Annotations for Dates: 1991

Latin jazz great Mario Bauzá died July 11 of cancer in his Manhattan home, just blocks from where I live. Mario Bauzá, an integral part of New York's Latin jazz scene, was 82 years old.

I remember this great musician sitting on a milk crate outside a bodega, surrounded by friends, drinking coffee, and enjoying the simple things of life. You would've never known it by seeing him that this small, tender, smiley man had totally revolutionized American music.

In the 1940s, he influenced popular music by innovating a new musical style which mixed popular Afro-Cuban rhythms with American jazz.

Emilio San Pedro prepared this remembrance of Latin jazz legend Mario Bauzá.

[Afro-Cuban jazz]

Mario Bauzá was first exposed to American jazz in 1926, when he visited New York. In 1930, anxious to become a part of that scene, Bauzá left his native Havana for New York, frustrated that in Cuba, Afro-Cuban music was considered merely the music of the streets, not the music of the sophisticated nightclubs, country clubs, and hotels of pre-revolutionary Havana.

Had to happen outside of Cuba before the Cuban people convinced themself what they had, themself over there. They didn't pay no attention to that. When I got big in United States, Cuba begin to move into that line of music.

[Afro-Cuban jazz]

In the 1930s, Bauzá performed with some of New York's best-known jazz musicians, like Chick Webb and Cab Calloway. In fact, in those days, Bauzá was responsible for introducing singer Ella Fitzgerald to Chick Webb, thus helping to launch her career. It was also Bauzá who gave Dizzy Gillespie his first break, with the Cab Calloway Orchestra.

During their time touring and working with Cab Calloway, Mario Bauzá and Dizzy Gillespie, along with the Afro-Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, played around with Afro-Cuban rhythm and jazz arrangements and created something entirely new: Afro-Cuban jazz.

[Machito--Sopa de pichon]

In the early 1940s, Mario Bauzá formed the legendary band Machito and his Afro-Cubans, along with his brother-in-law, Francisco Perez, who was called Machito. Bauzá was the musical director of the band, and he composed and arranged some of the group's most memorable songs.

[Machito--Sopa de pichon]

The sensation caused by Machito and his Afro-Cubans and by other Latin musicians in the 1940s made New York the focal point of a vibrant Latin music scene.

It's the scene of the Mambo kings you know, and that's why a lot of people will say Mambo is not Cuban music or it's not Mexican music. Mambo is New York music.

Enrique Fernandez writes about Latin music for the Village Voice.

It was here that this kind of music became very hot, that it really galvanized a lot of people, that had really attracted a lot of musicians from different genres that wanted to jam with it, and that created those great encounters between Latin music practitioners and jazz practitioners, particularly Black American jazz practitioners, that brought all this stuff together that later on, generated salsa and it generated Latin jazz and a lot of other things.

[Machito--Si si no no]

Groups like Machito and his Afro-Cubans were responsible for sparking a Latin dance craze in the United States, from New York to Hollywood. Mario Bauzá's sister-in-law, Graciela Pérez, began singing with Bauzá's orchestra in 1943.

Pero jurate que la música de esta…[transition to English dub] The music made by Machito's orchestra created such a revolution that you could say people began to enjoy because dance schools sprang up to teach the mamba and the guaguanco and all that [transition back to original audio]…el guaguanco todo todo.

Graciela and Mario left Machito's band in 1976 to form their own group, Mario Bauzá and his Afro-Cuban jazz Orchestra. Achieving recognition came slowly for the new band as general audiences lost interest in the traditional Afro-Cuban jazz sounds.

But in the late 1980s, Bauzá's music experienced a resurgence in popularity. His orchestra played to packed houses in the United States, Canada, and Europe. And in the last two years, Bauzá still active and passionate about his music, recorded three albums worth of material.

