Month: May 2020

Panamanian Música Típica is an entire gorgeous world unto itself. Thankfully, Toronto’s Dr. Sean Bellaviti (see his PHD thesis here) has a forthcoming book on the subject, which I can’t wait to read.

Interestingly, as Panama’s discography amply shows, many Típica musicians knew and loved the AfroCuban canon. Just looking at the Soundway Panama! series, we comped Ceferino Nieto’s “Ceferino en Salsa”, his hot version of “Zum Zum Babae”, Papi Brandao’s incredible versions of “Bilongo” and “La Murga”, Chilo Pitty’s swinging version of Rafael Labasta’s “Piculina” and Ormelis Cortez’s cover of Willie Colón’s “Si La Ves.”

Many Panamanian Típica versions of AfroCuban songs swing harder than straight ahead versions by groups from other Latam countries. When I asked Papi Brandao how it happened that he recorded his smoking version of “Bilongo”, he smiled and said “Yo era Salsero.” That simple.

In the early ’70s, Música Típica took a delicious detour deeply into Salsa music, and I’ll post a number of examples in this and forthcoming posts. First, here is Ceferino’s take on the AfroCuban classic “Tumbando Caña”:

Note that Cefe didn’t just slap a “D.R.” on the song credits – he knew the song originated with the Cuban “Comparsa los Alacranes!”

Next is another personal favorite, a stunning version of Willie Colón’s “Guajira Ven” by Chiriqui’s own Chilo Pitty:

Here is a clipping from Panama’s La Prensa, advertising the Toldo “La Salsa Tipica” from the 1972 Carnavales:

Finally, here is Típica titan Osvaldo Ayala doing a version of the Hector Lavoe/Willie Colón composition “El Dia De Mi Suerte”. Ayala, who also recorded an LP with Bush y Su Nuevo Ritmo in the ’80s, would have been hanging out with Colón and Lavoe at their shows in Panama around this time. He also recorded a hot version of their song “Juana Peña” (youtube it), and can be heard singing out “La Salsa de Paritilla” on this track:

Here’s a smoking original by Panama’s great Manito Johnson with his Diferentes from 1973-74, with a nice anti-domestic violence message as well. The arrangement is by “El Profesor” Alexis Castillo.

Next is a beautiful original composition by Pedro “Bolita” Gómez from his hard to track down LP Bolita y su Tentación Latina (1972?). “Los Provincianos” deals with the different provinces in Panama, which culturally differ significantly, but of whom Bolita affirms, “todos somos hermanos.” Bolita’s group included the Ortega brothers Dirk (Piano), Cancer (Tres) and Villo (Conga).

Bolita – one of Panama’s great salsa singers and lyricists, who sang lead on the beautiful Freddy y sus Afro Latinos LP – was raised in barrio Calidonia, and sang with the well known big band “La Super de Raul Ortiz” early in his career. He also recorded a couple of very hot sides with Tille y Su Nueva Dimension on the Tamayo label.

Bolita later moved to Puerto Rico and was the last singer Joe Quijano had with his Conjunto Cachana.

Here is the 45 version – which is shorter, and a different arrangement (thanks to Jota Ortiz for the heads up):

And here is the LP version:

Tommy Olivencia – who toured Panama a number of times beginning in the early ’70s – got the Bolita composition in his hands and recorded an excellent version with his Orquesta on the Juntos de Nuevo LP (1974), with vocal by the great Chamaco Ramirez. I imagine it was from Olivencia’s version that Enrique Lynch’s band in Peru got wind of the song, and created their own really nice version that extends the concept of brotherhood to all of Latin America. Take a listen:

Finally, here is one of those amazing one-off Salsa sides Panama is infamous for – the electric piano-led guaguanco “Felicidad” by Silvestre y su Grupo, canta Eddy Acosta, on the Tamayo label. This band was led by Jorge Sylvester – another of the musical geniuses born and raised in Panama (Colón).

Dirk Ortega appears on piano here, and shared arranging duties on this 45 with Sylvester, who plays Tenor Sax as he did on the Bolita LP. Panama’s Gabriel Solis is on Trumpet – Solis would later go on to play with Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz among others.

