born in the 80's and growing up in the 80s, and 90s and early 2000's, acoustic music, electronic music, jazz, techno, house, freestyle, salsa, samba, timba, like all of that stuff had to be in there somehow, reggaeton to some degree, although I don't know if you can find reggaeton in the album. But it's all there somehow and that was the idea.
You know, there's been this idea, at least in European music aesthetics, up to a point to have instruments reflect the voice because the human voice was always central, right. So if you think about a flute, you know, for instance, like even in, you know, the philosoph... in the works of Plato, like Plato's Republic, you know, Plato focuses on the flute and he says, you know, we can't have flautists out here who play these really attractive, alluring melodies because it may distract people, right, they may get wound up in the beauty and maybe not focused on whether or not the musician is playing well or, you know, using noble melodies and these sorts of things. So this idea that like even an instrumental voice can be just as persuasive, just as enticing as the human voice because we all know that feeling when we hear someone singing and it just captures our attention, sounds like we become enraptured in the moment.
But you know, in European aesthetics, by the 19th century, that had changed now so that instrumental music now occupied a kind of primary place, you know, and partially that has to do with someone like Beethoven who's between the piano sonatas and symphonies and all these other works, was seen as someone who's elevated now the instrument past the point past what a human voice can do. Can get the piano, can get the orchestra to do things that the human voice can never do. So at least in European aesthetics there's been now that tension between you know, is the human voice central or is the instrumental voice central and where does the composer exist within that? So that's, that's kind of one corner of the relationship between voices, a human and instrumental. But you know, even instruments, electronic instruments, can't make music on their own. There's always a human involved.
So the human voice is always involved somewhere there maybe in an abstract way. So that's kind of my long answer to your question. The short answer is, the sound of someone's voice, I think, is a great deal... it provides a great deal outside of the visual of how we identify them and how we identify ourselves then, right, which is to say, you know, sometimes people make the joke where depending on how someone speaks to you, you may even adjust the way you speak, right? So there's that joke when you hear people say, you know, like in office environments when someone is like very kind of like, enthusiastic in the morning and they say something like, "Hi, how are you," and you go, "Oh, I'm fine. How are you?". Hearing someone's voice, and identifying them by their voice is also part of how we identify ourselves, right. It's kind of like a vis a vis relational sort of thing. And the power behind that is such that, you know, you can identify someone and everything that they need to, you just by virtue of this sound.
Think about the sound of your mother's voice or your grandparent’s voice that it automatically brings you to a time and place. The power of the human voice can be that where it may even help shape or reconfigure how we ourselves are in a particular space in that moment. But it can also allow us to access these memories that, you know, have been stored in our brains for some time, like, again, hearing your grandparent’s voice, if they've passed away almost brings you back to the moment, the moments that you shared with them in ways that maybe reading their writing or maybe even seeing a picture can't quite do. You know, there's a way in which that voice resonates within us that brings us back... maybe this is just me. I mean, I can't speak for everyone, but for me, you know, hearing these sounds can bring me back to a moment more in a much more intense way than any other kind of medium like a picture. Pictures don't do that much for me, but sound can do that.
(Music and recording)
JOG: Now, Kwame, tell me what do you think about noise?
KC: Well, noise is all around us as you can hear, but you know, noise is one of those very tricky I would say philosophical issues, right, which is to say that what's the difference between music and noise, sound and noise, like what goes into making something noise. And I think it's a very subjective sort of thing, which is to say that noise, simply a sound that we don't want or sound that we find interrupted or undesirable. So what might be noise for someone might be music for someone else. Classic example is when you live next door to someone who's playing their music, to them in their space it's music. For you in the next apartment over it's noise. But maybe you like that. Some people... usually people seem not to like that sort of thing.
But I don't know, I think noise is, you know, there's a way to even make noise into music. It just kind of depends on your perspective, you know, and how you listen to it, I'd say.
JOG: There's a lot of people that say that Spanish speaking people are very noisy people. What do you think about that?
KC: I would just say, you know, from my experience, my Puerto Rican and Dominican family, these are people who live life very audibly, right, which is to say that maybe what's normal is not a very quiet life because life itself is very noisy. I think controlling noise is, can sometimes be a very culturally specific thing. You know, and for people who grew up in maybe very regimented or religious or otherwise conservative backgrounds, you know, noise is one of the first things that has to be controlled. But for people who grew up in situations that are little more permissive, a little more culturally open, you know, the idea that, you know, the sounds that you regularly make in life needs to be made quiet may not be true. So, maybe that's a way to kind of understand, you know, Puertoricanness, this Dominicanness, Latinidad and Caribbeanness, you know, living life audibly.
