La Maraca en La Bomba

In the old Bomba tradition, one usually starts with the 'Cua', then passes on to the Maraca, the singing and lastly, the dancing.

It makes sense, because the dance itself it is a creative expression that rules the solos of the lead drummer ( the primo drum).

By knowing the percussion well, the dancer plays with the timing like a magician and that's what's all about.

I started my slow ( or should I say fast?) journey into the bomba cult with the dance. I have always been a dancer and even during my roquero years, back in the days, I always used certain beats as the base for songs that I wrote.

Why was not I practicing the percussion then?

Insecurities of al sort was part of it but also the fact that I am an artist. In a Rock band, the drummer doesn't usually have the key to creations. Drummers usually roll with the punches. when i was a young roquero I prefered the spotlight of a lead guitarist ( which I am not).

As I advanced to the intermediate level as a dancer I feel the need to sing my own creations.
I learned that traditionally the bomba singer (In the north of Puerto Rico) plays a single maraca.
This helps the singer keep the timing. It also looks cool. It gives an aura of authority on the singer.

Last week, I wrote my first Yuba and this week I wrote my first Sica. It happened in the most unexpected way. the rhythms came to me and so did the lyrics and that was it. I used the "cimiento de Cultura" practice c.d. ( Bomba melodies we used in class to practice the dance an the precussion) By playing the melodies, i started to practice with the maraca.

The Creation of a Yuba



And so today was Saint Francis de Sales celebrated in the Catholic Church. A sixteenth century saint who wrote "The Devoted Life". I recall haveing read that book in the original French of the 17oos. It was easy reading because the french of that period was very similar to modern spanish. The book became a manual in the early days of my catholic conversion. I must say I read it several times and even took notes.
I put the usual passion I invested in Art and Music, but on the mystical road. That was my world and it is still my world today. My rock and my salvation.

Daily spiritual nourrishment is the eating of the Eucharist and the Blood of Christ. There I was at St. Angela Merici in the Bronx, celebrating the date of St. Francois de Sale. The priest lifted the cup in the air in an act of offering, when my fingers began to tap the rhythm of a Yuba on the back rest of the pew in front of me.

As the priest continued the Holy Ritual, the rhythm of the Yuba got through my fingers and into my heart.
The words of a song I had never heard before , came softly in my lips: "Maya Kukuli Oye"..
At the same time I felt bad, that I was not concentrating in the holy hour. I am aware that this is one of the most important things in life: Controlling our passions and giving them the just time.

And there I was, physically motionless before the altar, with the exception of my tapping fingers; but dancing a slow trance like-Yuba within my being. I could feel the primo drum not far in the distance, as the priest asked us to kneel down and pray. An african beat from out of space. As I got up to have communion,
I prayed that I wouldn't forget the melody of the rhythm, so i could record it after in the evening. God answered my prayer. that is how my first Yuba was written, "Maya Kukuli Oye".

It all began with a Yuba, last Lent, a year ago.
I recall the feeling of distress I felt in my heart that evening as I walked into a Maestro Cultural Center.
Obanilu Allende was our teacher that first night.

"This is called a Yuba" He said

It was what slaves in Puerto Rico used to danse at the end of the week, to release the sorrows that may had kept them even more captive than life itself.

That's how I began to exorcise my personal troubles and that is how I still exorcise them now. Slow or fast,
the Yuba rhythm envelops the dancer into a ritual. A communication of one's feelings with grace and creativity. Hope develops like a grace upon the dancer. Intuitive knowledge tells him that everything is o.k.

The Yuba is the sublime opportunity to enter the invisible world of beings we couldnt imagine. Sublime, because one is hosted by music, joy and fate. One does no wrong in this. It is not as if we were burning red candles to the wind, in a conscious act of manipulation of Nature.
When we dance the Yuba with the due dignity, we talk to the Creator, not a banal chat; but, an intimate dialogue about our innermost issues.

The 'Cua' in la Bomba

As I begin to experiment with the Cua ( a wooden surface where I Play rhythm with two sticks.) Since my serious conversion to our afro-puerto rican folklore and my early steps in the art of dancing, I have been listening to the same two or three records: El Roble Mayor, Don Rafael Cepeda, Marcial Reyes y los Pleneros de Bayamon( life in Washington 1989) and dancing the Drum by the Cepeda family. In these three records, the Cua is heard more or less loud and clear in some songs and difficult to discern in others. In the two bombas by Marcial Reyes, I am able to follow well the buleador and the Cua,, so I profit to practice both. But I do enjoy playing the different Cua rhythms for Yubá, Sicá, Holandé. Especially in the Cepeda's Bailando el Tambor, which features slow Holandeses ( Patio Celestial) and a llanera from Venezuela on the Holandé style.


