Month: March 2021

This is a post I have been wanting to write for the longest time. I found the Cofradía Tamayo single “Rio Chucunaque”/ “Tu Cariño” over 15 years ago, and have been trying to find out about the band ever since. No one seemed to be able to tell me much – “they used to practice in this park, they gave shows in the street” was about all I ever learned.

Over the years I found or traded for the other three 45s I am aware of, all on Tamayo:

“Lolita”/”Contento Estoy”
“Ritmo Cofradia”/”Si Me Quereis”
“Las Panameñas”/”Palida Mañana” 

And though the “Las Panameñas” single is sought after as an example of the loose and hot Panamanian Salsa of the 1970s, none moves me like “Tu Cariño.”

Cofradía was founded by Luis “Wicho” Phillips and two friends from the barrio of Betania in Panama City in the early ‘70s. Before Cofradía, Wicho and his friends played rock covers at the infamous Golden Key nightclub, favored by US servicemen as it sat across the street from the Canal Zone in Panama city. The Golden Key scene, where bands like the Latin Monsters and Los Kiwis played regularly, will be detailed in forthcoming singles on the Discodelica (MX) label in the near future. From all descriptions, The Golden Key was nothing less than a nightly rock bacchanal. 

Ariel Rawlings, who composed and sang lead on “Tu Cariño,” is from the barrio of Carrasquilla. He got his start singing coro with a little local group, and his first lead was singing Cheo Feliciano’s “El Raton” (recorded with the Joe Cuba Sextet) when that song took the barrios of Latin America by storm in the mid ‘60s.

Ariel started a group with some friends (including Raymond Innis, nephew of singer Anselmo Inniss of the Panamanian combo Los Persuaders) that they called “The Soul Persuaders”, singing Salsa and Latin Soul. According to Ariel, young musicians who would go on to fame both in and outside of Panama such as timbalero George De Leon and singers Carlos El Grande and Gabino Pampini played with the Soul Persuaders. (link gabino to that article) The group never recorded, but Wicho apparently saw them play, and soon after both Ariel and Raymond joined Cofradía.

Cofradía played quinceañeras and” fiestecitas”, then moved on to University of Panama “novatadas” where they put huge stages in the middle of the street, and 4-6 bands would play while the students danced and partied. Bigger gigs included alternating with Pete “El Conde” Rodriguez when he was touring Panama.

Around 1974-75 they went into the studio to record for Tamayo. According to Wicho, the recordings took place in Balito Chan’s Panavox studios under Chan’s supervision. “They had two channels, one for music and another for vocals,” says Phillips. “You had to have the song down when you went in.”

Band members included Leader and Bateria/Timbales Wicho Phillips, singers Ariel and Beny Romero (link to other article) (of the combos Sui Generis and Roberto y su Zafra), Juan Salazar and the brilliant David Choy on piano, Mario Becabunco on bass, Umberto Philips on conga and Chicho Espinosa bongocero. The horn section included Oscar Suman and his cousin on trumpet, and two trombones: Kako and Chiqui (who was Oscar’s cousin). Ariel mentions a Boricua named “Bambam” who also played trombone with them. The electric guitar that really stands out on both “Tu Cariño” and ”Rio Chucunaque” was played by Carlos Grabowski, who both Phillips and Rawlings agree was a great player who “imitated Santana.”

The B-side “Tu Cariño” is a Rawlings composition that Ariel sang to David Choy, who wrote the arrangement and played piano on the recording. It’s listed as a “Salsa Bosanova”, and as typical of many brilliant Panamanian tunes, has a bit of everything in it. The horn arrangements on both sides of the 45 are as gorgeous as the electric guitar is tasteful. For me it’s nothing less than a pure expression of both the joy and sadness of love:

Gracias Ariel 🙏🏼

The A-side ”Rio Chucunaque” is an interesting choice for Cofradía to have recorded – it’s somewhat of an obscure Panama classic, written by Pablo Castillo and recorded in the very early ‘60s by the great Juan Coronel on the ABCO label with the Sexteto Moderno de Cuz. The original is listed on the 45 as a “Lamento Guajiro”, while the Cofradía version is rebooted as a “Salsa Guajira.” Wicho says that the idea for the Cofradía recording was singer Beny Romero’s, and the arrangement was by the great Alexis “El Profe” Castillo, whose hands are all over ‘70s Salsa in Panama.