Sylvester (starting at 14 or 15 years old) led the excellent raw combo “Los Caballeros de Colon” with singer Mauro Garcia, and after attending the Conservatory in Panama and playing with bands as varied as Bolita’s and with Victor Boa, left Panama to a fruitful career in Free Jazz.

You can hear an example of his brilliant Afro Caribbean Experimental art here:

And for more, check out: https://www.jorgesylvesteracemusic.com/

Disfruten!

Here is Ray Perez’s Los Calvos with “José” circa 1967, with El Pavo Frank set loose on the full drum kit, and another gorgeous bluesy piano solo by Ray. The brilliance of Calaven is on full display here:

Genre-breaking. With style.

Next is both a majesty and a mystery – Calaven recorded a version of the fantastic Eddie Palmieri original “Oyelo que te Conviene”, but no one seems to have ever seen the vinyl, and no one knows definitively with what group it was recorded.

Ray suggests Calaven recorded it with Jesus “Chuito” Narvaez on sello Velvet. But again, no one has seen the vinyl. My friend the distinguished Venezuelan music journalist/researcher Gherson Maldonado has it on a CD that has the group name as simply “La Tromba”:

Finally, here is Calaven doing “El Gato Negro” with Federico y su Combo. Luis Soulful Torino, who has curated tons of fantastic rereleases – and some originals – on his Soulful Torino label, has this song as a “Jump Boogaloo”:

You can read more about Soulful Torino here http://www.recordkicks.com/news/SOULFUL-TORINO-RECORDS

And read Gherson’s fantastic blog here: http://hemerotecamusicavenezolana.blogspot.com/p/la-palabra-salsa-antecedentes.html

Here is the original of this love letter to my favorite country in the world, written by the great Postman Poet of Puerto Rico, Catalino “Tite” Curet Alonso:

The song appears on the same LP with “Panameña”, which highlights how important and receptive those Salsa capitals – then in full bloom – were to Nuyorican Salsa as it was created.

Here’s a version you may not be familiar with, and it’s smoking hot – by the underrated Boricua bandleader Johnny “El Bravo” Lopez, who was a semi-pro baseball player that made the move to musician. His version (mine is a Nicaraguan press. Lord how this music got around) is called “Pa’ Colombia Entera” and features vocals by Toño Lopez and Junior Cordova:

Told you. Finally, here’s another gorgeous take on a rare 45 by Panama’s supergroup Los Exciters on the Loyola label. The exciters slow the song down even more, making for a swinging slow and slinky montuno, with those inimitable Exciters horns:

Disfruten!

Here is “Para Ti Mi Amor” by Los Fabulosos Festival (Los Festivals or The Festivals) featuring vocalist Kabir, then known as Ernie King:

Really, what a performance, and what a song. The Festivals were led by Ronald George, who was the drummer and director. Vocalists were a rotating group of talents including Olivia Thousand, Edgar King and Kabir (Ernie King). Guitarists were Alfred Peters (left Panama in the early ’70s to study medicine in Mexico), Ricardo Yearwood and Raymond King. Melvin Wright, tumba player, sang the salsa songs, and Edgar King played tumba when Melvin sang salsa. Bassist was Carlos Danvers.

Of this time in his career, Kabir told me:

“After the Invaders I went to the Exciters, and from the Exciters to the Festivals. With the Festivals, my career was sky high. That’s when I started to get along with the Festivals, the used to do their thing in the canal zone with the Exciters. The Festivals put me on with them for one month as a test.

After a while we dropped the “Fabulous” and became The Festivals. I stayed with them for about 7-8 years, we didn’t have any problems. We went through changes, but kept our harmonious nature, the most harmonious of the combos. Cause Edgar King is a crack at harmony. Him and Melvin.

Wilfredo Reyes joined us after Alfred Peters left, he is a very good singer. We had three kings, Ernie King, Edgar King and Wilfredo Reyes. We could sing anything, the Manhattans, the Chilites, we used to do a lot of Chilites. Main Ingredient, Lou Rawls, Marvin Gaye – groups had to play the big hits of the time, or they were nada.”

Singer Olivia Thousand – Kabir called her “The Queen” – recorded the remarkable song “Que Voy a Hacer”, an Alfredo Peters original:

The Duncan Brothers, another fantastic long-lived group from Colón, re-recorded the song as “Sin Embargo” with a male vocal a few years later and had a big hit in Panama. In fact, more people seem to know the Duncans version than the original version in Panama.

