Giiiro y Maraca Vol. 4, No. 4 Dec. 2000 A PUBLICATION OF THE SEGUNDA QUIMBAMBA FOLKLORIC CENTER, INC. Modesto Cepeda: 25 Afios Dedicando Su TITO PUENTE's BOMBA & PLENA Mtisica A La Escuela de Bomba y Plena RECORDINGS Rafael Cepeda Atiles. The career of El maestro, the greatest of all cantautor, Puerto Rican musicians folclorista y ended this year with the Modesto Cepeda de untimely death of el Santurce, Puerto rey, Tito Puente. Even Rico, acaba de the often-staid and grabar un proyecto always disconnected titulado "Antologia- organ of the que celebra 25 ahos mainstream press, The de su rmIsica de New York Times stood bomba y plena up and noticed the dedicada a su suerio passing of this musical hecho realidad, la legend by giving Tito Escuela de Bomba y Puente front page treatment and declaring, rightly so in Plena Rafael Cepeda Atiles. Es un acontecimiento this case, that Tito was as symbolic of New York City as importante en el desarrollo de nuestra cultura Yankee Stadium. I was impressed as were many new puertorriquena y merecedor de nuestras alabanzas. Yorkers who witnessed the incredible career of an icon, a Empezando con unos talleres en 1973 y llegando al maestro in every sense of the word, and a prolific edificio en Calle Union de Villa Palmeras, la Escuelita es recording artist and composer. Tito Puente was finally la cuna de grupos como Cimiento Puertorriquerio, Los getting some recognition in the latter years of his life, Cepeditas y otros que siempre cuentan con una including a Eubie Lifetime Achievement award presented representacion juvenil sin igual. by NARAS in 1989, a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1990, the Yale, concert w/ sinfonica de PR, and his induction into the jazz hall of fame. He has played INSIDE: for Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. Every accolade was well deserved. PROFILES FROM RINCON CRIOLLO: NORMA CRUZ p. 9 So as we end the last year of the millennium how could we not stop to reflect upon the career of this tremendous percussionist? How can we not invoke his Por muchos Otos los lideres de la Escuelita name? And how can we not recognize the few forays fueron Modesto Cepeda, director y maestro de musica, su into Puerto Rico's authentic drum music, our bomba and hija Gladys Cepeda, encargarda de la coreografia, y su our plena, that Tito Puente initiated. The pickings are esposa, Enriqueta Culta de Cepeda, conocida por Doha slim but each one is a jem. Ketty, quien se dedicaba a disehar y confeccionar los trajes de la bomba y plena para los estudiantes. A Background: Ernest Anthony Puente, Jr. was morirse en 1999 El Nuevo Dia sehala que "muere una (continued on p. 2 ) parte de nuestra cultura negra . .una embajadora del la (vease pag. 6) 2 Giiiro y Maraca born in Harlem Hospital, New York City on April 20, bomba, la plena; they had their own typical music in the 1923 to Ernest and Ercilia Puente from Coamo and San island. But at that time we were playing Cuban music, German, Puerto Rico. He began his performing career as and that's what developed really — the jazz, the Cuban a dancer with his sister Anna and his musical career bebop and all that throughout the years. A lot of the studying piano and drums. At age 15 he was considered young Puerto Rican musicians developed a lot of good a child prodigy. Soon he began playing drum set and Cuban-style playing. As I grew older I became a big- timbales with the likes of Noro Morales, Jose Curbelo band leader, [and] then I catered to all kinds of people, and eventually with the premier Latin band of that era, but I really played Cuban music — which I still play, Machito and his Afro-Cubans. He served in World War because that's the good dance music: the mambo, the II, where he played saxophone and learned the guaguanco, the cha-cha-cha, the guajira, all that kind of foundation of musical arrangements. When he returned music." he played and arranged for Curbelo, Pupi Campos, Miguelito Valdes and others until he formed his Picadilly Puente's deep association with Cuban music was Boys to play an engagement at the famous Palladium not lost on the Cubans. Indeed they adored him. Olavo Ballroom on 53"I Street in Manhattan. Soon the band Alen Rodriguez, a Cuban musicologist interviewed in was known as Tito Puente and his Orquestra and Tito 1999 by Jim Payne for Puente's and Payne's Tito Puente, became one of the big three of the Palladium golden era: Drumming With the Mambo King, is noted as saying: Tito Puente, Machito and Tito Rodriguez. Simultaneous "Everything I hear from Tito Puente is so Cuban. The to the mambo explosion in the Palladium, Puente