The actual Rio Chucunaque is longest river in Panama and flows through the Jungle-covered Darién province that borders the Colombian Province of Chocó, long the home of Native nations like the Embera-Woounan and Colonial Afro populations. The song perfectly uses the dread tone of a classic Guajira to speak of the danger that ensues when the Rio Chucunaque floods:

And here is the original version of ”Rio Chucunaque” by Juan Coronel. Cuz, by the way, was the nickname for Teofilo Joseph – an excellent pianist and arranger who played with the Marcelino Alvarez Orquesta (one of the best big bands of the ‘50s and early ‘60s) as well as the Guardia Nacional’s Orquesta 11 de Octubre:

Wicho later formed a rock group called RST, and then went on to start the DJ/promotion company “Electro Disco”, for which he is well known in Panama. Electro Disco and its competitors were part of the process that finally killed the live combos in favor of the cheaper two turntables and a microphone.

Ariel sang with Bush y su Nuevo Sonido later on, and eventually ran his own soldering workshop in Carrasquilla.

Disfruten!

René Santos’ Conjunto was a key part of the musical scene in Panama throughout the 1960’s and into the early ’70s. Under-recognized Panamanian singing great Manito Johnson narrated a Battle of the Conjuntos held in Panama in the mid ’60s in an excellent interview published by Herencia Latina’s Eric Gonzalez ( Gonzalez is a pioneer in Panamanian Popular Music research):

Manito: “So, after lots of success in Colombia, the “Conjunto-show” — we had a “show” and everything — the Estrellas Panameñas de Máximo Rodríguez came back to Panama. It was 1966. We came back to the Jardín Rancho Grande as a bigger attraction – full every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The parking lot and Vía España (in front of the Rancho Grande) was a madhouse. While we were working there, the heads of the Teatro Encanto planned a spectacle never before seen in Panama. That was to choose the best Conjunto in Panama by popular vote. In the competition were René Santos, Papi Arosemena, the Conjunto Gigante of Fermín Macías – my compadre, who also passed away –, and Máximo Rodríguez y sus Estrellas Panameñas.”

Eric: “René Santos had his own Orquesta?”

Manito: “Yes, he was the first to have an “Estrellas” in Panama. Well, you know René came from Cuba, and after the musicians in the Conjunto he came with went back, he stayed in Panama, and started a group in Panama, and called them the “Estrellas.” But Maximo’s were the “Estrellas Panameñas.” René’s I think were René Santos’ Estrellas”

Eric: “OK. What happened in the Teatro Encanto competition?”

Manito: “At the Teatro Encanto, we played second, and, after we finished playing, it was hard for Fermín Macías to play in the theater, because the people didn’t stop clapping and wouldn’t stop yelling. We won the competition by a mile, with “Lágrimas y Tristeza” and “Felicidad y Boogaloo”. It was two songs per Conjunto.”

Aside from René on Bass and Tres, Santos’ Conjunto/Estrellas at various times had Alfredo de Mercado, Jose Castro and Carlos Torne on trumpet, Moises “Monchi” Bustamante singing, “Professor”Tito Rodriguez (no relation to the Nuyorican bandleader/singer) on piano and vibes, “Benites” on piano, “Cañon” on timbales, Jorge “Cubita” Gonzalez on Congas and Santiago Labastid on on bongoses.

“Professor”Tito Rodriguez also played with both Maximo Rodriguez’s Estrellas Panameñas and Freddy y sus Afro Latinos, while both Monchi and Santiago Labastid later played with transplanted Dominican bandleader/trumpet player Rafael Labasta’s well-regarded Orquesta.

In the late ’60s/early ’70s, Santos recorded a pair of (now very sought after) LPs for Ducruet y Ducruet’s Panavox label, one in collaboration with organist Alberto Quintanar, and another with singer Sócrates Lazo. The Sócrates Lazo LP actually appears on the Loyola label, but the notes reveal that it is a Panavox/Ducruet production – both were recorded by Panavox’s brilliant engineer Eduardo “Balito” Chan.

Following are two songs from the Santos/Quintanar production Quintanar y su Clan Sonero, “Guaguina Yerabo” and “El Clan Sonero”. You can hear “Son de Mayari” from the Quintanar LP and see images in my previous post here: https://esperobook.com/2020/03/30/2-versions-of-son-de-mayari/

“Guaguina Yerabo” is a Chano Pozo original, and both Chano and Silvestre Mendez (who wrote “Son de Mayari”) were contemporaries of Santos in Cuba. Interesting to note that all three Cuban musicians had diasporic ends – Santos in Panama, Mendez in Mexico, and Chano in NYC, where he was famously gunned down at the age of 33 in an argument over bad cannabis – after having seeded the birth of Latin Jazz with Dizzy Gillespie and others.

Miguelito Valdes also did a version of “Guaguina Yerabo” with Casino de la Playa, as well with his own Big Band in the amazing 1949 NYC “Mambo Dance Session” recordings. The song is additionally notable for the lyrics (noted on the back of the Santos/Quintanar LP): “Salama ecu, malecumsala”, which signal the significant slice of Muslim Africans brought to Cuba during and after the 19th century Oyo/Dahomey wars :

And here is the mesmerizing Guajira “El Clan Sonero”:

The Santos/Lazo collaboration was entitled “A la Carga con la Descarga”, and featured Lazo, highly regarded as a bolerista, on vocals. Lazo is older brother to internationally recognized singer Gabino Pampini (nee Armando Lasso or Lazo).

Here is the heavy “Que Pena Magdalena” from the LP:

And here is the sweeter Son Montuno “Ay Que Sabor”:

In addition to the original Panamanian pressings, both the Santos/Quintanar and Santos/Lazo LPs were pressed in Colombia on the Real label.

I have elsewhere pointed out that Panama was a key part of overlapping musical routes of AfroCuban, Jazz, Calypso and Spanish Language popular musics during the 1930s through ‘70s. For AfroCuban music, key stops on the route included Havana, New York, Puerto Rico, Caracas, Mexico City and Panama City/Colon. A connected part of the story involves the diaspora of AfroCuban musicians throughout those destinations and further afield in Latin America. 

On the one hand, Cubans (musicians and otherwise) had been moving to Latin American countries (and NY, whose Latin population by the 1940s was over 150,000) throughout the first half of the 20^th century, bringing their music with them. Thus the interesting cultures of Danzón in Veracruz and the Yucatan since the beginning of the 20^th c., and Cuban Son dance cultures in the Dominican Republic and Curacao, some related to Cubans involved in the sugar industry moving to those countries. 

This happened in Colombia as well, per an article on Sexteto Tabalá: “The story of the sexteto in Colombian tradition begins in the sugar mills sometime in the 1930s. Fulfilling needs for labor, plantation managers imported Cuban workers to Colombian mills, and with them came not only their skill in the field, but their mastery of the son, a style of music originally played with the Spanish vocals and guitar matched by African rhythms.”

Various pushes and pulls brought Cuban musicians to Latin American countries (and again, to NYC) from the ‘30s through the ‘60s. The frothy nightlife of Mexico City, Colón (thanks to large populations of US servicemen and Canal employees) and Caracas offered excellent opportunities for Cuban musicians. All of these cities had well developed Radio stations, and Mexico City in addition was an emerging center of motion pictures distributed throughout the Spanish speaking world – especially the 1940s and ‘50s “Rumbera” movies that featured AfroCuban music and told stories of dissipate women in the nightlife milieu.

Some of the pulls to NY included the opportunity to play lucrative gigs for White society (especially for light skinned musicians) and for Latin populations alike. Per “Hispanic New York, A Sourcebook” the Puerto Rican population exploded from roughly 60,000 in 1940 to  600,000 in 1960, and they were key consumers (and contributors to new forms of) of AfroCuban music. So Anselmo Sacasas and Miguelito Valdes, the star pianist/arranger and singer respectively of Orquesta Casino de la Playa, both left for NY in the early ‘40s. Sacasas had a successful career playing the sort of society clubs Walter Winchell could be found at, later retiring to Puerto Rico. Likewise Miguelito Valdes, who played with the nationally famous Xavier Cugat, and later acted in movies in Hollywood and Mexico City.

For more on Miguelito, see my article here: http://esperobook.com/2020/04/23/cugie-ricky-ricardo-and-the-real-mr-babalu/

Another impetus to sojourn in or move to Latin American cities involved the sheer numbers of excellent musicians in Havana. The talent was just too deep, and there were only so many choice gigs. Beny Moré is the classic example. An unknown in his native Cuba, he could not break through in the Havana of the early ‘40s, so moved to Mexico City and recorded a series of seminal recordings (“La Culebra, “Bonito y Sabroso”, etc.) that have become classics of the AfroCuban canon. He returned to Cuba a star in the early 1950s.

Excellent musicians either proceeded or followed him to Mexico City, including singers Orlando “Cascarita” Guerra, Kiko Mendive (who also lived in Caracas), singer/composers Francisco Fellové and Silvestre Méndez, and Bandleaders Damaso Pérez Prado and Mariano Mercerón.

Racism also pushed Cuban musicians – Havana’s color line was as bad as in any US state, exacerbated by large numbers of US tourists and Yankee casino managers who insisted on anti-black racism. Many musicians commented on racism as a factor in their decision to immigrate, including Machito bandleader Mario Bauza, who was relieved to be able to live in a Harlem where blackness was normal. 

Finally, political developments were a push, especially after the Cuban Revolution, leading artists like Celia Cruz and La Sonora Matancera to emigrate first to Mexico and later to NY and other cities in the US and Latin America. Some of this was based on political preferences, but it was also true that Revolutionary Cuba both effectively killed Havana’s nightlife and suppressed AfroCuban religious practices after the revolution.

Coming back to Panama, as I noted earlier in a post on René Santos’ recordings with Alberto Quintanar: “Santos was part of a wave of Cuban musicians that came to Panama in the mid ’40s to play in the popping nightclub scene during and after the World War, names that include Peruchín and Miguelito Cuní!” Another accomplished musician who moved to Panama (and then to NY, and back to Panama) was Saxophonist/violinist Chombo Silva, who played with the Alegre All Stars in NY and whose tone on Sax has been likened to Lester Young’s. 

Big name Cuban bands also toured Panama in the era, including Orquesta Riverside and Roberto Faz, and Cascarita, Beny and Manuel “Puntillita” Licea played the carnavales numerous times in the late ‘40s through 1950s. For more on Beny in Panama, see my article here: http://esperobook.com/2020/04/18/salsa-in-panama-from-beny-to-willie/

Of René Santos unfortunately I have not been able to find much documentation, and he passed in the months before I first visited Panama for interviews (he was one of the first I inquired about). According to Mario Garcia Hudson, Director of the Centro Audiovisual de la Biblioteca Nacional de Panama, Santos came to Panama in 1948. Francisco Bush Buckley (QEPD) in his “La Musica Salsa en Panama y Algo Mas” has Santos touring Panama with the Conjunto Habana, and deciding to stay.

As Tresero (and bassist), Santos was a solid representative of the Cuban Conjunto style in Panama. Remember these are the glory years for Cuban Conjuntos – Beny had gone to Mexico with the Conjunto Matamoros in 1945, and by the late ‘40s Arsenio’s Conjunto was just breaking up as he was moving to NY to try to get advanced medical care for his blindness. All the excellent Conjuntos that splintered from Arsenio’s seminal group, such as Conjunto Modelo, Estrellas de Chocolate and the inimitable Conjunto Chappottin, led by Arsenio’s first trumpet, were at their peak in this era or shortly afterward.

Santos played in various groups in Panama, including Armando Boza’s La Perfecta, and Trio Las Tres Voces with (soon to be famous Bolerista) Marta Estela Paredes and Cuban singer Osvaldo García.  García, who later sang with Panamana’s Orquesta Rumba Casino, imparted his knowledge of Cubano Soneo to a young Panamanian singer named Felipe Carrasco, who would go on to sing with Santos and many other excellent groups.

Santos also played with the Conjunto Bahia, which included García and singers Sonia Evans (also Cuban) and Panamanian Jorge Luis “Chuchi” Moreno. Per Hudson, Chuchi, who was a singer with Ezequiel “Pipo” Navarro’s Conjunto Estrellas Panameñas, loved the conjunto style and was one of the first to sing with Santos when he organized his own Conjunto.

Here is Chuchi singing the delicious Son Montuno “Pegao Pegao” with René Santos’ Conjunto, on the Discos Istmeños 45:

In the ‘60s, Moreno also sang with the Conjunto Gigante, the house band of Panama’s National TV2, directed by Saxophonist Gussy Escobar and later by Fermín Macias. It seems that there was a rotating door of musicians between René Santos’ Conjunto and his Estrellas and both Conjunto Gigante, as well as the well-regarded Orquesta 11 de Octubre of the Guardia Nacional.

Conjunto Gigante’s pianist was Teofilo “Cuz” Joseph, and arrangements were handled by Escobar, Santos and Panama’s famed bassist/bandleader/arranger Clarence Martin Sr. Conjunto Gigante also featured singer Marcos Caceres, who moonlighted as an outstanding graphic artist. In fact, Caceres designed a number of the arresting LP covers in Panama’s discography  – The Nuevos Soul Fantastic and Manito Johnson y Sus Diferentes LPs on Taboga stand out as examples.

Here is Moreno again, this time with Conjunto Gigante, singing the massive “Guajiralandia” on Padisco:

Santos’ Conjunto also featured Felipe Carrasco, mentioned above. According to Eric Gonzalez of Herencia Latina, Carrasco is considered Panama’s best Cuban-style Sonero. Carrasco first recorded (and had a small hit) with Santos’ Conjunto on “Tierra Querida/Sarasí” on the Artelec label. He later went on to sing with the Orquesta 11 de Octubre, Conjunto Gigante, Víctor “Vitín” Paz’s Orquesta, Rafael Labasta’s Orquesta, Los Salvajes del Ritmo ( which earlier had a young Ruben Blades as singer) and his own group called “Los Criollos.” Carrasco’s sister is Catalina Carrasco – “Catita” de Panamá – one of the most famous música típica singers. who starred with the Conjunto de Yin Carrizo.

Here is Carrasco singing René’s love poem to Panama, the guaracha “Tierra Querida”:

Finally, here is another excellent 45 by René Santos y Sus Estrellas – the Boogaloo flavored Son Montuno “Yo No Camino Mas”. The song is of Cuban origin, written by Anacario Mondejar. Damirón y Su Charanga did a version in the ‘60s, and the Sonny Bravo-led NY powerhouse Típica 73 later recorded a nice modern charanga típica version, featuring all-world musicians Alfredo De La Fe on violin and Mario Rivera on Baritone Sax, with vocal by Jose “El Canario” Alberto.

The singer is not listed but everyone seems to agree it’s neither Carrasco nor Moreno. Musician and Panamanian Music Historian Clarence Martin Jr. believes that it’s either Manolín Diaz or Tony Bermudez.

To be continued…