Finally, here is “Algo Muy Profundo” a stunning original by Ralph Weeks with Panama’s supergroup, Los Exciters:

It’s very gratifying to me to see how many of these songs are part of the Lowrider Oldies Canon. When I was first listening to them in Central America, I kept thinking how the guys at the San Jose Swap Meet would love to hear all these tunes… little did I know those deep Soul DJs and diggers already knew these songs, since long before I did!

What’s remarkable about this song is that not only are there two amazing English versions – the original “Something Deep Inside” by Ralph with his group “The Telecasters”, and another by The Beachers with Lloyd Gallimore on organ (thanks to Cameron of Suavecito Souldies for the tip) – but Ralph recently re-recorded fantastic new rocksteady versions in both languages, backed by Combo Lulo, for my panas at the NYC Trust label:

The 45 release’s liner notes by label head Eric Banta are absolutely worth a read, as they explore Ralph’s 50+ years in music between Panama and the US.

The Goombays or Los Goombays were like a phantom on the Combos Nacionales scene. All the great Combos that came later will tell you how excellent the Goombays were, but almost the whole group up and moved to the US in around 1971, which means they really only participated in the first half of the Combos era which was roughly 1965 to 1978 or so.

Joe Clark of the Silvertones told me:

“This is 1965, ’66… the Goombays were a hit then, younger guys looked up to them… They were a big group in Colón… I went to dances and they called me up to sing, the Goombays used to call me up, we used to sing at the Esquire together, but then after Cecilo Wilmot got into the group I just dropped out…

They were tremendous, really. If you hear “Siboney”, with Ces singing, that’s what I am talking about. There is one American singer who can do that, that’s Smokey Robinson. I haven’t heard anybody else do that, except maybe Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston. But for a man to be able to go that high, that has to be respected… they did a lot of covers, and a lot of originals, they did mixes with Calypso and Spanish music. They did very good until they went to the states, since then I haven’t heard anything from them.”

Here is a song that captured me the first time I heard it, The Goombays cover of the great Dennis Yost and Classics IV song “Spooky”:

Next is another great Panamanian Soul tune by Bocas del Toro’s Los Ases del Ritmo. This one is a personal favorite of my man Adam Dunbar, a deep collector – I remember him soon after he started hearing it, telling me “those drums man!”

Finally, returning to the Goombays for a lovely instrumental track off the Story Book LP they pressed in San Francisco (California!) in 1972, “Black Tribute”:

I love to think how I was a year-old baby being strolled around the streets in the same town while these guys were admiring their amazing, freshly pressed LP =)

(This is an email I wrote to friends after my second trip to the Mercado in Cartagena. The postscript was added now)

on thurs i went into the mercado in cartagena again – the dirtiest, most horribly foul smelling place in which i have ever set foot, open muddy lanes with potholes full of green water, fish scales, bustling with people and dirt, young men with bare feet sharpening knives on telephone poles to peel oranges… to find records of course. i go there every time i get to cartagena.

as on my last trip, i went accompanied by my man willington, a local of these parts, skinny and hindu looking, with a great slow smile. a lover of reggae. he knows the alleys and the people, and i go tranquilo with him. when he was 15 he used to wander cartagena with revolvers in his waistband, hard to believe because he is so mellow. i am teaching him to tell boogaloo era covers from 80s crap, and to tell an original label from a later release. dudes that pass us hanging out of bus windows wave at him.

we went to meet a guy named jaime or jimmy, who i had met the day before in the market. he looks at me with a suspicious eye, but says he has the records i am looking for. when we entered his little bodega inside the mercado’s catacombs, which remind me only of the videogame doom, i had the sensation of being in an ancient monastery no one had entered in 400 years. there were two floors and little lighting, all i could see was the outline of stacks and stacks of lps. a voice from the upper floor was informing jimmy that the shelves holding records had all fallen down and needed to be rebuilt. the voice belongs to “cantinflas”, a short and amiable black man in shorts and flipflops who works for jimmy. to my right i saw a narrow, empty open area that was filled at least 10 feet deep with discarded records and covers. of course, everything in the bodega is dusty and nasty.

