“Oye Como Va”: Three Generations in the Life of a Classic Latino/American Dance Tune
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bak15665_Ch11_217-250.qxd 12/8/06 9:38 AM Page 217 chapter eleven “Oye Como Va”: three generations in the life of a classic Latino/American dance tune New York City San Francisco UNITED STATES Los Angeles Related locations: Tijuana Canada South America Chile West Africa Miami PUERTO Congo RICO Dominican Republic London Havana San Juan MEXICO France Paris CUBA Jamaica Tokyo Nigeria TRINIDAD Spain & TOBAGO United Kingdom PANAMA Los Angeles. 1988. The lights dim. The curtain rises. A crowd of a thousand- plus Latin music fans cheers wildly, for there, standing center stage behind a timbales battery of drums and other percussion instruments called the timbales is (teem-BAH-lays) The King—El Rey—of Latin music: Tito Puente. Tito Puente (TEE-toh This is a king who wears many crowns: king of the timbales, king of PWEN-tay) salsa music, king of Latin jazz. Like Elvis Presley in rock-and-roll, Louis Arm- strong in jazz, and Ludwig van Beethoven in Western classical music, Puente is an icon. He is a musician whose artistry and persona essentially define the musical tradition with which he is identified. Tito immediately takes command of the band, locking in tightly with the other members of the rhythm section (pianist, bassist, percussionists) bak15665_Ch11_217-250.qxd 12/8/06 9:38 AM Page 218 and “kicking” the rhythms and riffs of the horn section (trum- pets, trombones, saxophones) with a barrage of drum fills and accented “shots.” The energy his playing and presence generate is extraordinary, and the rest of the band rises to meet it. Over the course of this magical night of music making, Tito Puente wows the audience with his dazzling timbales solos, his lyrical playing on the vibraphone (an instrument whose use he pioneered in Latin music), his bandleading skills, showmanship, charm, and humor. They take it all in, loving every minute, crying out “Tito, we love you!” at various points. There are many great moments, but there is one that unquestionably tops the rest as far as the response of the audience is concerned. When Tito and the band launch into an arrangement of “Oye Como Va,” the most famous piece he ever wrote, the entire crowd rises from their seats as one, swaying and dancing to the cha cha chá beat of this classic Latino/American tune. Tito Puente playing the timbales. III Introduction This chapter presents a story of Latin dance music viewed through the lens of the musicul- tural history of the song “Oye Como Va.” According to ethnomusicologist and Tito Puente biog- rapher Steven Loza, “Oye Como Va” is “an international anthem,” “the most played Latin tune in the world,” and a song which, in 1970, turned the worlds of rock and pop music “up- side down” when it was recorded by the Latin rock band Santana and became a commercial mega-hit the likes of which had never been seen before in the domain of Latin music (Loza 1999:45, 73, 44). The chapter begins by placing “Oye Como Va” in the contexts of Latin dance music and Latino/American culture. We then move through a survey of the key developments in Latin dance music history—especially those rooted in traditional Cuban dance music styles such as the rumba (ROOM-bah) rumba, the danzón, the danzón-mambo, the cha cha chá, and the mambo—that prefigured danzón (dan-SOHN the musical style and social significance of “Oye Como Va.” The second half of the chapter builds [last syllable in- around Guided Listening Experiences based on three important and influential recordings of between English “Oye Como Va”: “sun” and “sewn”]) I The original Tito Puente recording from his 1963 album El Rey Bravo. I Santana’s enormously popular, rock-infused version from the hit 1970 record Abraxas. I A hip-hop and techno-inspired dance mix version from a 2004 Tito Puente Jr. CD entitled Tito Puente, Jr.: Greatest Club Remixes. Each of these recordings tells its own tale of the form and substance of pan-Latino cultural identity at a particular historical juncture. Each also reflects on a broader musicultural history of interrelationships between the United States, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. It is the musical products of this history that account for most of the major styles of popular Latin dance music: mambo, cha cha chá, salsa, Latin jazz, Latin rock, and a plethora of newer styles identified by umbrella labels like Latin pop and Latin rap. This chapter, then, takes a specific piece of music, “Oye Como Va,” as its focus musical ele- ment, and looks at that composition in terms of the musicultural history of pan-Latino culture and society. A variety of topics and subjects emerge along the way. Five are of central importance: 218 Chapter Eleven “Oye Como Va”: Three Generations in the Life of a Classic Latino/American