Why did I persist with the same three recordings? Well, I simply studied them like books of mysteries. I had to soak myself in the bomba cangrejera and get the feeling of it, which becomes illusive, if we think we have it already packed down. That is why amateurs like myself, in the art of bomba dancing, get so confused with certain rhythms after having had them under control. Specially the Holandé of Cuembé.
The secret to these rhytms is quite simple: one must listen a lot to them before anything else. Once we no longer think in terms of "Piquetes" or what step to do next during the performance, then the danse becomes an inner experience. One could dance on time without moving the body.

This has its connection to Cua rhythms and I discovered that by listening to a forth record: Unplugged by Viento de Agua. The music here is no longer Bomba cangrejera(Santurce), but bomba Balancé, from Mayaguez.
The rhythm is hipnotic and mysterious, opening doors to improvisations to all drums , including the Cua. I have the impression that the solos just keep going, when in fact is just a simple phrase with a Sicá like beat with a lot of swing.

I realized when I heard these rhythms by viento de Agua, that one must play the Cua like one dances bomba. If we keep a basic fixed rhythm that follows the buleador that is just fair. But if one allows a little beat here and there as if playing a little primo drum in a subtle manner, then, the sound of the Cua goes beyond the basics and becomes a channel of energy.

Bomba at Jake's ( 19-22-04) [Dedicated to Obanilu Allende ]

This evening was our Bombero's del Maestro first official night out as a group. The batey was supposed to be at Jake's , in Spanish Harlem.

Unfortunately, and due to personal circumstances, no one from our group showed up, except for myself and Frank who arrived later on.

I loved the lighting of the place. It was less darker than Camaradas. There was even a little more space to dance. I could spot the bomberos from Brooklyn by their looks. The Rastafarian hats is their trade-mark, just like muslim caps are a trade-mark in the Bronx. I had a glass of wine and prepared myself spiritually to enter the Batey: mainly deep breathing to control my anxiety; then, I headed to my duty:

"Excuse me, coming through...", I opened myself a path through the sardine crowd around the tiny back room.

As soon as I entered the circle of Alma Mayo, I was glad to see that Oba, our teacher, was the primo-drummer .

He greeted me with a spiritual smile, like a father embracing a son. It was a profound moment.

I entered slowly, bowed before Oba and focused myself on the conviction that there is an invisible reality within the circle .

No time for pre-conceived piquetes in a magical moment like this.

I surrendered to the wave circulating the area, and remembered the advise Roberto Cepeda gave me, during the Bomplenazo 2004, when I asked about piquetes : "Just look at a fish moving freely, slowly, then crazy, from side to side."

Inactive moments of a second or two, between those movements are imperative.
Oba had told me back in May:

"...you must surrender yourself when you dance, but show that you are in control of the forces and not vice-versa..."

It is during the slow movements of a fish that one shows the control of the forces, as opposed to a voodoo dancer who has no control of anything.

That is the main difference between Bomba and other ritualistic Afro caribbean dances. The Bombero must be shamanic and nothing else.

Oba read my piquetes carefully. I could feel his concentration by the way he beat the drum. I realized the importance of doing your first dance in the Batey with the drummer who taught you to dance.

So, actually, last week at Camaradas, was not my first night out as a Bombero; that was just a rehersal, for the initiation tonight at Jake's.

As Oba played my free form, I felt a mystical thing taking over me.
Something as if I had written a prayer and God read the words aloud. That is the ultimate blessing of the bomba experience. The gift that God in his mercy, would allow us to receive a loud answer to our prayers.

I realized that, a piquete is a phrase written in a poem. A poem or a prayer written by the improvisation of movements of the body, as it follows the rhythm of the buleador. The primo reads the verses poured out
in space by the dancer-creator of that poem or prayer.

No wonder, this afternoon I felt the need to borrow a poetry book from the library. One of our own:

Julia de Burgos.

If we could internalized the rhythms in written verses of poetry as we internalized the beat of a Sica or a Yuba; then, we would be able to find our own words to new poems. The key is to surrender to the rhythm, that, like a buleador carries us into the unknown.