Meringue, meringue from San Domingo. Cumbia's cumbia from Colombia. Afro-Cuban is Cuban. That's why I've got to keep a bunch of these Afro-Cuban rhythms. Danzón Cubano, la danza Cubano, el bolero Cubano, el cha-cha-cha Cubano, el mambo es Cubano, guaguanco Cubano, la Colombia es Cubana.So I've got to call it Afro-Cuban, yeah.

In a 1991 interview, I spoke with Mario Bauzá about his extraordinary musical output.

You've brought out these great musicians, you've helped create or created Afro-Cuban jazz, brought Latin music and Latins to Broadway.

That's it.

And you're 80 years old.

Yes.

Many people at 80 years old are sitting by the pool or in the rocking chair and whatever. You don't look like it.

You know me. It ain't going to be like that.

What else could you do at this point, what more?

I don't know. I ain't through, I ain't through. I just wanted my music to be elevated. That's why I want to record this suite now. I want to see the word, music is music. You tell me what kind of music. I like any kind of music that we're playing. And that's what I tried to do, present my music different way. Some people might don't like this, don't like that, but when they hear that, they have a right to choose for. That's what I want them to do.

[Mario Bauza--Carnegie Hall 100]

Mario Bauzá worked steadily until his death. He recently released a compact disc on the German record label Messidor called My Time is Now.

For "Latino USA," I'm Emilio San Pedro.

[Mario Bauza--Carnegie Hall 100]

My friends, today, on the 25th anniversary of our birth, I pledge to you that the National Council of La Raza will carry on the struggle.

That's Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest community-based Hispanic organization. At its recent national conference in Detroit, NCLR celebrated its 25th anniversary, and as Latino USA's Vidal Guzman reports, "While many of its members believe great strides have been made for Latinos over the past 25 years, they also see challenges and struggles ahead."

The 25th annual conference of the National Council of La Raza opened with a retrospective hosted by actor Edward James Olmos.

The year is 1968, and it is a year of tragedy. First, Martin Luther King, then Bobby Kennedy are killed by assassin's bullets. For those neither black nor white, but brown. It is a momentous year. In that year, a great organization is born in Phoenix, Arizona. It was then called the Southwest County...

As I look back, and I saw the photos of the marches we were doing, we were fighting discrimination.

Ed Pastor, a founding member, went on to become the first Latino congressman from the state of Arizona.

I look back, there's a lot of stories of success that people have empowered themselves and there has been movement forward, but the irony of the whole thing is that we have a long way to go.

This was made clear with a release during the conference of a report called the State of Hispanic America. According to the survey, Latinos are more likely to be among the working poor than other Americans. In 1991, one third of Latino families living below the poverty line had at least one full-time worker. The authors say this challenges the stereotype of poor Latinos, as well for recipients. Another study released at the conference focuses on Latinos in the Midwest; up to now, a largely invisible population. John Fierro, one of the authors of the report is Director of Community Affairs at the Guadalupe Center in Kansas City, Missouri.

Well, I think overall what we've seen was Hispanics in the Midwest resemble the national scene as far as educational attainment. Both areas suffer from high dropout rates. Poverty is high, the income is basically similar, but a couple things that stand out to me is definitely the labor force participation among Hispanic females, that when you look nationally, Hispanic females rank third among blacks, whites and Hispanics. Whereas in the Midwest, they're leaders.

Everyone in attendance at this 25-year retrospective agreed great accomplishments and great strides have been achieved. However, they also felt that many of the original problems that the council began to tackle in the sixties have still not disappeared, but they left the conference feeling the 90s will provide many opportunities for continued progress. NCRL president Raul Yzaguirre, echoed that sentiment.

We will win because our issues are America's issues, because ending poverty and discrimination is not only the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do.

For Latino USA, covering the National Council of La Raza's 25th anniversary in Detroit, Michigan, I'm Vidal Guzman.