me and willington set to work, pulling out stacks into the light and flipping through them… hoping, wishing for the rare colombian stuff i have come so far (and so often) to find, when all i have heard is, as in the store of a friend yesterday when i mentioned the titles i was looking for… ” que va, hombre (no way, man)… the guys who have those records, theyll give you their woman before they give you those LPs”

very soon i recognized that this was yet another ridiculously strange collection of records, even in this quantity — little colombian material, much 80s material, and much african material, highlife from the early 80s… it seems that the colombian costa is very afro descended, including a number of maroon palenques that held out against the spanish, and get this – when they started hearing highlife in the late 70s, they invented their own music called terapia and champeta, which is like spanish highlife, complete with wandering guitar (and which is now assimilating bits of reggaeton), and is hugely popular here. its like the cumbia and porro of this generation.

but back to the dirty bodega, where workers are stomping in to climb the stairs and fix the shelves, unleashing clouds of dust and who knows what else into our hair as we dig. and its humid in there. hot. i start to see some new york stuff from the 60s, some original cotiques (what they hell are they doing here?) and some venezuela issues of rare fania records. then i start to see some venezuelan stuff, los dementes, later stuff but nice. meanwhile, jimmy is coming in and out saying things to me like “if you dont have enough money on you, dont worry, you can come back” and “lend me two bucks, i will pay you later”. his character seems to have changed. i am focused and laugh him off, but after he comes in twice willington makes a gesture of someone who’s been drinking and points to jimmy.

uh oh.

after three hours we go into another alley to eat lunch, and get into a big argument with a reggae singer who has turned evangelical and is babbling about how jesus was the perfect human and onlyhecansaveyou etc… thanks to my boy will h’s example i have the safe meal – beans and rice and platano. all this cooked on hot wood coals packed in small round stoves made of car wheel rims soldered onto metal poles. a man is laying on the ground about ten feet in front of us, he has yellow white hair, and it looks like he has small white bandages all over his face. when he turns my way i see he has smeared white paint markings on his face. his pants are rotting off his body, and something jumps near his waist as a younger man laughs loudly at him and points in his face. the man is urinating on himself.

back to the bodega, we get disheartened by the tons of shit we have to go through to get just one good record. jimmy keeps wandering in, and his voice is more more shrill and slurred. i had not noticed how old he looks, his face has become screwed up, as if he was really, really unhappy, or as if he had dentures but had removed them. but the good ones we find are good, so we keep at it. finally we give up and go through those selected, weeding out about half. i am left with 76 records. its now 5 in the afternoon.

we take the box out into the alley, and jimmy is visibly hammered. a cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth, and he starts to pull out the records brusquely, throwing some on the ground in piles. i look around at his minions, and they shake their head at him. he is barely making sense, and is drunk-whining a lot. what happens is bad. he asks ridiculous sums for the records as he paws each one, claiming deep knowledge as an old school collector, but throwing the records on the muck coated floor. the cigarette burns down to the filter, still in his mouth. i ask nicely for a figure for the whole lot, starting somewhere reasonable, but he wont budge, actually his price goes up. his minions start to argue with him, tell him to be reasonable, make a deal… he wants to fight and argue with them. he pulls out the records, bending and abusing them. “he knows”, he says, pointing at me. then waving the records, “this is good stuff. i can sell these in medellin for $20.” he is gloating, holding the records we have selected. later willington makes me aware that because he asked me for $2 and i gave it to him, he thought i was rich and could stick it to me. i thought because it was $2 i was showing i had meager resources. just the opposite actually. in the end he is so unreasonable, yelling and whining, that i negotiate to buy ten records that are worth it for what is a high price in the mercado in cartagena. he crows and tells me to come back tomorrow if i want the rest at the same price. canti and the others laugh at him. “he’s not coming back,” they say. “like a bird, he’s gone!” i tell him in respectful spanish full of “usteds” that with all respect, after all the work we did to weed through his records for him and the way he was being unreasonable, i was not coming back. his minions all try to argue with him, but he just yelled and moaned and stomped off with the box under his arm.

ok. me and willington beat it, shaking our heads. we had fun though overall, and the few lps i got are real interesting. plus it was satisfying that everyone else there was struck by his poor conduct. cantinflas ran up to us as we walked out. ” where can i reach you guys” he asked conspiratorily, “i am going to talk to him when he sobers up and see if he will make a deal.” me and willington get to a bakery and eat some cookies. a kid walks by barefoot with a shirt full of holes and transparent spots onto which he has drawn the body of a naked woman with a blue marker. alongside are the stylized words “hip hop” and “king”.