Notes on Painting (7-18-04)
 
It is amazing how much one could absorve by patiently  studying a work of art; Particularly when we seek the key to its creation. I recall during the early 80s, when I used to go to the Guggenheim museum on Saturdays, to study the paintings of Cezanne. They weren't many, just a couple, but I would stand before them for long moments. I tried to figure out the secret of their harmony. The first thing I noticed was how dark follows light and viceversa. Patches of different shades,  one darker or lighter than the other.
 This harmony was the outcome of Cezanne's profound observation of nature.
No wonder Picasso once called him: " the father of us all...my one and only master..."
 
Picasso really knew how to bring those patches of light and dark to another dimension.
Yet; there were other preocupations for me. Surrealism was a major awakening in my life, even before I began painting. The compilation by Lucy Lippard about the Surrealists, shaped my youth in a decisive way. Writing, ofcourse, was more important than painting at the time. During those days of the early 70s, there was nothing interesting in New York. Conceptual , Minimal and Pop art had taken over and painting in general seemed no longuer to be interesting. Only those who persisted painting during that period, were the ones who savored the huge recognition of the 80s. 
 
It was not until a show in the fall of '82, when I saw a painting by  Susan rothenberg, that i realized that i could do better than her.  I got a set of paint at Utrecht in the Village and started painting on November 23rd of that year. It was a piece entitled "Automatic Writing". I was amazed of how well it came out and I persisted at it. Thats how I was drawn to the Cezanne's at the Guggenheim, in search for answers for my own painting.
Less than a year and a half later, I quit my job and left for Paris where I was to live another existence.  That wonderful summer of 1984, I got to see Bonnard, Renoir, Picasso Matisse , among others, and of course my spiritual father of that period, Marc Chagall. I recall hitch hiking all the way from Lyon to Aix en provence ( the town of Cezanne) and then all the way to a village on the outskirt of Nice, where Chagall lived. I wanted to meet him and ask him questions about painting, in the hope that he would accept me as his protegee!, such was my innocense!. When I arrived to the village, to my surprise, there was a retrospective of Chagall at the Maeght foundation. I was blown away by so many paintings I had only seen in book reproductions .
 
I was told by the guard of the museum where exactly Monsieur Chagall lived. I walked along the village road surrounded by expensives villas and protected by dogs, searching for the house, but soon I came to my senses and I realized how mad my adventure had gotten. I sat overwhelmed and desoriented by the side of the road, surrounded by tall oak trees. The environment was taken over by a  piercing sound of crikkets that was heard throughout the forest. I just sat there over my back-pack and wept.
 
 
That winter, Chagall died, he was 98.
 
I was to embarked myself in some dark journey. The coldest winter in Paris in noone knew for how many years! and to think that I was so used to the well heated apartments of New York!. 
 
It  got  really bad, I even forgot to paint . It was really my season in Hell. IT was not until the Spring of 85, when I visited Amsterdam and my life changed for the better. Those wonderful Van Goghs! and Rembrandts!. The encounter with the gallery Vassallucci where I was to have a couple of shows, enfin!.
 
I returned to Paris a new man. I handled my brushes differently, and after several days and mad hours of painting on my first "Cosmic Tree", I discovered a texture on my work, something like the secret of the impressionists. The colors just weaved into the surface like it never happened  before. From that moment I decided to dedicate my first solo exhibition in Paris to Arthur Rimbaud, the 19th century symbolist poet. Wow, those paintings kept coming as I kept smoking hash and listened to scratchy tapes of Bob Marley. "Mystic Man", that is the title that I could still hear in my head.
What helped suceed in accomplishing a certain light in my work of that period, again, it was studying the magnificent works of Renoir. I had the luck when The Grand Palais of Paris showed that summer , a retropective of his works. I recall seeing pieces that would enlightened a dark room by their sheer light. That is the light that I seeked for "Ma Boheme" and some other pieces painted during that period.
To a certain extend, it is the light that I still seek in my work, whether I like it or not.
 
Well, a lot of that is history now.  
Peace.
 