(Music)
I think one of the most important and relevant sounds that anyone from the island or anyone who has connections to the island via family automatically identifies with so much a part of Puerto Rican folklore. It's maybe the most Puerto Rican kind of nationalist symbol more than anything, and that's the coquí, right. So now we see the coquí on T-shirts and all that stuff but really it's the sound, the song of the coquí that speaks to Puerto Rican identity in a way that is unique. "Coquí, coquí," right. It's been the subject of songs even, right. People have mimicked the coquí on instruments even so, what more of a kind of symbol of Puertoricanness do we have apart from the coquí? You know, I'm not even sure. I mean, the flag, right, the Puerto Rican flag, and all of its many permutations it's kind of a symbol in a way, but depending on who's waving and for what there can be many different meanings there.
The coquí, I think, the sound of the coquí kind of brings us to maybe this kind of fictionalized or romanticized Puerto Rico, you know, this kind of idyllic island. Many of us know that it has not been this idyllic Island since European colonization but maybe, you know, those moments in Puerto Rico when you are, you know, when it is turning into evening, la madrugada, right, and the coquies first start coming out and you feel the stillness of the island or the enchantment, you know, and this is why they call it the Enchanted Island. I think that speaks to that kind of experience of island living and that particular island more than any other symbol that I can think of immediately, and it has everything to do with the sound of this one frog that is unique to the island although I hear that there are coquí now in Hawaii. Is that true? I'm not sure.
(Music)
Miguel Zenón (MZ): My name is Miguel Zenón. I’m a musician, saxophonist, and composer born in Puerto Rico – San Juan, Puerto Rico – and I currently live in New York.
(Music)
MZ: Sound is like a kind of message that can mean many things depending on the person. And now I identify many things with music because I’m a musician, but initially it was like a kind of message. It could be anything. It could be some sort of vibration or some kind of melody, some kind of organized or disorganized rhythmic cadence, that sort of thing.
You know, from the time I was little I always identified with music, not like now but like an organized sound. We go back to the same thing. I was always surrounded by it, my family and on the streets and all that, but I was very drawn to the idea of music as layers, you know, like you have a layer that means something. It could be rhythm. Another layer could be harmony or melody and like a combination of those things can create something more, that sort of thing. I was always drawn to that.
For me, look, the question… Now that I think about it from a musical standpoint, the question of folk music for me is like something that identifies… it ties me to Puerto Rico more because now that I’m older and fully immersed in it, so to speak, but also because the more I expose myself to sounds and music from other places, the more I realize that each place has a very particular, very special thing and from Puerto Rico. It’s very unique up to a certain… to a point. And I really identify with the idea of how the sound of the tambourine, the sound of the barrel, the sound of the four string guitar, the organization of certain things, musically speaking, how they complement each other, how they’re organized, that sort of thing.
In terms of incorporating them I - I don’t let myself get carried away… I mean, I do let myself get carried away by sound, but it’s more… I see it more from the standpoint of identifying elements that are essential within a field or a genre music. For example, when I listen to plena, or bomba, or folk music, jíbara or whatever, there are certain very specific elements that make bomba, for example, different from French tumba or from Garifuna from Belize. You can… Even though they come from the same source or they make folk music sound different from… What’s that called in Cuba? The question of punto guajiro - that.
It’s like there are certain things that specifically identify them as being from Puerto Rico. I do this with any… with all music, but with Puerto Rican music in general in terms of the research and everything I’ve done to incorporate it within my music, what I’ve done is to try to identify those elements and, for example instead of doing something that sounds like a seis chorreao, I use elements that are specific to a seis chorreao as opposed to, aguinaldo cagüeño, etc.; and then I use those elements to write my own piece, but always using the seis chorreao, the essential elements of the seis chorreao as the starting point. And up to a point maybe you listen to the piece and you don’t hear a seis chorreao, but I do hear it. And in my eyes the point is not necessarily for it to sound folkloric, but for the injection or the base of the music to come from that point of view.