=======================

two days later we are back near the market, where we meet a friend named mario who works at the airport. mario is earnest, strong, chocolate colored, and stutters. at his house we meet his wife and parents. his wife, a tall, dark skinned indian woman, is lovely and sharp, and his beautiful 3 year old son delver andres is a perfect mix of both his parents’ colors and features. delver romps around in shiny black pirate pants his mother has sewed for him, making menacing bruce lee poses at us with totally convincing facial expressions. on the patio to the sound of blaring vallenato we talk about how in the US a big mac meal costs $6 but workers at mcdonalds get $7.25 an hour, while in colombia a big mac meal costs 8000 pesos and a worker gets 1500 an hour. by the way, 2500 pesos equal one dollar. earlier during this trip i asked the stupid question “don’t you have labor unions?” of one of my informants. “not really”, she replied. “if someone starts a union, they kill them.” they kill student leaders too, apparently. two were shot in the head and killed while i was in cali in the span of three weeks, both attributed to right wing paramilitaries. all i asked acknowledged that the government had to have approved of the actions.

mario is explaing something to me about his work unloading baggage at the airport and i am not understanding. he says every year, after one year of service, they call and fire him, and five days later call him again and hire him for another year. i don’t get it. why do they do that, i ask. so they dont have to pay him a pension, says his wife. if he works for more than one year, they have to contribute to a pension fund for him. if not, they dont.

i wonder if young and strong mario will be like those grey haired older men i see at the mercado, visibly their wiry frames straining to push a load of chinese-made goods through the muck in a plastic shopping cart fitted with wooden slats to drive aside the mud… men that look 65, 68 years old… or the man i saw crawling on the ground right outside the market, face first, his one good leg pushing the other which had a crushed can underneath the knee he was dragging.

two things occur to me as i write this. that someone might think i am just some run of the mill reality show type voyeur, and that it might seem i am exaggerating details, making them more lurid than they really are…

in fact, i am leaving out things i have seen with my own eyes that you might not believe even if i had the words to describe them, open wounds that scarred my soul just to look at for a split second… as to being a voyeur, i admit i look with interest down crazy ass alleys and it all somehow reminds me of how i felt reading an old dime copy of irving shulman’s “amboy dukes” for the first time… but in fact, i have not watched tv for more than four years, and if life is so comfortable in the US that people want to pretend no one else is living, anywhere, right now at this precise moment – that’s their problem, y no el mio, papa.

me and willington are talking to some other youngsters in the mercado next to a man cutting a customer’s hair with a razor blade. they all have heard about what happened, and all agree it was not right. i feel better, i had tossed and turned a little the night before, not for the records, they come and go. for the principle. i stay awake thinking about shit like that, always have.

i call my friend william hincapie’s store, he says cantinflas is looking for us, and has gone to bachir’s. we call bachir (both he and william were big “pickup” djs in the 60s, spinning the hot boogaloo and latin soul records (with blacked out labels, so rivals couldnt steal the tune) on huge, cobbled together sound systems), and en fin hook up with canti. he says he talked to jaime’s son, that jaime is a dumbass, and that his son wants to sell us the records we picked out for a fair price. a few minutes later the son comes up with the box on his shoulder. its all there, minus four records jaime apparently passed out clutching. it feels strange. in the end, i have the records. i cant wait to get back to costa rica to hear anibal velasquez’s cumbia-boogaloo-descargas, or the strange primitivo santos LP i found on patty records from the dominican republic. i also got joey pastrana’s first LP, with “rumbon melon”. on record! no more listening to it on mp3. i couldnt care less that its a venezuelan repress.

and i think willington is more satisfied than me. when we were talking about what had happened with jaime later the first night, he said “we have a name for that here, in the mercado. its called injusticia.”

