Friday, August 26, 2005
By JOHN RADANOVICH/ SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
WHO: Ochún.
WHAT: Latin jazz.
WHEN: 4:15 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 10 p.m. Sept. 8 and 13.
WHERE: Saturday and Sunday at North Plaza, Lincoln Center, Manhattan. Sept. 8 and 13 at Sabor, 8809 River Road, North Bergen, (201) 943-6366.
HOW MUCH: Free at Lincoln Center; no cover at Sabor.
Ochún also performs at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays at Nights in Havana, 67 Old Tappan Road, Tappan, N.Y., (845) 359-4479. No cover.
Miguel Garcia was still a boy when he saw the greatest singer his native Cuba has yet produced.
The year was 1953, and the great son star and bandleader Benny Moré was just achieving his well-deserved fame. It was the golden age of Cuban big bands, and Garcia's mother, who was a rumba dancer, knew many of the great musicians of the time.
"I begged my mother to take me to see him," Garcia said excitedly by telephone from Miami. He was 9 years old when his mother finally took him to a radio broadcast of CMQ, Cuba's leading radio station. "I get goose bumps just talking about it. From then on I wanted to be a singer."
When Garcia was 14, his family left Cuba and resettled in New York. Garcia first sang informally in doo-wop groups and went through a succession of bands. First came a Latin rock band and the group Macau, both of which opened for Tito Puente and played the tri-state area.
Over time, Garcia gravitated back to his musical heritage, and in the mid-1970s helped form Osuna Son. In Spanish, "son" means "sound," and in Cuban music it is the form that traveled from the island throughout Latin America and to the States; it is essentially what is now referred to as salsa. Even though Osuna Son again opened for Tito Puente as well as Latin jazz pianist Charlie Palmieri, Garcia dropped out of the scene for almost two decades.
"I would sing with people here and there, but otherwise I was kind of like obsolete, a dinosaur," he said with a laugh.
Lucky for fans of timeless Cuban music and non-commercial salsa that Garcia took his voice out of hiding with another son band in 2002, and the next year formed the group Ochún with Texas-born pianist Paul Armstrong. The band's name comes from the Santeria river goddess whose Catholic counterpart is the patron of Cuba, la Caridad del Cobre. Ochún, Garcia says, "is the goddess of love and positive energy, and this is what we want it to bring to our audiences." She also happens to be an expert in seduction, and so is the music played by Garcia's band.
The eight-member group plays modernized versions of what most U.S. listeners know from the Buena Vista Social Club bands: son, guaracha, mambo and guaguanco, as well as charanga (usually containing flute, violin and voice) and cha cha. Ochún does not play the latest of Cuban music forms, timba.
"We aren't really timberos," Garcia said. "We are more New York, mixed with older music from Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s."
Although not every member of the group was born in Cuba, all are veterans of Latin music, most notably trés (a type of Cuban guitar) player Pablo Moya, who does all the arranging. Although Garcia wrote most of the recordings, he heaps praise on the arranging skills of Moya.
"We are very lucky to have him. In Cuba he was a famous trés player. They call him 'el tresero de manigua,' which means the trés player from the countryside of that region. All the best treseros always come from the hills there."
Some of Garcia's reemergence has been helped by Norman Issacs, owner of Ion Records and Norman's Sound and Vision record store, a fixture on Third Avenue in Manhattan for many years. A fervent lover of Latin music, Issacs lives in the same building as Garcia but for many years did not know that his neighbor happened to be a very fine ballad and son singer.
Issacs released the band's first eponymous record in 2004, and is executive producer on a pending release, "En el Año de Ochún." Both records showcase a swinging band coming into its own. Unlike so much of salsa music these days, the songs are lightly produced to let Garcia's talents and clear enunciation tell a song's story. This is especially true on the ballads, known as boleros, recorded with a minimum of accompaniment.
Music like that of Ochún, Issacs said, is why he got involved in the industry in the first place. And although he acknowledges the difficulties of selling records these days, he believes that bands like Ochún are out there, playing "music that has life to it."
|