I did a project that worked with plena. What I did was to start with the point of view of panderos and think about the panderos that traditionally… Well, years ago they used two, now traditionally, three are used, as the center of the music. Like that was what really identified the sound of that genre. And then when I started to write music, well obviously I would use the rhythm and try to incorporate rhythmic cells that you could say were native to that genre, but I also thought about the idea of the three, of those three characters who are the panderos in that genre. And when I wrote the music I would always write it with the number three in mind, which in musical terms, that would be a triplet. They can be figures of three. They could be triads. It could be an augmented third. It can be many things. And when I write music, I write with that in mind. That’s going to be sort of my primary motivation.
And maybe you listen to the music and you don’t hear it, but when I write it, well I’m always writing without… It’s like a series of rules, like a system, because one creates a system around something that comes from something folkloric.
From my point of view the idea is that a lot of the music I write, especially when I work with things that come from folklore, or in this case Puerto Rican folklore or the sounds of Puerto Rican music, they’re not so much based on an impression… they’re not so much based on an inspiration that comes from the moment. Like, it’s not like I sit down and suddenly hear a melody, though there’s a little of that, but there are more concrete ideas based on… Maybe… sometimes ideas that aren’t musical. Other times they’re musical, like the idea of the three panderos, for example. Though they’re indeed instruments, it’s not a musical idea in itself.
So I look for a way to transfer that idea which in this case is a number or whatever, to a musical language. And then to be able to use that musical language to write music. But generally when I sit down to write music I already have a fairly clear idea of what I’m going to do. It’s not like it’s all based on inspiration so to speak. There’s that, but there’s two sides to that. There’s a pretty systematic side, and I sort of create a system in use that system to write the piece.
The music I work with generally comes from a fairly jazz-ish point of view. When we improvise, when we play, we interact, the instrumentation, well, it’s pretty jazz-ish in its classic form. I don’t use electronic instruments very much, for example. Almost all of the instruments are acoustic, etc. But the root of what we’re doing is very, it’s very folk, not jazz-ish, for example. So there’s a combination of the elements of music writing and many of the elements we use especially in the rhythmic arena, the rhythmic language we use, is not jazz-ish.
So there’s a combination of both things. Perhaps the language of improvisation, harmonic, the interactions, but maybe when we compose and interact rhythmically, well that comes from somewhere else. And it’s a combination of both things. So when we play together, for example when I play with my group and we’re working on these things I don’t necessarily think differently from if I were playing a jazz theme, when I play. But I’m aware that, well, the rhythmic root is different, perhaps I need to come in on that side or make some adjustments, but on the other hand I’m thinking of it just like as if I were taking on a traditional jazz theme.
(Music)
I didn’t grow up with jazz. Jazz is new to me. It’s new in the sense that it came along at the halfway… during a period which was sort of the halfway point of my life where I had studied music, I was already playing, I was already a professional musician so to speak, from the time I was young, and the vast majority of music I played was danceable music, salsa, merengue, traditional music, plena, bomba, country music, pop music.
Now that I think about it, looking back, the vast majority of that music, of the music I played, had elements found in jazz. For example, the element of improvisation is basically a universal element. It exists in all musical styles. What differentiates one from the other a language so to speak. I thought that when I played salsa I couldn’t play a solo that sounded like Charlie Parker because that’s not the language. But the instrumentalist uses the language of a singer. When you play, instead of going (sound of music) that Maelo or Cheo would play, you understand. So when I identified the fact that each style sort of has its language, my vision became much clearer because I could concentrate on that specific language when I played a specific style.
I see it from a standpoint of respecting both traditions equally. Respecting both traditions. So on the plena album, what plena we would do would be done like plena, and what was would be done as jazz, because it was going to be like it is. In the case of the record Alma Adentro, when we arranged those things or played them if we were going to play Olas y Arenas, if someone who is familiar with the theme listens to it, I didn’t want it to be hidden. But within that, we’re also doing our thing.
(Music)
New York is people running, the train, noise everywhere, a lot of music too, but something else, another kind of… Another kind of … like another corner, maybe less percussive and more amplified. I feel it’s more or less something like that. Basically I’ve been in New York for around 20 years. I’ve been in New York for 20 years. At first it was very hard to get into what the city was, especially the speed of the city. It’s very fast, everyone running, very aggressive, but now I’m totally a New Yorker. I miss it so much if I don’t have it. I miss that about New York even when I’m in big cities.