==========

postscript: on my next trip to cartagena willington’s number didn’t work. he had asked me to record him some cds of dread reggae, and i wanted to get them to him. finally a couple years later i was near the mercado with another guy i met and saw willington passing in a bus. i raised my hand to him and he did the same, but it was just a second and he was gone. the guy i was with said “you know that guy??” I said yeah, he took me in the mercado the first time i went, such a cool dude. i’ve been trying to get back in touch with him. “ese es maton” he said. “that dude is a killer.”

also, some of the 80s crap I wasn’t even looking for turns out to have been amazing =(

The descendants of Panama’s largely English-speaking, Protestant Afro-Antillean population – who probably account for at least 20% of Panama’s population – were clearly a significant cultural leavening agent in a small, cosmopolitan, already Afro-heavy Spanish colonial country.

Their epic contributions to Panamanian Salsa (Francisco “Bush” Buckley, Manito Johnson, Claudio Avila (Nee Claude Abregail), Jazz (Victor Boa, Bat Gordon, John “Rubbaleg” McKindo, Mauricio Smith) and Soul (The Exciters, Silvertones, Festivals, etc.) are a key component of the content of this blog.

It should be unsurprising that given such a large influx of brilliant immigrants specifically from Jamaica and Barbados (and Trinidad – which is where Panamanian musical giant Maurico Smith’s father was from), Panama boasted a rich Calypso scene since at least the late 1930s.

Given that the Antillean immigration began with the French Canal project in the 1880s and then really gained steam in the first two decades of the 20th C., Calypso (and Mento, certainly work songs) were likely being heard in Panama very early in the new century. Banjos and Ukeleles were easy instruments to pack, and there was always a lot of back and forth traffic with the islands during this period of “Sojourning”.

Interviews done by His Excellency Professor Gerardo Maloney (Panama’s former ambassador to Jamaica) for his documentary Calipso (1991) consistently mention Panama’s other key port city of Colón (on the Caribbean coast) and its Carnavales as a key center/time for Calypso.

Colón had a dominant US presence, with four key forts: Camps Beard, Davis, Sherman and Gulick. Even apart from the omnipresence of US sailors and soldiers, Colón’s was a multicultural population of Afro-Antilleans, Afro-Panamanians, Hindus, Chinese, (mostly Sephardic) Jews, Latinos from other countries (Salvadorans, Guatemalans) and Panamanian mestizos.

Afro-Antilleans called Afro-Panamanians “Come Coco” (eats coconuts) or “Spanish Bwai”, and were called “English Bwai” in turn. The Chinese owned the grocery stores and restaurants, and the Jews owned clothing stores. Key popular neighborhoods where local music culture emerged were “the beach” – a shanty town that included Hindu fishermen – and “Bamboo Lane”, which was the border between Camp Beard and Colón. In the ’60s, US personnel were known to come buy and smoke ganja (Panama Red) in the beach and bamboo lane.

Contemporaries say that Colón’s nightlife was superior to that of the capital city in the ’40s and ’50s, and have likened it to a little Havana, with multiple cabarets, nightclubs and bars featuring Jazz and Latin orchestras and Calypsonians such as Lord Cobra (Wilfred Berry, b. 1926 Bocas del Toro) and Lord Panama (George Allen, b. 1928 Colón).

Roy Clark, better known as sweet soul singer Joe Clark of the Silvertones, was born in Colón in 1945, and told me the following:

“People used to travel from all over for Carnaval in Colón, from February to March. Carnaval was Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday was the big day, Martes de Carnaval. The two last days were Sabado Carnavalito in Panama City and and Sunday Carnavalito in Colón.”

“I started to go around listening to these calypso bands playing, to the different instruments, and one day I bought myself a plastic ukulele. Lord Panama’s guitar player showed me how to play a tune.”

“We used to pick up collections, everywhere we went we played different songs. The Americans loved to see that kind of thing. There weren’t a lot of tourists but always lots of soldiers, sailors, marines… they’d stop us and say “hey play us a song”, and we’d launch into “Down by the Riverside.” And they said “hey, you guys sound good!” Because we used to blend our voices with the instruments. And they would drop whatever they had into our hat, sometimes they just stuck their hand into their pocket and whatever they had, threw it in. And that’s how we got paid, when we were done, we would share it together.”

“In bamboo lane, that’s the place where I grew up, that’s where we played with a ukelele and a bass made from putting ma’s washpan on the ground and attached a string to a stick of wood. Boom boom boom boom. Sometimes someone had a conga. And we were goin crazy. We played all over!”