Will the predatory Statue of Liberty, devour the Virgin of Guadalupe, or are they merely going to dance a sweaty cumbia. Will Mexico become a toxic and cultural waste dump of the US and Canada? Who will monitor the behavior of the three governments? Given the exponential increase of American trash and media culture in Mexico, what will happen to our indigenous traditions, social and cultural rituals, language, and national psyche? Will the future generations become hyphenated Mexican-Americans, brown-skinned gringos and canochis or upside-down Chicanos? And what about our northern partners? Will they slowly become Chi-Canadians, Waspbacks and Anglomalans? Whatever the answers are, NAFTA will profoundly affect our lives in many ways. Whether we like it or not, a new era has begun and the new economic and cultural topography has been designed for us. We must find our new place and role within this new federation of US republics.

Latino USA commentator Guillermo Gomez-Pena is an award-winning performance artist based in California. In 1991, he was a recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant. Well, what do you think of NAFTA? Give us a call and leave a brief message at 1-800-535-5533.

Since it first opened in Los Angeles in September of 1991. The art exhibit known as CARA, the acronym for Chicano Art Resistance and Affirmation has traveled throughout the country to Denver, Albuquerque, El Paso, San Francisco, the Bronx, and Washington DC, bringing art inspired by the Chicano political and social movements of the 60s and 70s to audiences that had sometimes not even heard of the word Chicano. The CARA exhibits last stop was at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Museum patrons on this last afternoon of the CARA exhibit seemed to appear a little bit more intently than usual at this collection of 130 works by 90 Chicano artists from across the country. San Antonio artist David Zamora Casas was among those getting a last glimpse of the landmark art exhibit.

It has opened up the link that we have with our collective past. It has made it okay to and cool to be Chicano again.

Spanish teacher Barbara Merrill came from Devine, Texas. She says the works in the CARA show help her to better understand her mostly Mexican-American students.

There’s so much of the heritage and seeing it through the eyes of the Mexican American. The quote over there, the A Chicano is a Mexican American through non-Anglo eyes, speaks very much to me through this exhibit.

Combining art, politics and history. These diverse works, posters, murals, and multimedia together defined a distinct Chicano aesthetic.

What that meant some 15 years ago is that Chicano artists began to look inward at their own experience to look at their own traditions.

Art historian Dr. Jacinto Quirarte curated the exhibit in San Antonio.

Things that the Chicanos themselves had experienced rather than leapfrogging over to Mexico and looking at things indirectly. By the mid-70s Chicano artists began to really know who they were and by the 80s they were really well onto their own.

In three years of touring the Chicano Art, Resistance, and Affirmation exhibit has brought this distinctive artistic style to the attention of the mainstream art world, but perhaps its most lasting impact has been on audiences who had seldom before seen themselves reflected on museum walls.

We worked the fields in the summer and on weekends during the school year, whatever crop was seasoned. So uh-

30 year old beautician, Sally Ortiz came to see the exhibit twice in San Antonio before it closed. The familiar images she says like that of the Virgin of Guadalupe and of farm worker life and struggle touched a deep cord of memory.

The lettuce and the grapes and the pesticides. I remember my mother talking about the pesticides and of course I was very young and I never understood, but she used to always say, ‘que era muy venenoso.’ Just looking at everything. Just, it's like looking into my past all over again.

And for others too young or not around during the heyday of the Chicano movement, the CARA show proved an education.

Looking at the photos of all the rallies that they had, I found my mother in one of them and it just made me feel really proud that my parents had never really told me about it. But then they started telling me about all this stuff, makes me really proud that people were so alive back then and it just makes me want to be more alive now with the movement because it is still going on.

In San Antonio, as well as the other cities where CARA was exhibited, the show brought in more Latinos than had ever visited those institutions previously. The challenge now say many observers is to keep them coming.

For inspiration leading to the exhibition of Noche de Muertos: Chicano Journey into a Michoacan Night, in 1991, a Chicano artist from Colorado traveled to the Mexican state of Michoacan.

Latino USA commentator Guillermo Gomez Peña is an award-winning performance artist based in California. In 1991, he was a recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant. Well, what do you think of NAFTA? Give us a call and leave a brief message at 1-800-535-5533.