I think that a lot has to do with the surroundings. For example, this area where we are here is where the vast majority of jazz clubs are and something I do a lot, not so much now but I did before, I would come here to the Village and I would go from club to club. I would see a set or a couple of things in one, then I would go to another, listen to two themes, in another place I would listen to three themes. I don’t know, that’s like… For me it was like immersing myself in everything that was going on, like being there inside what they call the scene, you know, the scene, what’s going on here, because for me and well, maybe other people disagree, but for me jazz is New York.
Jazz, this music, is here. Perhaps its birthplace was somewhere else, it developed in New Orleans or other places, but right now, jazz’s present is here and it has been for a long time. So if you’re here you have to take advantage of that. The musicians we admire, what’s happening right now, is happening here.
I studied at the Libre de Música and when I started at the school, well initially it was the saxophone and other kid stuff, and I really got into pop music, rock music, that sort of thing, heavy metal, the same thing, hip-hop, what people were listening to on the radio. When I started playing, I started to play salsa and such professionally, then I started to hear, “Hey, listen to this album by Cuba Irakere, Los Van Van, NG. So, that was my first foray into something that wasn’t American music, that type of music. And afterwards, in connection with that, jazz arrived, for example, and then jazz opened doors because it wasn’t just in the U.S. What they do in Latin America, what they do in Europe; that kind of opened my ears to going to other places.
What’s more, when I was immersed in salsa almost everything I listened to was old salsa. It was Fania, for example, back then. Later on, Willie Colón, Rubén Blades, Maelo... Maelo from the time I was little, but Héctor Lavoe, that sort of thing. Then that also brought me up to the present because when I was playing which was when 90s salsa was at its peak, when Gilbertito was there and those people had their groups. Alex De Castro, Gilbertito, Tony Vega, Victor Manuelle coming out, just getting started. So all that was out there. It was like the popular music at that time was salsa, like all of my friends were musicians… My friends from the school were all musicians. When we would go to listen to a salsa groups we weren’t there to dance, we were there to listen to the group.
LP: When we asked Miguel about the relationship between his album Identities are Changeable and Juan Flores’s book The Diáspora Strikes Back, he told us:
MZ: The project came from that book, basically. When I read the book and I started reading I said, wow, this could be like an idea, you know, to do this but to incorporate it around something musical. That same experience in the book, well it’s not purely Puerto Rican. There are people from everywhere and I said, wow, this is interesting and I have family here in New York who also grew up here. My brother grew up here. My sister was born here, but, you know, they’re Boricuas.
I grew up seeing that. They’re like me, but not, you know. It’s like they are, but they’re not - something else.
("To say that you're a New Yorker and to say that you're Puerto Rican doesn't necessarily have to contradict. A lot of people think that way, but I don't believe that. I think more and more people are realizing that you can be more than one cultural self at the same time.")
And talking with Juan there were certain things he said - as you know - you’ve heard the album. Many of the phrases including the title, are his phrases. So many of those phrases were the ones that sort of gave me direction, starting with the book but afterwards talking directly with him because, well, he would put it into such articulate and clear terms, that’s when I said, okay, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to create one narrative per theme.
(Music)
That song specifically, the Second Generation Lullaby comes from this relationship with my family here. As I mentioned to you everybody came here. My dad’s entire family, almost all of them came here, my cousins, they were all here. So it’s like I had that side of the family, which was my New York family. My sister Patricia, who’s the youngest, eventually had a son who is the child presented in the song. And I remember… I didn’t have kids yet, my daughter hadn’t been born at that time, but I remember thinking how different their experience would be compared to that of my nephew because they were raised, for example in a home where only Spanish was spoken, they already came with that direct connection to Puerto Rico, but taking that next step is to sort of distance yourself a little and part of what I was talking about with her in that interview, in the interview we talked about in the song, it was like she was going to try to pass that… to pass on that experience to her son. What would his path be? Let’s see, what can happen? He’ll forge his path himself. It’s the same thing with my daughter.
She’s going to forge her identity depending on what she’s drawn to, the road she takes in life, that type of thing. You can inject a little bit into that here there but you can’t do it for them.
LP: Itinerarios Sonoros is a Calle Loiza, Inc. and Radio San Juan production sponsored by Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades. Produced and directed by Lydia Platón Lázaro and Mariana Reyes with the collaboration of Priya Parrotta, Nalini Natarajan and Juan Otero Garabís. Technical direction was by Ambar Suarez Cubillé and Julio Albino. Follow us on Soundcloud, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as Radio San Juan.