by Martin Karakas - Friday, February 18, 2005

The weekend lowdown

This weekend, Havana is full of great groups, playing the whole gambit of venues. NG, as usual, is at La Casa de la Música (also at El Diablo Tun Tun, Expo Cuba and El Delirio Habanero), as is Pupi (also at Riviera Copa Room) and Sur Caribe. Sur Caribe is a relatively new band, with two albums under their belts; as their name suggests, they hail from Santiago de Cuba. They are one of the best new bands, not only from Santiago but from all of Cuba, and while their sound is son laden, it has many elements of Timba. During their Sunday matinee at La Casa de la Música Miramar, NG will be filming the video to their latest single, Pa’ qué te montas.

Pedrito Calvo is also at La Casa, Saturday. His recently released (end of 2004) album, De Aquí P’allá (Envidia), will probably pleasantly surprise many, after a few poor post-Van Van albums. The music is moderate Timba (a la Van Van), but is rocking; great coros and improvisation from Pedro (someone should give this album to some of the Puerto Rican commercial salseros so they can learn how to improvise on guías).

Azúcar Negra Saturday night at El Café Cantante and Bamboleo at La Casa de la Música. Bamboleo were among the first bands that energized the beginning of the Timba movement. Forming in 1995, Bamboleo released albums in 1996 and 1997’s masterpiece, Yo no parezco a nadie. They were even able to maintain themselves (or even surpass themselves) in the premier league when Lionel Limonta and Haila, among others, left in 1997 (to form Azúcar Negra), with the album Ya no hace falta. However, Limonta’s skill as a composer was never really replaced and they have had trouble releasing solid albums; only two studio albums in 8 years, and with the latest, they may have to be relegated to the second league. Azúcar Negra, on the other hand, put out one of the best discs of 2004, Sin Mirar Atrás (Egrem).

Charanga Habanera are in town, reportedly celebrating the release of Charanga Suave (wasn’t this released last year?), Paulito FG at the Melia Cohiba on Saturday, the young band El Clan at Café Cantante, Yumurí y Sus Hermanos “cogiendo la botellita” at el Café Cantante. Tumbao Havana, with their current hit, Amanezca en la calle, are doing the Friday matinee at La Casa. Chispe y sus Cómplices are celebrating 6 years together with a Sunday show at el Café Cantante and deserve a closer look one of these days.

In Cayo Hueso, as happens every year, a birthday party is held in the small street of Vapor where a stage is set up, this year Orchaestra Aragon and La Revé played.

Gardi, the latest Cuban to chase the commercial boricua sound (a la Marc Anthony) -many Cubans thought he was Puerto Rican, upon first hearing- has been given the Saturday night spot at La Tropical, should be a good test for this young salsero. Odelquis Revé is at La Plaza Roja in La Víbora; the purveyor of Mozambique, Pello el Afrokán, at La Macumba; and Tirso rounding out the weekend with a Sunday afternoon show at el Rodeo del Parque Lenin featuring Michel Maza.

This weekend’s award for hardest worker goes to Michel Maza who will be playing 2 shows on Friday, the matinee at La Casa de la Música Miramar and the evening at La Tropical; 2 shows on Saturday, the matinee at La Casa de la Música Habana, the evening at El Patio de la Salsa, La Virgen del Camino and a guest appearance with Tirso on Sunday.

Even with all the great music in Havana, this weekend’s choice was straightforward. Michel Maza is my favorite young Cuban singer, one of my principal hopes for the future of Timba and playing at my absolute favorite venue in Cuba, La Tropical.

Maza is no doubt planning to make some moves this year with last years release of his first studio album since leaving La Charanga Habanera in 1999. The album was made with some of the top-notch Timba musicians including Sergio Noroña, the pianist in the band that recorded what may be the all time classic Timba album, Paulito FG’s Con la conciencia tranquila. The Michel Maza album, Fiiieeeeesta, is good; the arrangements are professional, tight and Michel sings with a lot of energy and his ever-dynamic voice. With catchy songs such as Soy un juguete bien caro, Como un volcán and El portero, the album needs to get a bit more airplay. The song, Se perdió nuestro amor, has been getting some airplay lately and has a very catchy coro, maybe it will hit.