became greatest timbale player in the world is not a Cuban. He's influential in the Cuban bebop, or Cubop, movement Puerto Rican. Cuba has many, many very good timbale initiated by the great Mario Bauza. In time, Tito players, but in the international arena none of them can survived the rock & roll invasion, the boogaloo craze and compete with Tito Puente." Such was Puente's many other fads, by sticking to what worked, good Latin dominance of the timbales, an essential Cuban dance music, and by venturing into Latin Jazz instrument, that in 1957 (!) Tito Puente was the only expressions with a smaller ensemble. At the end of his non-Cuban to be invited to Cuba by Gaspar Pumarejo, in career he had accumulated five Grammy awards and was honor of the greatest Cuban musicians of the last 50 the leader of a smaller Latin Jazz ensemble and a larger years. Latin orquestra. Equally important, at the end of his glorious career, Puente was still el rey. This is not to say that New York born, Tito Puente was anything but clear on his identity as he notes Steven Loza's definitive biography Tito Puente in 1981: and the Making of Latin Music paints an elaborate "[And] I always, as we say in Spanish, `plantao picture of the man that has had such a remarkable impact bandera' — wherever I go I represent more or less, the on Latin and Jazz music in the last century. With Puerto Rican people . Wherever I go, [wherever] I analysis and historical references of Puente's career and travel, they ask me, 'What are you?' I say 'I'm Puerto interviews of Puente and his key collaborators, Loza's Rican.' Bam, barn, barn, I talk. But I am international, book is an important contribution to the Puerto Rican too. I play for all kinds of people, and they dance to my community and its impact on this country. Tito Puente music and I have all kinds of a following; so I don't want and the Making of Latin Music also sheds light on the to tag myself . but when they ask me who I am, I some of the factors that led to Puente to dedicate his represent Puerto Rico. In festivals . like Venezuela, career to Cuban music and to the American classical `La Festival de la Cancion,' I represent Puerto Rico." music known as Jazz. In Steven Loza's chapter on "Identity, Nationalism and For example, in response to Loza's question the Aesthetics of Latin Music," the author attempts to about how Cubans and Puerto Ricans were interacting in recognize the multiple identities in Tito Puente's career: the music world when New York City was quickly "Tito Puente's early years of enculturation in Spanish becoming a Puerto Rican center in the 1950s and 60s, Harlem were contoured less by an exclusive Puerto Rican Tito Puente observed in 1994: identity than by a bilingual, multicultural ambit and his exposure to many cultural concepts and values. It came very [easily] because the Puerto Ricans are very Although Puente . has expressed his interest in good musicians too. The Cubans have they own style of asserting his Puerto Rican heritage, he has music; that's what we play, really. We're not playing simultaneously personified through his musical Puerto Rican music, because Puerto Rican music is la expression and enterprise the issues of a pan-Latino and 3 Giiiro y Maraca international aesthetic. .Puente has openly and era? That passed. The shingaling, you know? Nothing consistently stated throughout his caree that he "plays happened. That's why Latin music has always Cuban music," and he has grappled with the evolved maintained itself, because there's a beautiful dance to it. term salsa as well as with concepts such as "crossover," You could do a nice cha-cha, you do a bolero, you know, for he has realized the historical inevitability of such couples get together and they dance. Very important in fusion and cultural interchange." those days. We had dance studios all over the place.. So the concept of having a dance studio was very Max Salazar, an excellent historian of Latin important for the music, because the music alone was music concludes similarly: "Tito said that his music was marvelous and everything, but you had to dance to it to not only for Puerto Ricans, it was for everybody. He keep it popular together. was very proud of being Puerto Rican. What I'm saying is that he didn't have to [wave the Puerto Rican flag] to This begs the question, unfortunately perhaps gain acceptance. His music gained acceptance on its never asked of Puente, did bomba & plena offer the same own.- opportunities for dancers? "Tito touched bases with everybody, basically to So in Tito Puente we have the trajectory of an cover his ass [laughing].