The following is a personal favorite Panamanian Calypso, “Mon Cherie” by Black Majesty (Claude Morant) and the Mighty Bamboo Band:

Next is Epiphanio Vargas and Los Pana Afros “Sweet Music” which is noted as a “Calypso Rock”. I don’t have any biographical info on Vargas, but Los Pana Afros were the band that most regularly backed Lord Cobra on his recordings:

And finally, another favorite, Lord Kontiki’s excellent Calypso Boogaloo “Contacto en Samaria”:

Disfruten!

Máximo Rodriguez was born in 1919 on the Isla de San Miguel in the Pearl Islands in the Gulf of Panama. One of 18 brothers and sisters, Máximo moved at a young age to El Marañon, a working class barrio in the capital that nurtured countless brilliant musicians such as Camilo “Azuquita” Argumedes, “Meñique” Barcasnegras and many more.

Máximo got his start playing the maracas with Conjunto Los Dedos in 1936 (he was 17) playing maracas for $1.25 a night. By the late 40s he was bassist and singer at the Happyland Cabaret with las Estrellas Panameñas de Pipo Navarro – which band included Anel Sanders Sr. (Armando Boza, Bush y Sus Magnificos) and Panama’s “High Priest of Jazz” Victor Boa.

Maximo’s idol as singer and bassist was Panamanian Camilo “El Gran Camilón”, who was raised in Cuba and starred in both roles with Mariano Mercerón y sus Muchachos Pimienta in the late ’30s and early ’40s, and then moved back to Panama in 1947. Around 1960 bandleader Armando Boza sought him out to sing coro, where he joined bongocero Mane Nieto and singer Manito Johnson in the consensus best big band Panama produced.

While touring Colombia, Boza’s pianist Leo Kipping had to return to Panama unexpectedly – thus beginning Mane Nieto’s career on piano. As a side note, percussionists make fantastic pianists with especially bouncy montunos – just ask Eddie Palmieri, who started out on timbales. Alfredito Linares told me that he molded his percussive tumbaos watching Mane play with Boza in Líma, Peru in the early ’60s. Mane never learned to read music – his playing is all by oido and feeling.

Máximo (bass and vocal), Mane (piano) and Manito (vocal) started Las Estrellas Panameñas in 1962 with Tomas “Plomo” Espinoza on tumbadora, Danny Clovis (who later recorded on Victor Boa’s LP) on drums, Angelo Rodriguez on Sax and Clarinet and Pablo Vega on trumpet. Shortly after, the group toured Colombia, where they recorded an LP in Cali on the Diana label.

On returning to Panama, they became a regular attraction at the Rancho Grande nightclub, and contemporaries have pegged them as the hottest dance band in Panama in this era. In 1966 they recorded Felicidad y Bogaloo en el Rancho Grande on Manito’s Lou label, a highly sought-after LP that features “Mambologia”, which appeared on the first Soundway compilation.

While Máximo’s Estrellas are rightly known for their Salsa numbers, the Diana LP includes a beautiful arrangement of a Panamanian Típica song, the Tamborera “El Carate”. That LP also included a stunning version of the Típica Tamborera “Sentimiento del Alma”, which they re-recorded on the Bogaloo LP:

In 1968 the band played a number of dances for Panamanians in New York City, and recorded an LP Los Generales: Desde Nueva York produced by Vicente Cartagena. Cartagena, who was the sound engineer on Eddie Palmieri’s famous Live at Sing Sing LP, produced or recorded a number of heavy underground Salsa LPs including those by Dax Pacem, King Nando, Orch. Tentacion, Mike HDZ and Brooklyn Sounds.

By this time the Estrellas had added “Diablo” (Manuel González) on timbales, and the LP also features hot Dominican bandleader Rafael Labasta (who lived in Panama for many years) on trumpet, and the great Francisco Ángel (Kako) Bastar on bongoses. Kako had deep connections to Panama, which is where he found his two main singers of the late ’60s, Azuquita and Meñique.

The wicked dancefloor guaguancó “Flora” (appears on Soundway’s Panama! 2) came out of this session, as did a great version of Lou Perez’s “Bonbon de Chocolate” and the infectious Manito Johnson composition “La Mujer Puertorriqueña”, which features Manito’s so-strong vocal:

Finally, I wanted to share another song off the same LP, which gives some shine to Maximo’s conguero, “Plomo” Espinoza. After this fast mozambique evolves into Espinoza’s conga solo around 1:20, Kako comes in at about the 2:00 mark and absolutely shreds the bongoses as the band holds forth like a latin Black Sabbath:

As Latin record collectors are known to exclaim: Ufffffff!!!

Thanks to Panamanian collector, archivist and Salsa commentator Luis Gooding, we can all see Máximo (that’s Mane on piano) live, in the following video. Note that Máximo is considered the first in the AfroCuban canon to sing and play bass at the same time – many decades before Oscar de Leon:

As final note, I want to recognize the critical work of music journalist Eric E. Gonzalez, who interviewed Maximo, Mane and Manito (and many other Panamanian music luminaries) in the late ’90s for the site Oasis Salsero, with his partner Israel Sánchez-Coll. Gracias Eric & Israel!

Among the many subgenres that make up the AfroCuban music complex – Sones, Guarachas, Guajiras, the many different Guaguancos, Mozambique, Conga/Comparsa, Changui etc. – the Son Afro is a particularly delicious and interesting form.

The archetypical Son Afro is Arsenio Rodriguez’s “Bruca Manigua”, discussed in the previous article (with video clip about halfway in). As the story goes, Miguelito Valdés brought the song to his bandmates in La Orquesta Casino de la Playa, and their recording of the song (with Miguelito singing) became a key part of the body of recordings they did in the roughly 1937-40 period that were massively influential throughout the Caribbean and Latam.

My idol Ned Sublette tells the story of the song’s recording in his masterwork “Cuba and its Music.” Describing a marathon recording session by RCA records between June 15 and 17, 1937, Sublette says:

“RCA producer Daniel Des Foldes and Engineer Fred A. Lynch recorded until they ran out of blank wax masters, for a total of 141 recordings, mostly in single takes, by 24 different groups.”

…“On the last day of the session, the penultimate group to record was Casino de la Playa, and no doubt the dwindling number of wax masters was a factor in limiting them to six numbers.

Fanfare, drum roll: those six numbers are the beginning of the modern tradition of Cuban dance music.

“Bruca Manigua” was the first recording ever of an Arsenio Rodriguez tune. It was a relaxed tempo, built on a rhythm that Arsenio at the time called “canto congo” and which on Casino de la Playa’s record, with an arrangement by Sacasas, was called an “afro-son”…”

Note that on the 78 in the Youtube clip, the song is noted as a “Conga.” On other songs it’s called a “Rumba Lament”, “Afro Lament” or just “Afro.” Miguelito Valdés’ signature song “Babalu” (He was known throughout his long and illustrious career as “Mr. Babalu”) was an Afro:

Here is one of my favorites – Colombian singer and composer Tito Cortés singing the great Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernandez’s Afro “Diablo”:

Just as the clave is an uncredited part of early Rock and Roll (check out “Iko Iko” and many of Bo Diddley’s songs – known as “the Bo Diddley Beat”), so too was the Afro present in early and mature Rock and Roll and R&B .

Listen again to Ray Charles’ “Unchain My Heart”

It’s a speeded up Afro. I hear it in Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Honey Child” as well. Once you start listening for it, you’ll be surprised where you hear it. It’s part of the “latin beat” the Funk Brothers discuss in the documentary “Standing in the Shadows of Motown”, as played by drummer (and with bassist James Jamerson, founder of the Motown Sound) Benny Benjamin.

According to Rolling Stone Magazine: “For years, Berry Gordy refused to record unless the hard-swinging Benny Benjamin was in the studio . “He had a distinctive knack for executing various rhythms all at the same time,” the Motown Founder said of his label’s key session drummer.”

Available bios of the Alabama-born Benjamin – who Stevie Wonder says he learned to play percussion by listening to – are spare as to his connection to Latin music, sometimes noting that his influences included “Buddy Rich and Tito Puente.” I don’t know… I smell an untold backstory here. You don’t get a nickname like “Papa Zita” without hanging out with Cubans or Puerto Ricans in NYC…

Now listen again to Santana’s “Black Magic Woman”:

That’s the Afro Son, especially strongly in the bassline. Note that key members of Santana’s group included Cuban-born percussionist Armando Peraza, who was part of the AfroCuban Jazz scene in NYC in the late ’40s.