Timba: the street connection

People always complain that Michel Maza is too callejero, which for me is one of the appealing elements about both Michel Maza and Timba music itself -an expression of the streets, of the tough social and economic situation that arose in the 90’s. As often happens with the best art, Timba songs often portray today’s Havana better than any other chronicler.

As in other countries, in Cuba, the latest pop genres in music have historically been met with resistances. Both Danzón and Son were styles that came out of the black population of Cuba and were met with major resistance until the styles were incorporated by other musicians and became widespread. The major complaint against the Timba genre is that it is too aggressive, both rhythmically and lyrically.

Timba incorporates much more traditional Rumba and Afro-Cuban religious rhythms in its music as well as many African phrases and rites, and street slang. Street jargon, made up of invented words, foreign words, words that take on new nuances, African words and Caló (Spanish gypsy dialect), has always been a dialect that has been looked down on. Even Cuban linguists consider this rich cultural heritage to be vulgar and inappropriate. Up until recently, this marginal dialect was spoken mainly in black barrios; currently (in part due to Timba), it has become part of the everyday language of most young Cubans.

Critics condemn Timba lyrics for being too vulgar, irreverent, violent, chauvinistic and crude; others value them as an authentic expression of daily life. El Tosco (José Luis Cortés) states: "I work for the most humble sectors of the population and nourish myself from them, they're the ones that best understand my music…I don't impose, [lyrics] surface from the streets." Music is one of the most important elements of Cuban life, as Giraldo Piloto puts it, “Cubans live on music the way others live on bread and water.” Timba is largely embraced by the island’s population.

No group embodied the criticisms against Timba music better than La Charanga Habanera -the band where Maza got his start as a 16 year old, singing lead in perhaps the most emblematic Timba songs of all times, Nube pasajera. With La Charanga Habanera dedicating more and more time to love songs and chasing pop charts, Michel Maza has definitely taken over the title from La Charanga, and is the undisputed #1 bad boy of Timba.

In the zenith of Timba, mid 90’s, when competition was fierce, rivalries emerged that were reminiscence of those in Jamaican dancehall music. As in Jamaica, where DJ’s battle each other with different lyrics, in the mid 90’s Paulito was battling El Médico, La Charanga Habanera had an ongoing rivalry with El Médico. Hilarious coros were invented to dis one another. This musical sport is both challenging and exciting, demonstrating the sharp wit of a singer. Just like in Jamaica, a sharp wit on stage is analogous to the type of street savvy useful, not only to deal with hard economic times in urban centers, but also to deliver a good piropo (flirtatious comment/pickup line) to woman passers-by. Unfortunately, the tendency of lyric battles declined in Timba music, with a few exceptions in 2000, such as the rivalry between La Charanga Habanera and Forever (remember the hilarious disses against La Forever in the song Sube y baja). However, there remains one purveyor of this practice, Michel Maza. I once heard a song at La Tropical were he spent one long song, listing a huge tirade of disses against David Calzado along with half the current Timba singers.

Maza’s guaponess is not limited to his lyrics; it permeates every element of his style. Even in his latest album, which is super smooth and hardly seems aggressive, there is evidence of this, for example, in his phrasing and delivery. His phrasing on the album is very much in the rhythm of talk in the barrios; this style of talking where a certain word will be stretched out, followed by an eruption of fast, half-eaten Spanish, often drawing attention not to a certain word or idea, but rather to the speakers attitude. Michel will sometimes slightly change the rhythm of deliverance of different lines in the same stanza, ending each with a different hook. He intonates repeated phrases differently, changing the stressed syllable, always playing around with the rhythm of a phrase. It is subtle but it is very much an expression of the barrio, listening to some of Michel’s phrasing, even on romantic songs, one can imagine accompanying macho Caribbean gestures. Words come out as on the street, where people argue loudly and aggressively, delivering their bomba on a certain topic, often trying to provoke the other people they are discussing with. As in Timba, the thing that makes Michel’s aggressiveness so appealing is the subtleness or the cultured manner in which it is delivered. Try to tell some used to listening to rap, Jamaican dancehall, or rock music that Lola or Sube la fiebre from Michel Maza’s album Fiieeesta are aggressive.

