CRIST�BAL D�AZ AYALA

Interview by Ned Sublette

CRIST�BAL D�AZ AYALA talks to NED SUBLETTE

PART ONE

NS: I spoke with Crist�bal D�az Ayala at his home in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on June 14 and 15, 2004. Crist�bal was born in Havana in 1930, and from 1955 to 1959 ran a record store there. He left Cuba in 1959, and in the 1970s began building up a collection of Latin music, which grew to encompass some 25,000 LPs and 17,000 78s, as well as books and recorded interviews. In 2001 he donated the collection to Florida International University's Green Library, creating the D�az Ayala Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection {hotlink: http:gislab.fiu.edu/smc/index.cfm}.

Crist�bal is the author of several books about Cuban and Latin music. His most recent work -- the most important single reference work about Cuban music in existence -- is web-published and downloadable for free: Cuba Sings and Dances: Encyclopedic Discography of Cuban Music 1925-1960 {hotlink: http://gislab.fiu.edu/smc/discography.htm}. There also exists in book form an earlier volume, Cuba Sings and Dances: A Discography of Cuban Music, v. 1, 1898-1925.

He talked with me about his Collection before we went on to talk about the Cuban son. CDA: In the 80's there was a very important development that made for a sharp change in my way of seeing things. I went to Colombia. I had seen a series of records on RCA Victor called Aquellas canciones de ayer, or something like that, which had a variety of music - music from Cuba, tangos, music from Colombia, Mexico, all of them with very well-written, very complete, liner notes signed by Hern�n Restrepo Duque. I thought, there can't be any one person that knows so many things. This has to be like Walt Disney, who drew some cartoons but then afterwards had 30 people drawing for him.

I was going on a trip to Colombia, and I asked a collector here in Puerto Rico, Gilbert Mamery, "Hey, does Hern�n Restrepo really exist?" "Yes, he exists. I have his address, go see him." So I went to Medell�n and I met Hern�n Restrepo Duque. The first meeting with him, Ned, he began to ask me things about Cuban music, things that I had no idea even what he was talking about. He was the most down-to-earth person in the world. Unfortunately, he died five or six years later in an accident. I learned a lot from him, but the lesson he gave me was: all Latin American music is an interconnected system. If you don't know a little of everything, you don't even know the music you think you know, okay? And from then on I intensified a little, I opened up my collection more, to music from Argentina, to music from Colombia of course, which is wonderful, et cetera. Since then I've had a different vision. I lost some of my ombliguismo, that navel-gazing that says Cuba is the best, Cuba does it all, Cuba knows it all -- no, no, no, it's not like that. It did me a lot of good. And from then on, my collection is a totum, that is, it's not only a collection of Cuba. When I heard from the University of Miami that they were only interested in [taking the part of the collection about] Cuba, I said no, under those terms it didn't interest me [to donate the collection]. And FIU was interested in the complete collection.

NS: I was upset when I found out it wasn't going to New York!

CDA: {laughs}

NS: It's the most complete collection I know of.

CDA: More than complete, it's the most organized. I don't know, I don't believe there's a larger collection, but above all, it's well organized. A lot of it's still in manual indexes, which aren't even typed, much less computerized, but now they're entering the information into the computer. All the 78s {hotlink: http:gislab.fiu.edu/smc/index.cfm} are indexed on line now. Now they're doing the LPs. I prepare the database. The LPs are there in library, it's a question of getting them up on the Internet. That's the great advantage, it's going to be available to anyone anywhere in the world. That's been my goal. And of course my discography of Cuban music {hotlink: http://gislab.fiu.edu/smc/discography.htm} has since 2001 been on line.

NS: Is the music going to be digitized too?

CDA: That comes later. There's a very interesting project now, involving not only FIU but other universities, to digitize music prior to the year '28, that is, from the years for which there are no problems of copyright. We've been pulling numbers out of the collection, and there are hundreds of records that can be digitized now without any problem.

NS: The problem of copyright has impeded musicology so much.