Dance Tune bak15665_Ch11_217-250.qxd 12/8/06 9:38 AM Page 219 I The Cuban cha cha chá: its musical and cultural roots and its historical transformation. I Puerto Rican and Newyorican (New York/Puerto Rican) society and musicultural life. I The life and career of Tito Puente (1923–2000). I The musical tradition of Latin dance music (defined below). I The integral connection between Latin dance music and the commercial music industry. “Oye Como Va” and Latin Dance Music in Context We begin with a deceptively simple question: Where does the song “Oye Como Va” (which basi- cally translates as “See how she moves”) come from? A simple answer: the United States, New York City specifically. New York is where Tito Puente was born and raised and where he based himself throughout his professional life. It is where the song was first performed and recorded. And it is almost surely where Puente wrote the tune in the first place. So then, strictly speaking, “Oye Como Va” is an American song from New York (i.e., with “American” meaning “United States-ian” to be precise). That is not all there is to the matter, how- ever. Though Puente was a lifelong New Yorker and a patriotic American citizen who served in the U.S. military during World War II, he identified himself, ethnically and culturally, as a Puerto Rican first and foremost. “Oye Como Va,” and Puente’s body of work overall, belongs to a grand legacy of Latino musical culture that developed principally among Puerto Ricans and Americans of Puerto Rican descent in both the United States (especially New York) and Puerto Rico. Perhaps, then, “Oye Como Va” is best described as an example of Puerto Rican music. Alas, there is a catch to this theory, too. In terms of its fundamental musical identity—its core style, form, and structure—“Oye Como Va” is neither principally American nor Puerto Rican, but rather Cuban. It belongs irrefutably to the musical legacy of the cha cha chá, a Cuban dance- music genre that emerged around 1950 in the Cuban capital of Havana before being developed and gaining wide popularity in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. Furthermore, Tito Puente himself, throughout his life, insisted that his own musical identity was principally Cuban rather than Puerto Rican or American. By these measures, “Oye Como Va” would seem to be a Cuban song, or at least a song of Cuban musical extraction. There is at least one more possibility to throw into the mix as well. “Oye Como Va” may have its musical basis in Cuba, its cultural essence in Puerto Rico, and its geographical point of origin in New York, but for millions upon millions of people around the world, it is, pure and simple, an American “classic rock” tune by Santana. Relatively few people who know and love “Oye Como Va” have any idea who Tito Puente was, let alone that he wrote and was the first to record this famous song. Nor do they know that Santana closely modeled his recorded version after the Puente original (though Santana never made any secret of that fact). Even among his legions of fans, Puente was not necessarily known as the composer of “Oye Como Va.” Wherever in the world he would play, he used to report, people would come up to him and say, “Tito, could you please play Santana’s tune, you know ‘Oye como va’?” (Puente, quoted in Loza 1999:44). This brings us back full circle. Maybe “Oye Como Va” is an American song after all, but for different reasons than those outlined earlier. The fact of the matter is that there is no single right answer to the question, Where does “Oye Como Va” come from? It comes from many different places, and in its eclectic musicultural admixture brings to bear an even more complex question: Where does “Latin dance music” come from? And by extension, who, and what, does it represent? Latin dance music defined “Oye Como Va,” in its many incarnations (at least the ones we deal with in this chapter), belongs to the realm of Latin dance music. This is one of those terms that can mean any or all of a num- ber of different things, so let us establish from the outset what it is assumed to mean here. Chapter Eleven “Oye Como Va”: Three Generations in the Life of a Classic Latino/American Dance Tune 219 bak15665_Ch11_217-250.qxd 12/8/06 9:38 AM Page 220 World events Music events European discovery of Cuba (Christopher 1492 Columbus) First Spanish settlers to Cuba 1511 Taino and other indigenous peoples all but wiped out in wake of Spanish conquest Height of slave trade in Cuba 1790–1860 Late 19th century Creolized dance-music forms: contradanza, danzón 1920s Danzón essentially becomes national dance of Cuba Afro-Cuban son emerges and challenges danzón in both popularity and nationalistic significance 1923 Tito Puente born to Puerto Rican immigrant parents in Spanish Harlem, New York City 1930s Xavier Cugat dominant figure in so-called Latin dance music in U.S.