This style really becomes irresistible when you add Maza’s deep rich baritone voice -no other singer in Cuba has a deeper more resonant voice than Michel- and his R&B type glissando. Again getting that special mix of street and classical, of guapo and smooth, that is Timba. Anyone with a weak spot for American R&B will be particularly susceptible to this element of Michel Maza’s voice; he has definitely gone to the Boys2Men School of glissando. He uses it sparingly though, teasing the listener.

If heaven is anything like the Tropical, I’m going to start going to church

La Tropical was closed for a number of months while renovations were done and there have been some nice changes. The upper deck used to be cut off from the rest of La Tropical and had seats and tables and charged dollars to get in. The new Tropical has removed the wall that separated the third deck and is now all one unit. This was the first time I have been able to go up to the top deck; the view is impressive, it makes La Tropical look huge. The main dance floor has been completely retiled and the stage has been redone. The stage is bigger now, fully tiled with green tiles and partially covered, and they have left the beautiful tree that invades the right side of the stage. Other than these changes, La Tropical remains the same open-air venue full of enormous, gorgeous, tropical trees.

Known as the “popularity thermometer,” La Tropical is the most important musical venue in Havana. It is truly important for communication between dancers and bands. Many musicians, including Juan Formell have stated that Timba came about as the musicians adapted the music to follow the new way people were dancing. There is an excellent article on the history of La Tropical in the Cuban music magazine Clave (2002, #1) by Adriana Orejuela. I will write an in-depth feature on La Tropical next week, suffice to say it is the “Cathedral of Cuban Dance Music.”

Fiieeeeesta!

Arriving around 11pm, there was a long, but orderly line to go through the police check to get into La Tropical. Inside, El Salón Rosado was sparsely populated, but steadily filling. Around midnight, it was almost full with just enough extra space to make walking around La Tropical easy. The concert began with many sound problems for the opening band, which heroically played through them. Finally, at 1am, Michel’s band started playing; after a couple minutes of dramatic instrumentation, Maza staggered on stage, in exaggerated guaponess, grabbed the mike and started letting it fly. Talk about guapo!(sorry, it is impossible not to use this word less than 1,000 times when referring to a Michel Maza show) Talk about audience participation! Talk about La Tropical! People went nuts; Maza is so loved at La Tropical, everyone joined in to sing along with all the songs.

I talked a bit about Michel’s new album, Fiieeeesta… a very good album, with great singing, arrangements, and musicians; well, at the show Maza didn’t play anything from the album, nothing of old Charanga songs either. This Friday, Michel hardly used any glissando or many long held notes; he was too busy partying with the crowd, making boasts, leading the party. It was certainly not a show that showcased musicianship, or even Michel’s voice. The band was a little sloppy, as where the coros, but these aspects were almost irrelevant; the concert was great.

Band and audience interaction is what makes La Tropical what it is; singers improvise about things going in front of them, women jump on stage to dance with the band. Audiences never clap, instead they communicate by dancing and singing along. Another complaint about Michel Maza, that was reiterated by concertgoers after this show, is that he insights the crowd to be guapo as well, which leads to fights and sometimes a premature ending of the concert. At this show, by the third song, people were getting excited and the police were on stage trying to shut it down. The music stops and Michel says into the mike, “What?! Stop the concert already? Stop the concert?” With this, the audience starts yelling, Mi-chel! Mi-chel! Who, on stage, looks like he is about to have a fistfight with the police, with all his exaggerated bad boy gesturing. Michel explains to the police that, no, the show is not going to end, grabs the mike, signals the band, who starts up -Fiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeesta! Wow, the crowd goes wild, I have seen this sort of stuff from Michel before, but this time he seems especially charged.

Walking around La Tropical, while a great band is playing, contemplating the band and the crowd from the many different viewpoints that La Tropical offers, going from one level down to another, then onto the main dance floor to be swept into the ocean of dancers, is unequaled. Floating through the crowds, as a rum induced fog sweeps down through La Tropical, gazing upon beautiful women dancing “El despelote (the letting it all out),” “El tembleque (the shiver),” “El picazón (the itch)” and “La subasta de cintura (the waist auction)” dances, with Masa onstage driving everyone into a frenzy, never fails to produce the comparison of La Tropical to heaven.