 
 

ON ART "ARRIERE GUARD"

What a revelation! IT has been a wonderful week-end. I saw yesterday a program about a neo-classical art movement currently in vogue. I believe in it. Even though I had been out of touch from the art world, I knew somehow that that movement was out there. It was common sense. I recall the end of my second Compostela pilgrimage in 1995, when I decided that I should go classic in my work, that I should followed a classical training. When I told such news to my avant guard friends they were in shock.
Once again I found myself alone and with nothing to identify with my contemporaries.
This process started early in my aritist life in Paris. I recall how little I had in common with those of my generation, something contradictory, as I had always been a hip dude. I had always been conscious of fashions and trends to the point of contributing at their creation; yet there I was admiring the post-impressionists during the 1980s in Paris when everything was either 'Figuration Libre' ( as they called the Neo-expressionist movement in vogue since the late 1970s) or total chaos Dada art such as the (if I dare say) the European version of abstract expressionists . Artists of the group Cobra and others. I liked the dedication to color and form of the impressionists.
I found myself in them somehow, as I struggled to teach myself painting .
How heroic! now I think, as I look back and feel a shiver up my spine. I quitr my permanent job in New York to go teach myself painting in Paris, beliving all along that I was not teaching myself but rather that I was an accomplished painter already.
This happened almost twenty years ago, and it was this evening when I humbly realized that I am just begining. Perhaps I'll be 70 when I find myself painting a real portrait and not some caricature in the phony modenist style that still rules ( with its days counted!)

It has taken me almost twenty years to find the key to some of Picassos free form.
Now I sor of understand Pollock and DeKooning, artists that never interested me before. I was unable to identify myself to anglo-saxon artists, I always felt alien to them. That alienation had nothing to do with cultural values( although for years I believed it was the case) but more with spiritual issues.
One thing I found curious as I lived through the 1970s in New York and the 1980s in Paris, was the lack of believe in Godly things. Bohemia, whether in New York or Paris was the same: a 'libertinage', false freedom and a cult to youth and demoralization. That alone aliniated me from my contemporaries. I did enjoyed my youth, but at a certain point enough was enough!
From that point onward I was more and more alone.
It didnt take long for me to stop painting. Four years after my arrival to Paris, I had no need to paint, I read obscure theology, studied modern Greek and became interested in Medieval art.
AT a certain moment I truly believed that we had to go back that far in history.
The symbolism of metaphisical changes used by occult artist in those cathedrals, something discovered through lectures at the Rocicrucian hall in Paris. This discovery took me in my long pilgrimage along the Medieval roads of France and Spain, covering more than 1000 miles by foot!

El Cigarro y su Misterio

Un dia mientras escuchaba la musica de nuestro queridisimo compositor Puertorriqueno, Juan Morel Campos, me vino a la memoria algo olvidado por mas de cuarenta anios.
Sucediera un Viernes en la tarde, luego de una tipica cena de arroz con abichuelas marca diablo, frente a una rojiza caida de sol que cubria nuestro balcon como una llamarada.
Mi amiguita Ville y yo gozabamos de un mav? bien frio mientras veiamos el show de las cinco del canal 2 con Gaby Fof? y Miliki, nuestros payasos favoritos.
En eso notamos que Mam? de Caguas (como le deciamos cari?osamente a mi abuelita) y otros miembros de la familia formaban rueda afuera en el corrar frente a un enorme palo de Mang?, admirando algo que sacaban de una gran bolsa de papel marr?n.
V?lle y yo corrimos a ver lo que pasaba y asi fue que descubr?mos de donde venia el aroma que mi abuelita llevaba encima al regresar del trabajo.
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Eran cigarros echos a manos que ella misma habia supervisado. Con una sonrisa p?cara y concentidora me dijo, “ tu abuelo los hac?a tanbien ”. En eso V?lle quien solo contaba con diez a?os grit? “ ?déjame fumar uno, déjame fumar uno!” y yo de ocho a?itos detr?s de V?lle grité “?y yo tanbien!...y yo tanbien!” Sent? la magia del momento al ver que aquella sonrisa consentidora no desaparec?a del rostro de mi abuela.
No se quien encend?o aquel cigarro negro pero todos jal?ron de el y luego lleg? mi turno.
El humo era espeso y suave, caracter?stico del tabaco fino y cultivado al sol en las monta?as de San Lorenzo. Aunque solo se me permitieron tres jaladas nunca podré olvidar aquel placer inic?atico, algo as? como hacer burbujas de jab?n por la primera ves.

Curiosamente, aquella fuera la noche en que me llevaron a ver mi primer juego de Beisbol en el Parque Sixto Escobar de Caguas. Recuerdo que el juego no llamaba mi atenci?n y que solo queria regresar a casa a fumar mi cigarro. Al regresar del juego le pregunte a mi abuela por los cigarros . Sus ojos se encendieron m?s brillantes que la llamarada de las tardes y me dijo,
“?No se?orito..aquello fue solo una vez, usted no esta de edad para hacer lo que quiere!”