CDA: Yes, sir.

NS: Look, my generation knows the whole patrimony [of Cuban music] through the label Tumbao, which works in Europe with fewer problems of copyright.

CDA: Yes, we owe a lot to Jordi Pujol,[1] and we owe a lot to Harlequin[2] as well.

NS: Speaking of the era of the son . . .

CDA: Remember that I was born in 1930. So what I saw was what remained of the son. The son had its great moment of splendor in the 20s, when it arrived in Havana, triumphed, et cetera. What I got of the son was very little. Certainly in the Tr�o Matamoros the son is there. But in the rest of the singers [of the 30s] what there was, was trova. There was, at least in the environment I came up in, something of a rejection of those rough voices of the son septets at that time.

Understand that I wasn't much of a sonero when I was a kid in the 30s. When I started going to used-record stores, which sold American records that could cost from 25 to 50 cents, they had all the records you could want -- the Septeto Habanero, all the septets, the green Columbias, for five to ten cents. They keep weighing on me, in my nightmares - I looked at them with disdain, at that time I wasn't interested . . What would I give to have carried away a box of them and to have them now! Things I've never been able to find again. And I believe that that rejection was general, as demonstrated by the fact that these used-record houses were full of Septeto Habanero, Septeto Nacional, etc., etc.

Moreover, aided by the discography, which I believe is the best tool we have for investigating popular music, I realized something: you always hear about the triumph of the son, that soon the charangas found themselves without work, etc. etc. Not true! The charangas reinvented themselves. In the 30s, the charangas, first, changed from being big orquestas t�picas with two violins, two clarinets, trombone, trumpet, ophicleide, etc., etc., that, as you know, were 12 musicians in all. They reduced it to the charanga, keeping the violines, the flute, the piano, the contrabass, the g�iro, the timbales, and that's it.

NS: The son was introduced into the danz�n. I'm thinking of "El bomb�n de Barreto."[3]

CDA: Yes, but I have news for you. It's something I haven't had time to write about yet. "El bomb�n de Barreto" is not the first danz�n to use son. There were earlier ones. I had in my collection earlier danzones that already in their final movement, in the "C" or "D" section, depending on the size of the danz�n, there was already the presence of the son. It was already in the danz�n, but even so the danz�n didn't resolve its problem. The danz�n kept on having problems, because people preferred the son as a danceable genre, period.

The danz�n had been somewhat imposed, above all on the poor classes. The danz�n needed twelve musicians, so that was twelve musicians that had to be paid. And people didn't always have money to pay an orchestra of twelve musicians. Twelve musicians, moreover, who, except for the g�iro player, all had to read music, because the charts for those danzones were quite complicated. That changed with the arrival of the septet, in which practically the only one who had to know a little music was the tresero, and, when it turned into a septet, the trumpeter. Plus, all the instruments of the son were much cheaper except the trumpet. So it was a contest between a lion and a monkey on a string. That's when the charangas began to reinvent themselves. What was the first thing they did? Well, they stripped down to a reduced format, which did use a more expensive instrument, namely the piano, but you could find a piano anywhere. And the flute and a violin, but it came out to only six musicians, or seven. Then they also took from the danzonete[4] the idea of a sung danz�n, but what the charanga very intelligently does in the 30s is broaden its repertoire. Now it doesn't just play danz�n or danzonete, but also son, rumba, bolero. And that way it stays active. I was telling you yesterday that if you go to the discography, which doesn't lie, you'll find that the Cuban orchestral format that cuts the most records in the 30s is the charanga.

Those little orchestras realized that they couldn't make a living just with the danz�n. And what happens in the 30s? Well, go to the discography and you'll find something surprising, that those little orchestras began to do sones, boleros, rumbas, congas. And if you look at what's recorded in the 30s, those are the orchestras that were recording . . Each one of them had a good singer. Belisario L�pez had Jose�to N��ez. Romeu had Barbarito Diez. Neno Gonz�lez had Paulina �lvarez, although he didn't record with her. There are 6 or 7 groups that, when you look at the discography of the 30s, you realize that they gigged a lot more than the septetos, that the septetos disappeared.

Now, the son didn't disappear, the son was there present - in another form, because the son keeps changing - the son that we know, like, as you were saying earlier, that old neng�n you heard in Baracoa, that son of the mountains, with rustic instruments, when it comes down from the mountain it turns into something else, first into the estudiantina. People forget that before the septets there were estudiantinas, which had a trumpet, one or two guitars, timpanis -- that is, not yet timbales, but big timpanis, coming from the symphonic or operatic orchestra. After that comes the septet as we know it, which started out using instead of contrabass the botijuela, the mar�mbula, and later used contrabass. And after all the big septets, the Tr�o Matamoros reduces it down to two guitars and a pair of maracas and keeps on making son. That is, the son varies in the form in which it's presented to the public. And that's what happens in the 30s. At least, in Havana, you're going to hear very little from the septets.

Certainly, there's a black population that continues cultivating the son. There continues to be a public for it. For example, at the end of the 40s I would go to a restaurant called Las Maravillas, in front of the Iglesia del Cristo in La Habana Vieja. The specialty of Las Maravillas was arroz con pollo. I would go there to have arroz con pollo. When I would leave, because they didn't even let the musicians play inside, Las Maravillas was an old house with a big front door, and you know who would be playing there? The Septeto Habanero. The 40s version of the Septeto Habanero, who made some recordings for Victor too. So it wasn't completely lost. But the son is like the butterfly, that starts out as a caterpillar. I believe that in the 30s, the son had turned into a caterpillar, and it emerges, at the end of the 30s, served up on a silver platter in the Cuban swing bands, which were called jazzbands -- incorrectly, because in reality they were swing bands, like Casino de la Playa, with Miguelito Valdés, and then you have "Bruca Manigua," etc. etc., and now you have from that time on, another form of the son. When Arsenio [Rodr�guez] gets hold of it with his conjunto, and the son montuno stabilizes, now you have another form of the son. That was my era.

Then another extraordinary phenomenon happens. The style of m�sica guajira [the country music of the Cuban peasant], latches on to the richness of the Afro-Cuban religious culture, and you get "�Que viva Chang�!"[5], "San L�zaro," et cetera. There you have a symbiosis, a mix, a fusion, of the Cuban guajiro with the black Cuban. What is "Santa B�rbara ["�Que viva Chang�!]?" It's a hymn. What form does it have? The form of a décima guajira. But what rhythm does it have? Son montuno. {laughs} Look what a mix you have! The son is protean. It doesn't stay put. Like other great musical genres, the son undergoes parallel developments. What I mean by that is, look at Dixieland. There are still people who play Dixieland like it was played back in the day in New Orleans. But Dixieland didn't stop there, Dixieland was one of the bases of jazz, of swing, of what came later. That seed, which is Dixieland in its original form, is still being played, but at the same time it evolved into the jazz of Chicago, and the same thing happened with the son.

NS: I have the impression that there was another change too. When the son arrived in Havana, I say it became a son rumbeao, a rumba-ized son. Coming to Havana, it takes on a different character. The people who play bong� are the same people who play rumba, who play bat�. They also play arar�,[6] maybe. I say that, although they didn't record the rumba of the solar [tenement] at that time, if you want to know how it sounded, listen to the son records. And although they didn't record the coros de clave,[7] if you want to know how they sounded, it's there. You know that what always caught my attention about the Septeto Habanero is -- those records are weird! They sound strange!

CDA: It's an acquired taste, the Habanero. What you're saying is true. It all comes together in the emblematic figure of Ignacio Pi�eiro, who gets rid of the four monotonous verses of the original son and replaces them with décima; who mixes the son with the guajiro style, et cetera. And also Ignacio Pi�eiro was Abaku�,[8] Ignacio Pi�eiro was in the coros de clave. That is, the son kept evolving.

NS: Miguel Matamoros's Tr�o explodes in '28, and then in '31 they record "L�grimas negras," something that defines an era.

CDA: Already there the bridge is obvious, it's emblematic of the step that the bolero is going to take, that's going to guarantee its permanent, universal fame. By making it danceable. Because remember that the bolero wasn't danceable. The bolero was for singing among friends or at the foot of your sweetheart's window, but it wasn't for dancing. Then the bolero becomes the bolero-son, it becomes a couple dance. And then its future is guaranteed, because there's no musical genre that prospers long term if it doesn't have a danceable form. People like to sing and dance, both things. And that's why "L�grimas negras" is so important, because maybe it wasn't the very first, but it's generally considered the first important danceable bolero, the first bolero-son that then turns into the tradition of the danceable bolero.

NS: With such a soft sound, the Tr�o Matamoros couldn't compete playing in the street, but it was perfect for radio.

CDA: Yes, because the son adapts itself to the environments where it can develop. Looking for the way to get to the public. When we get to the 50s, the era of the big bands, the son evolves by means of the conjuntos in three very different forms. That is, very black in Arsenio - I perceive Arsenio as the blackest representation of the son, that is, the son with the most African force. And you have what let's call the more mestizo son of the Sonora Matancera, which I locate in the middle. When I say the Sonora, I mean the groups that play like the Sonora Matancera -- Gloria Matancera, Lira Matancera - and when I say Arsenio, I mean Arsenio and the groups that play like Arsenio, like the conjunto of Chappott�n, and then, the white music, which is the son but now with a lot of jazz influence, representated by the most emblematic group, the Conjunto Casino. And when I say Conjunto Casino, I'm saying Luis Sant�, Conjunto Saratoga, etc., etc., where there are now more elements of jazz, but in all of it there's son. In some there's more son, in some less son, but in all of them there's son.

NS: Returning to the 20s, what does the Sexteto Bolo�a signify for you?

CDA: For me, it signifies a lot, because I'm a little bit iconoclastic about music. Maybe it's my legal training that causes me to look at things objectively. The lawyer looks for evidence. I can listen to the Bolo�a, and then listen to the Septeto Habanero, and I find that man for man, in the period when the Bolo�a had Barroso for a singer, it sounded better than the Habanero. First, there was Bolo�a himself, that poor man with his hump, playing a tres that shook you up, that is, he did more things with his tres than the tresero of the Habanero was doing. The bongosero was better too. Unfortunately, I don't know why, the Bolo�a didn't last long. There are 12 or 14 recordings of the Bolo�a and that's all. That's something no one can figure out, why such a good group ended so quickly.

NS: But that happens at times. Like with Kubavana.[9]

CDA: Also.

NS: An influential group that recorded very little.

CDA: For me Kubavana was seminal. It was extremely important. All the conjunto singers imitated Alberto Ruiz. Nelo Sosa imitated Alberto Ruiz. Many, many, many singers imitated him. He created a style. At least among, let's say, the mestizo and mulato soneros - the black conjuntos are something else, watch out, there you find very high voices, they have two first voices and one second voice, which is what the conjunto of Arsenio Rodr�guez had. But the mestizo conjuntos like Sonora Matancera, or the white ones like Casino, imitated Ruiz, who was a little detached in his way of singing, almost like what later would be the style called feeling. Alberto Ruiz didn't force the song, he said the song.

NS: In the 20s there were dozens and dozens of sextets, hundreds maybe, everywhere, and very few of them recorded.

CDA: That's right.

NS: But of what survives, there's a nucleus that permits us to know how it all sounded. How do you interpret the change of adding the trumpet to the sextet?

CDA: It was a stroke of genius. . . . Everything brings you to the same conclusion. The secret of Cuban music, the secret of much popular music that has been successful: to combine tradition and invention. The new and the old. That's all. As simple as that. That is, when you manage to mix the old and the new in the correct proportion, it goes forward and the music is successful. If not, it fails.

NS: It's hard to explain to people who don't know Cuba how it is that the bong� was prohibited in the street.

CDA: Forget the political problems -- the grand issue of Cuban history is the race problem. We were a hundred years late getting our independence because of the race problem. Slavery had to be maintained because it was the basis of the sugar industry. So that Cuba, beginning in 1902 when the Republic was constituted, arrived with a zeal for whitening itself. That is, it had to demonstrate to the world that it was white. It wanted hide its black people, and the best, or the most practical, form of hiding the black people was to hide the manifestations of the black people. How do black people manifest themselves? With their music. What characteristizes the music of black people? The drums. Okay, eliminate the drums, simple as that. There came a series of ordinances prohibiting the use of those drums in public, and then later in private too. They started persecuting the ceremonies.

Something curious happens: that in the colonial period, Ned, the black people had more freedom to play their drums than they had after Cuba was a republic. Why? Because Cuba had to demonstrate to the rest of the world that it was white. It wanted to demonstrate that. As part of this process, the immigration of Spaniards was favored. It's the only case in the world where something like that happened, that after the end of a war, where normally the group that loses the war is kicked out of the country, in this case the Spaniards began arriving to Cuba the following year in greater numbers than were leaving. In the first 30 years of the Republic Spanish immigration to Cuba was greater than in the whole previous century. Why? To whiten Cuba. And, of course, part of the process was: eliminate the drums.

Now the Afro-Cuban is skillful at hiding things. With religious syncretism he saved his religion, making a correspondence between his santos and the Catholic ones. He did the same with music. That's when we got what are called the toques de g�iro. They couldn't play the bat� drums, but they got three large gourds, and replaced the bat�, it was a softer sound, and they could make a religious ceremony with three gourds instead of bat� drums. They took the banjo, removed the strings, and made it the rhythmic instrument of the coros de clave. That is, they found ways to get around the problem. And, little by little, they got out from under this censorship, and the Republic took its course.

Robin Moore explains it very well in his book Nationalizing Blackness, how in the 20s there appears a movement of white literati in defense of black culture. Cuba begins to become consicous, to take possession of its African culture, which it had denied until that moment, and begins to liberate that drum.

But of course, it's not an easy process, nor a quick one. You don't have to look in Cuba, look at it here [in Puerto Rico], where it's worse. Here, there is also an African base, though not as big as Cuba's, which manifests itself, as you well know, in two very powerful genres, the plena and the bomba. The plena, which, moreover, comes out of the experience that the Afro-Puerto Rican already had with what happened to the bomba. What does the plena do? It doesn't use drums. What does it use? Panderetas [tambourines], which sound softer, which are a Spanish instrument, and with that, a genre that began in the year '10, nevertheless in the following decade, is already going into the recording studio. You know when the bomba first entered the recording studio, when the first Puerto Rican bombas were recorded? In the 1950s. Okay? Why? Because it used drums.

NS: Returning to the trumpet, I have the impression that it was a way of putting a touch of jazz into the son.

CDA: I read something very interesting not long ago. A Cuban trumpeter who was very famous as a son player, said in an interview that he gave not long before he died, he said, "Yes, but the first thing I was, I was a fox trot player and a jazz player." You know who I'm talking about? The famous Jabao of the Septeto Nacional.

NS: L�zaro Herrera.

CDA: L�zaro Herrera. He was a jazero and a foxtrocero. Why? Because in Havana there was a large presence of American orchestras in the first two decades of the century. Because they brought them for the American tourists. Because besides, there was a floating population of the American army, of American teachers, American technicians that wanted that music. And they brought orchestras, and those orchestras hired Cuban musicians, and there the Cubans learned jazz.

NS: The jazz groups that were heard in Cuba were the white groups, no?

CDA: Of course, of course. Unfortunately. {laughs} We didn't get the best of jazz.

NS: Because when I listen to Casino de la Playa, I hear Paul Whiteman.

CDA: Certainly.

NS: But the trumpeter in the septet, who is improvising all the time, is playing like a jazz player in that sense, but this also exists already in Cuban music.

CDA: Certainly. They improvised in the danz�n, and they improvised a lot.

NS: The flute player . .

CDA: And before the flute player, when it was the orquesta t�pica, in what was called the clarinet trio, though in reality the clarinet was what you heard the least. In the clarinet trio of the danz�n generally the directors were trumpeters. The trumpeter took the role of the singer, with the trombone doing the harmony and countermelody, and the clarinet. That's the trio. What does that trio remind you of? Where do you find that trio? {laughs}

NS: I know where you're going with that! . . .

CDA: You ask yourself: Where did Dixieland get that tr�o? For the only antecedent that I can find for that trio, you have to go back to the XVIIth century, to the concerto grosso, where a part of the orchestra detaches, separating from the body of the orchestra, and plays with the rest of the orchestra accompanying it. It's the only thing like it. But even there we're talking about woodwinds and strings, not brass instruments, like you have in the tr�o. Of course, the way of playing, the syncopation, is different, the rhythms are different. But the concept, that I'm playing trumpet, and you're going to folllow me with the trombone and ornament what I'm doing, and you're going to follow me with the clarinet and do the same . . .

NS: In the 30s, a lot of things happened all at once. You were saying that the charangas didn't disappear, but you didn't mention the danzonete.

CDA: Certainly, that's part of the process of the transformation of the charanga. I wrote a good article that came out in the magazine Encuentro a little over a year ago, called "The invincible charanga," or something like that. I follow the charanga from its beginnings, as the orquesta t�pica of the danz�n in the mid-XIXth century, a big orchestra of 12 musicians, and how, for economic reasons, namely, the competition from the son, that orchestra had to strip down to the charanga of six or seven musicians. At first, the only thing it plays is danz�n, but in the 30's, it reinvents itself, broadens its repertoire. You see, in reality the danzonete didn't catch on, but it did bring in the idea of the singer. That is, the idea was good, but it was badly applied, because the format was very forced. And then, immediately, once all those orchestras had a first-rate singer - we say orchestras, but really they were sextets or septets, no bigger --

NS: There was a generation of singers that became known through the danzonete.

CDA: What happens is that in reality they weren't singing danzonetes. There were very few danzonetes. The first danzonete, the famous "Rompiendo la rutina" of Aniceto D�az, . . a Brunswick record, if you listen to it, you don't move a muscle, it's a solemn thing, something which, besides, was sung in duet. Why? Because at that moment they grabbed the trovadores the way they were, singing duets, so you have two singers in place of a solo voice. Nothing happened with that. It's quite interesting, it's very formal. Nevertheless, Paulina �varez, a charanga singer, softened that danzonete format, and she's the one who really popularized the danzonete. From then on they speak of the danzonete when in reality it's a sung danz�n. That is, the same thing. And it catches fire in the 30s, and what happens in the 40s? People are beginning to get a little bored with the same thing all the time. The Cuban likes to change his musical menu, you have to invent new things. And besides, as at the beginning of the century, the charanga had a ferocious competition from the sextets and septets. What happens in the 40s? The conjuntos arrived. That is, the charangas see that they have an enemy . . .

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Head of the label Tumbao, which maintains an extensive catalog of Cuban music more than 50 years old. [2] A label which has released a number of early Cuban rarities, with notes by Crist�bal D�az Ayala. [3] a danz�n by clarinetist José Urfé, premiered in 1910, that had a final section incorporating son. [4] danzonete: a modification of the danz�n which debuted in 1929, using singers (the danzones had been all instrumental) and incorporating the son into its final section. [5] a 1948 composition by Celina Gonz�lez, sung in duo with her husband Reutilio Dom�nguez. Also known as "Santa B�rbara." [6] arar�: the name given in Cuba to people from Dahomey. [7] coros de clave: ambulatory choral groups that were popular in Havana and Matanzas in the late 19th century and into the 20th. [8] Abaku�: secret society for men, brought to Havana and Matanzas from the Calabar region of Africa. [9] Conjunto Kubavana, which recorded only from 1944 through 1948.