Irakere never wanted to play popular music -- they just wanted their music to be popular. As explained in interviews in the opening segments of Irakere's Latin Jazz Founders DVD, they eventually accomplished these seemingly contradictory goals, but only after years of experimentation. The magnitude of their ultimate success is reflected by the relatively large amount of biographical information about the group. If only it were as easy to research the early history of Van Van and Ritmo Oriental!

In the Latin Jazz Founders DVD - perhaps the best single source of information on Irakere - co-founders Chucho Valdés and Oscar Valdés take turns recounting the frustration they experienced when they first tried to play experimental Afrocuban jazz at large Cuban dance venues. The audience was bored and no one would dance ... until ... they played a song called Bacalao con pan. Then the crowd went crazy. Oscar, who played batá and other percussion, and reluctantly doubled as lead singer, explains that although danceable music was "a thing that we didn't like", they could see that it was the key to bringing the music they did like to a wider audience. For timberos, a couple of "dichos de la Yuma" apply here:

"one man's trash is another man's treasure"

"there just ain't no accountin' fer taste"

In any case, if you've gotten this far in this book I suspect you're going to agree with me that Bacalao con pan has stood the test of time a little better than Señores Valdés y Valdés anticipated.

To place Bacalao con pan in our chronology, I was hoping to find the EPA number for the original Areíto single or EP, but my search was in vain. UC Irvine musicologist and Irakere expert Raúl A. Fernández explains why:

“Irakere was not really a formal group yet when "Bacalao con pan" was recorded. The Orquesta Nacional de Música Moderna was on a tour of Oriente Province, and had spent a few days in Santiago de Cuba. Some of the members, who had been rehearsing some ideas, stayed behind. In Santiago, a local music producer, composer and musician, Rodulfo Vaillant [ed: who also wrote several songs for Ritmo Oriental] gave them a local studio to do a couple of recordings. One of those was "Bacalao con pan." The boys could not have recorded the tune in Havana, they were fairly controlled by the Orquesta de Música Moderna there. But somehow the tune made it from Santiago to radio stations in Havana where it became a hit; Irakere was formally organized a little bit later.”

Pablo Menéndez (currently the leader of Mezcla) recalls the first time he heard Bacalao con pan:

"Irakere were jazz musicians who played stuff like "Bacalao con pan" with a bit of a tongue in cheek attitude -- 'for the masses'. I remember Paquito d'Rivera bringing a tape of the first four songs of Irakere over to the ICAIC, where he sometimes played with our group. He thought it was pretty funny stuff (as opposed to 'serious' stuff)."

"Serious stuff", for the ultra-virtuosic Irakere musicians, was their ground-breaking fusion of Afrocuban folkloric music with jazz, classical music and progressive rock, and in the end it wound up being extremely popular all around the world. But their early struggles to be popular in Cuba led to the creation of some extremely danceable "funny stuff" which, ironically for those of us studying the roots of timba, is our "serious stuff".

1972? Irakere - Bacalao con pan (released on LP in 1974)
(composer: Raúl Valdés)
xx0x 0xxx 0xx0 xxx0 2-3 rumba clave
0xx0 xxxx xxx0 xxxx kick
0xx0 0xx0 x0x0 x00x bass tumbao -- MIDI
bass: Carlos del Puerto -- drums: Bernardo García
batá: Oscar Valdés -- congas: Lázaro "Tato" Alfonso
sources: Irakere Vol. I (if you want the original 8-track LP) Bacalao con pan (a better value for the non-completist - contains a nice selection of 13 dance tracks spanning the 70s & 80s -- only drawback is that it doesn't have Quindiambo or Misaluba)

notes: It shouldn't have been so surprising to Chucho that the 1972 dance crowd went berserk when they first heard this torrid track. Like La candela, it has a modern, aggressive, minor key aesthetic not previously heard in Cuban music but very essential to the timba of the 90s. Also like La candela, the bass tumbao transcends its traditional role. It follows the expected rhythmic template, but its broad, majestic melody and prominence in the arrangement elevates it from an accompaniment to a main theme which is later juxtaposed against the broad and powerful horn cuerpo.

Like La candela, Bacalao has a blistering arrangement which is years ahead of its time. The bloque-accompanied piano breakdown is a powerful "flash-forward" to timba, as is the idea of introducing a second tumbao with a new chord progression, which leads to another triumphant horn theme, a timba-esque percussion breakdown, and an exciting upward run. "Funny stuff" indeed!