Al paso de los a?os nunca me interes? ni el cigarrillo ni el cigarro. La experiencia del cigarrillo la encontré siempre desagradable, e imaginé que los cigarros eran peor aun.
No fuera hasta aquella tarde m?gica escuchando el Cuatro y el güiro de los hermanos Col?n Zayas interpretar la m?sica de Morel Campos, que despert? en mi conciencia el misterio de la tradici?n del cigarro.

El viaje épico de Cristobal Col?n en el 1492, relataba en sus diarios un reporte de dos compa?eros que se aventuraron dentro de Cuba, encontrandose un gran n?mero de nativos “con tubillos encendido, echo de una planta aromatica la cual era su costumbre inhalar”.
Tal costumbre se reg? con los marinos y conquistadores hasta llegar a las costas de Espa?a y Portugal. La historia nos hace creer que el embajador Frances Jean Nicot llev? la substancia a Francia, y de ah? dandole nombre a la planta , la nicotina.
Sin embargo, un monje Frances llamado André Thevet fue quien llevara el tabaco a Francia en el 1556 cuatro a?os antes que Nicot. El monje cre?a en el poder medicinal del tabaco.
No tom? mucho tiempo para que el uso del cigarro fuera algo com?n en casi toda Europa.
A mediados del siglo XVII, las fabricas de cigarros se respandieron utilizando miles de trabajadores y el resto es historia.
Asi fue que olvidamos por completo el aspecto espiritual de la planta, tal y como la vivieron nuestros indigenas.

El término cigarro viene de la palabra Maya Sikar, que quiere decir fumar.
En la spiritualidad de las culturas ind?genas el tabaco es considerado como algo sagrado y era usado como un medio de acci?n de gracias.
En cierto sentido el tabaco es un incienso, utilizado para la purificaci?n del medio ambiente o rincones sagrados donde entramos en contacto con nosotros mismos.
No es concidencia la de encontrar Santeros que fuman un cigarro durante los despojos u otras operaciones sham?nicas.
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El nativo de nuestras tierras tenia una perspectiva de la vida que enlazaba dos mundos opuestos pero inseparables: el mundo natural (f?sico) y el mundo espiritual. Con tal perspectiva, nosotros como humanos existimos en nuestra forma f?sica en el mundo natural y existimos como esp?ritus en el mundo espiritual. Estos dos mundos se ilustran con gracia en el conocido s?mbolo Chino del Ying and Yang.
La contemporanea tendencia de ignorar el aspecto espiritual de nuestra realidad, no es diferente a la vivieran nuestros antepasados al encararse con el mundo materialista venido de Europa. La tendencia es de relativizar nuestras tradiciones y embrazar las costumbres de otra cultura que se impone como superior a la nuestra.
Durante la décadas del 60 y 70 del siglo pasado, vimos un renacer en la espiritualidad de la juventud del mundo entero.
Los libros del autor Latino, Carlos Casta?eda Las Ense?anzas de un Indio Yaki, y Una Realidad Separada, fueron responsable de despertar en toda una generaci?n la curiosidad a un mundo invisible y lleno de misterio.
Es desde ese punto de vista en nuestra vida interior que podemos ir m?s all? de lo que nos d?cta la cultura contemporanea.
La manera en que se ha usado el tabaco en los ultimos dos siglos es un absoluto sacrilegio, podemos ver el resultado en los miles de casos anuales del Cancer debido al abuso del fumar.
El cigarrillo en s? no es tabaco, pero es m?s bien un derivado de este y esta saturado de amonia.

Es la misma diferencia que podemos encontrar entre una Coca Cola y un vaso de agua con sabor a Coca Cola.

Es hora de otorgarle la dignidad que se merece el cigarro de nuestra tierra. Sin que abusemos de su misterio para convertirle en vulgar placer.


Creo que es un deber el de fumarnos un cigarro al menos una ves en la vida.
De hacerlo en un ritual personal, con la mente abierta a lo invisible,
prefer?blemente en la naturaleza y no en un bar.
Encendamos apropiadamente ese cigarro que nos destin? alguna musa y no como si fuera un miserable cigarrillo.
Y desde ese rinc?n sagrado soplaremos una ofrenda a los cuatro vientos.