“Ófulo te volviste loco”

Michel’s band is full of young musicians; they all looked like teenagers. While far from the cream, they sounded fine, full of energy, with aggressive metales. The whole stage becomes part of the dance floor, with people dancing and milling about. Standing behind the kit drummer, I am able to get a close look at Michel and the other musicians, but it is Masa that draws my attention away from everything else. He is crazy; there is no other word, such energy, dishing out improvised guías between coros. For example, he makes up a guía on the spot about La Tropical, then turns to the band to signal a rhythm change to bomba, singles to a women backstage whom he directs to get a bottle of rum from over there to give to fulano over there, then back to the front of the stage to throw out some more controversial lines, “…yo no creo en Charanga…” More hand singles to the band, someone passes him a glass of rum, which he drinks as water, then back to the microphone to deliver some more guías... Not only is Michel controlling the dancers, leading them into bliss, with extended montunos, he is directing the band, directing the flow of rum, directing the party that is going on stage, behind stage and in front of the stage.

Michel’s boasts are hilarious tonight; he shows no signs of shedding his bad boy image. For example, “this girl came to me in her Jaguar, and I told her, you’ll have to get into line, in line with the girls with Toyotas, in line with all of the rest.”

Audience participation includes Michel letting young singers try out guías in front of the crowd. As members from the audience take turns singing guías, Michel goes over to the piano to play a few tumbaos, them jams a bit on the tumbadoras, sends off a few more bottles of rum and back to center stage, “oyuyullé…que veo, tremenda jala jala, tremendo traqueteo…”

Michel Maza or Michel Guapo?

The major complaint about Michel, that he is too deep into reparterismo, is definitely evident at La Tropical. It would have been interesting to see his band play the matinee at La Casa de la Música, the same day. I wouldn’t doubt it if they played a completely different set, with more songs with romantic-salsa like cuerpos.

However, to say that his music suffers because of this “Timba de reparto” may be going too far. Without a doubt, it prevents Michel from being in a band with musicians that are his equal; not necessarily because of this reparterismo, but because of the amount of creative rule that he enjoys now. To be in an A-league Timba band he will have to loosen up a bit on the reigns, which he completely controls with his current band. He is no David Calzado, and would have to share the creative direction with other Timba talents. And, yes, it would be great to see him in a top band -I’ve said it many times, ’d love to see him team up with Tirso Duarte, sharing ideas on arranging, composing and singing- with some top arrangers, some great singers to sing coros, a few good song writers. Nonetheless, what he has been doing for the last 5 years, since leaving La Charanga, is equally important.

For now, his music is so raw and communicative, serving as a base both for self-expression and for the development his own musical integrity. It suggests that he will not easily commercialize his music. He will probably never make an updated version of Chan Chan with rapping in the middle of it. He did not try any lame attempt at Reguetón.

Michel is the genuine item, and he brings La Tropical down every time, with an ordinary band, playing none of the songs he has recorded. If his new album is a signal that he is ready to settle down with some top musicians, to form a stable lineup in the A-league of Timba bands, his concert was indicative of the opposite.

When Michel is ready to maintain a top-level band and put out regular albums, it is sure to be a genuine effort, representative of his fans. The reason that Michel hasn’t formed this top line band, to tour Spain and Italy, isn’t because he is unable to, but rather because he doesn’t want to. For the time being he is happy being a ghetto superstar.

Nonetheless, there are leagues of Cuban music fans who are disappointed with his decision to remain in Timba reparterismo (and yes, Friday’s show was shut down prematurely by the police, albeit 2 hours into it). Many Cubans shake their head when you mention Michel’s name, “He’s too repartero…,” “He’s wasting his talent…” “He’s too boastful, too macho.” Comments go as far as to say that he is not a real musician, that he rides on the fame of his mother, that he is too uncultured to ever be considered a real Cuban musician.

Maybe Michel Maza should change his name to Michel Guapo, be it as it may be, he is just being himself; he is still very young, in his twenties and the day will surely come when he will once again rise to the top of timba. Till then, bring on Michel Guapo –Fiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeesta!