Audio
Writing and Broadcasting the Spirit of Salsa
Transcript
0:20 Hermán Luis Chávez: Buenos días y welcome to Oíste? a National Park Service podcast. I'm Hermán Luis Chávez.
0:28 Melissa Hurtado: And I'm Melissa Hurtado. In the Oíste? Podcast, we explore the salsa stories of Afro Latin music in the United States through interviews and conversations.
0:39 Hermán Luis Chávez: Izzy Sanabria, the famous salsa music promoter, once said: “salsa is not the music itself, but the spirit behind the music, the spirit that moves you to dance, sing, and go on in spite of all the obstacles.”
0:54 Melissa Hurtado: In today's episode, Writing and Broadcasting the Spirit of Salsa, we will explore the multifaceted elements of the spirit behind salsa through a look inside Catalino “Tite” Curet Alonso’s life.
1:08 Hermán Luis Chávez: We'll be discussing topics such as what impacted Alonso's writing, and complexities in defining the genre.
1:15 Melissa Hurtado: We've invited a special guest today who will bring their own music expertise to our discussion, and help us answer some pressing questions. Together, we’ll learn how Tite’s life teaches us about the importance of lesser-known stories and finding your voice through community.
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1:44 Hermán Luis Chávez: Many salseros are known as performers, but how many are known as composers and songwriters? Today, we'll be looking into the life of a songwriter and composer: Catalino Curet Alonso, who was affectionately known throughout his life as “Tite.”
2:00 Melissa Hurtado: Journalist Aurora Flores explains that “Tite Curet helped father the salsa movement that was marking time in clave through the streets of Puerto Rico and Latin New York. Through news events, music, and lyrics, his words inspired hope, faith, solace, and joy during a time of social upheaval. In more than 2,000 tunes, Curet was the musical narrator of current events and national pride, romance, and religion. He wrote when the social reality of the poor was in direct opposition to the political power line, leaving music as the life-support of optimism. Tite Curet reflected the face of a community in need of answers.”
2:43 Hermán Luis Chávez: Tite was born in 1926 in Guayama, Puerto Rico and raised in Barrio Obrero. In 1941, he wrote his first song. He went on to graduate from the University of Puerto Rico where he studied sociology and journalism. He moved to New York City in 1960 where he would work as a sports columnist at El Diario La Prensa, the oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper in the United States. Journalism helped him curate his own elegant, metered, and literate style of song writing. He also worked for the United States Postal Service for over 20 years.
3:21 Melissa Hurtado: In 1965, he collaborated with Joe Quijano. Tite composed one of Joe’s first hits, “Efectivamente,” and after that, the rest was history. His name was ever so slightly noticeable in album credits of artists’ music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
3:38 Hermán Luis Chávez: Tite Curet Alonso’s songs were performed by many well-known salseros such as Hector Lavoe, Ruben Blades, Ray Barreto, Cheo Feliciano, Celia Cruz, Ismael Rivera, Roberto Roena, La Lupe, Pete “El Conde” Rodriguez, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, the Fania Allstars, Rafael Cortijo, and many, many more.
4:06 Melissa Hurtado: Tite died in 2003 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was transported to Puerto Rico where he would be buried next to Noel Estrada—the composer of “En Mi Viejo San Juan”—and Don Felo, his two amigotes.
4:21 Hermán Luis Chávez: Tite’s writing style and focus on social conciouseness was instrumental in the development of salsa, and was a reflection of historical events weaved together with everyday life in the mid and late 20th century. Salsa wouldn't have been the same without him.
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4:48 Hermán Luis Chávez: It is a pleasure to introduce our guest for today, Felix Contreras! Felix is an American journalist who the co-creator and co-host of Alt.Latino, NPR’s radio show and podcast celebrating Latin music and culture. On top of hosting the show, Contreras programs music from the Latin diaspora for the acclaimed Tiny Desk concerts and appears regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines, All Things Considered, and Morning Edition.
5:17 Melissa Hurtado: He is extremely knowledgeable and an international ambassador for Latino heritage and arts. “Tio Felix,” has been cited as a music and culture experts by the Smithsonian Institution and captures stories of important icons in jazz and Latin genres. He is also NPR's resident Deadhead and performs around the DMV area with his Latin music Beatles cover band, Los Day Trippers. Thank you for joining us today, Felix, it is a pleasure to have you here on the podcast. Bienvenido!
5:48 Felix Contreras: Gracias, thank you so much, the honor’s mine to be able to participate in such an esteemed project. It's such an important project. Thank you so much.
5:57 Melissa Hurtado: We want to start off today's episode by asking you about your connections to salsa. Did you grow up with it? What does salsa mean as music to you and as a movement to you?
6:07 Felix Contreras: So my connection to salsa is very curious because I am of Mexican American background. I was born and raised in California. And by the time I was fifteen, 1973 or so, it's right about the time when salsa was becoming a social movement. As a Mexican American, we didn't have a connection to the Afro Caribbean, right? When I first heard the music, it was like, you know, the sky opened up and lightning struck me. So then I'm like, okay, I gotta find out everything I can about it. Pre internet, right? That was the beginning. Over the years, I immersed myself in trying to find out as much about the music as possible, and eventually started to learn how to play congas, and timbales. My experience is exemplary, is a very common story, of what was going on in California among Chicanos. We consider ourselves Chicanos. Chicanos to me are politicised or self aware Mexican Americans, right? So among the Chicanos in California at that time, it was, you know, post-civil rights movement. So on the West Coast, there was a lot of political activity—or out in the southwest rather—of Mexican Americans trying to have a seat at the table in terms of politics, economy and all that other stuff, right. Curiously, this Chicano movement, the soundtrack was basically Afro Caribbean music with bands like Santana, El Chicano from Los Angeles, Azteca from the Bay Area, Malo from the Bay Area. It was all congos and timbales right, what they were doing in California was reinterpreting what was going on the East Coast, right. So part of my experience was learning all that stuff, learning about my Chicano identity, but learning about it through Afro Caribbean music. It wasn't until Los Lobos came around in the 80s that accordions became cool, because it was strictly, it was an incredible phenomenon where we all absorbed this Afro Caribbean music and claimed it as our own as part of this progressive movement of thought, of art, of expression. Like if you were part of that, if you were listening to salsa from Fania in the ‘70s, and then listening to the Afro Caribbean based Latin rock out in California, you were, you're a part of the progressive movement, you were part of the vanguard of art and politics and everything else that went along with it.
8:30 Hermán Luis Chávez: That is such an amazing story. You're mentioning these elements of inter- and intra-Latino identity and cultural elements going on here where there's these resonances for you, and I think for a lot of Latinos as well, that are not from the Caribbean, but who have created a relationship to salsa. And I think that tells us so much about what is complicated about the Latino identity, and how even when we think about the way that we conceptualise salsa, or Latin music more generally, these questions about who we are and how we fit into them are always there. And you did an interview as well with the Code Switch podcast where you were asking, along with your alt.Latino co-host, Anna Maria: what is Latin music anyway? And so I mean, that's, I think, a part of the discussion that we're wanting to have today as well. So why do you think it's so hard for us to define Latin music and to define salsa, right? Is it even necessary for us to define these terms and these genres and what does it tell us about Latinidad?
9:42 Felix Contreras: I think that it is part of being outside of the mainstream here in the United States. When it comes to music, you know, it's a form of expression. It's art. It's something that's important to our lives, but it's also a business and then they have to be able have to sell records in order to make money in order to keep that business going. You can go back to the early 1900s when they started recording African American artists, and they called that race music, right? Instead of the blues, they called that race music, and they commercialise that right? They made money off of that. The term salsa, it was basically like a marketing method. Right? It's a way to quantify that type of music. And so then Latin music, here in the United States, the history has been well, it's basically anything in Spanish language. Over the years, in order to be able to market it, it was initially Spanish music, Spanish language music and Latin music. But it covers all these genres like Latin music here, in the southwest, its conjunto; mariachi along the Texas Mexican border. And then in the northeast, its Dominican music, its Puerto Rican music, its salsa, all the different forms. Come to the present, now, what is Bad Bunny doing? He's got, you know, on his last album, he has bachata that he has a little bit of salsa, a little mambo, of course reggaeton, you know he's got hip hop. And only here in the United States, is where people tend to have the tendency to use the catch all phrase “Latin music.” It's hard to define it because it's so many things.
11:26 Hermán Luis Chávez: These are also choices that we make, too, when we decide to name things and when we decide to talk about them in certain ways. And those choices can sometimes be political, just in the way that the music—and you know, salsa itself and also some of these other genres and styles—can be really political things. I want to quote, Ruben Blades talking about the Tite Curet Alonso, who said that he “was a conscious person and that consciousness was manifested in many ways... Tite saw things clearly and because of that he expressed them: The Puerto Rican sensibility, condemning racism, the need for an expression of a much more fair reality than the one we are living in... [and] that was always very present in his music.” And that was Ruben Blades talking about Tite Curet Alonso. So what would you say is the importance of bringing these sorts of ideas into the musical world? And how did this effect the people who sort of took in salsa music and continue to take in salsa music to understand the world that we're in?
12:30 Felix Contreras: Tite Curet Alonso is a fascinating character in this music history, because I don't think enough people know about him, right? He's like a musician's musician, a songwriter’s songwriter. With his immense body of work, and the social things that he took on almost from the beginning, we're talking 1965 or so, that coincided with the civil rights movement of African Americans. His music stands out because of that early commitment to speaking out against all these things. Coming from Puerto Rico, he of course grew up in a society that was shaped by colonialism, and continued to be, and then the way his music was banned from the airwaves, because of the dispute between the record label, or basically the publisher, and he as an artist, just added to him not being recognized properly among the broader public. He's part of a long tradition of socially conscious songwriters in Latin America: the stories of the underclass, stories about the people who were suffering, why this revolution was going on, in their storytelling, in their verse. So he is part of that trajectory of a long history, and even here in the United States.
13:54 Melissa Hurtado: Just speaking about how his music was banned from venues in the US and Puerto Rico, it was banned for 14 years, and you really talk about him being a musician's musician and not really getting the credit he deserved, pretty much about the newer generation and the generation during sort of forgetting who he was. So I really want to pose this question, and see if you have any insight: what do you recommend newer generations can do to actually learn about the Tite Curet Alonso's music, as well as his legacy that he left behind through socially conscious lyrics?
14:32 Felix Contreras: There are a lot of sources that are marking his contribution. And then you find interviews, like I know I've interviewed Residente from the group Calle 13, who is, you know, the epitome of socially conscious songwriter here in contemporary music in the United States, and in Puerto Rico. And he's mentioned him every time I talk to him in an interview as a source of inspiration. So that thing that he started going back to the early mid sixth 1960s is reverberating even now, in this century, among younger musicians like that. So yeah, I think that going back and finding those sources—the fact that you're recording this and doing this as part of the US government, and the Park Service, recognizing his contribution—these are all important steps and trying to correct a little bit of bad history, so that everybody else can catch up.
15:29 Hermán Luis Chávez: And of course, so much of salsa is coming from such a place of recognition of the particularly Afro Latino experience. So why was this focus on Blackness and on being Afro Latino, something that was important to salsa, the movement of salsa at the time?
15:49 Felix Contreras: You know, you have to consider the racism within Latin America, and how these Afro Latino cultures and communities were marginalized for centuries. Only within the last 20, 30 years, where being Afro Latino, there was an attempt to try to understand that, socially, politically, and musically, there was a strong movement among young musicians at that time, in 2001, from Colombia, from Venezuela, from Puerto Rico, from all these places that had the legacy of the slave trade, where they were going back into their history and reclaiming that. These musicians were reclaiming that Afro Latino, that Afro Colombian history, Afro Venezuelan history back, like bomba stereo from Colombia, they went back and they reclaimed that. And that's part of this process of reclaiming that history, that he was part of that Tite Curet Alonso was part of. And it's still going on. All of that stuff, it was an effort. It's a considerate and deliberate effort to reclaim that history that is part of the legacy of the slave trade. The tragedy and the horror, but what came out of that also were very unique and distinct musical expressions, based on whatever was going on in the country at the time, or that territory, and then whatever part of Africa that the folks were coming from. So yeah, he is part of that, that Renaissance, that reclaiming of Blackness.
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17:32 Melissa Hurtado: What place are they actually speaking about? You know, these societal issues are happening in the music right, in this cloud, and they're talking about a space that is symbolic, but also a space that exists within different places, not only in the United States, but in Latin America as a whole. And so that brings me to our point: that salsa history is US history. What they're talking about, not only in salsa but Latin music as a whole, are things that are happening within the nation. Much of the salsa that we know today was made in the US by of course, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Latinos. But let's tie this into a geopolitical context. So did salsa act as a way of cultural and lyrical expression for the people of Puerto Rico responding to the island's colonial status at the time? And is it still so today?
18:30 Felix Contreras: The meta-barrio exists, whenever people gather to celebrate that music, to listen to the music, to dance, to go to a concert to put it in the background at a cafe. It exists in our minds, it exists in our souls, and it exists in our hearts. And it comes from the expression from the musicians, right? The difference between African music here in the United States and African music in everywhere else: here in the United States, the African folks were not allowed to play their drums, when in Latin America, that's why all the music sounds the way it does, because they were able to continue to play their drums even as they were enslaved. And then these songs, styles, and genres and cultures grew out of that. Here in the United States, the call and response of African music is found in the Gospel, in the blues in the field hollers. All of that stuff that's came out of the African American experience here in the United States. So that is also part of that legacy of enslavement and how, you know, again, we're going back to the meta-barrio, right like the spirit and the energy and the consciousness of just trying to survive, and trying to keep maintain a sense of identity and sense of self in the smallest way, and then eventually express through music. I think that what we're experiencing in this country right now, it's hard not to feel overwhelmed and wondering how are we going to deal with this as a whole, right? Music is a way to cope, for us to gather around a shared sense of, like, let's get through this, a shared sense of support, a shared sense of we got your back. So that right now, in this point in history, like it's so important, whether you express yourself in rap, hip hop, reggaeton, you know, whatever, musicians are out there right now making those statements. As a way to like, again, to fortify ourselves, to get us through this, because we will get through this, we will survive, and things will change eventually. But I think that that's the importance of music and that's the legacy of salsa and anybody else who used music as a means of self-identity, to express themselves. The community's like, you know what, this is who we are. This is who we are.
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21:09 Hermán Luis Chávez: Thank you to Felix Contreras for sharing his expertise and opinions on Latin music from then and today. To hear about more stories like Tite’s, check out more of Felix’s work at alt.Latino on NPR.
21:22 Melissa Hurtado: To wrap up we wanted to list some of the many songs that Tite Curet Alonso wrote. Do you recognize any and if so, did you know they were written by him?
21:31 Hermán Luis Chávez: Some of these songs include: La Gran Tirana by La Lupe, El Periodico de Ayer By Hector Lavoe, Las Caras Lindas by Ismael Rivera, Anacaona by Cheo Feliciano, La Esencia del Guaguancó by Johnny Pacheco and Pete Conde Rodriguez, Brujeria by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, Tu Loco y Yo Tranquilo by Roberto Roena, and many more.
21:57 Melissa Hurtado: Such great songs! We hope going forward that more and more folks know who the poet behind these classics was. And you know what they say: ¨The soul of the Carribean is the soul of the poet.” We are grateful for Tite the poet and his legacy in writing and broadcasting about the lives, triumphs, and struggles of Black and Indigenous communities.
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22:30 Melissa Hurtado: Thank you and gracias for listening to Oíste. I’m Melissa…
22:34 Hermán Luis Chávez: …and I’m Hermán. To learn more about Oíste, American Latino heritage, and Telling All Americans Stories at the National Park Service, please visit nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories
22:48 Melissa Hurtado: Tune in to the next and final episode, “Sembrando Stewardship,” where we will be reflecting on each podcast episode in this series while discovering how all of us can be stewards of salsa stories.
23:00 Hermán Luis Chávez:
Hasta pronto!
Description
Beyond the sounds of music and movements of dance, salsa is made up of the composers, songwriters, and journalists who write for and about salseros. In Episode 5: Writing and Broadcasting the Spirit of Salsa, we discuss the life of composer and songwriter Tite Curet Alonso with journalist Felix Contreras, who also highlights the importance of Afro Latin identity in salsa marketing and lyrics. (Music © No Más - La Banda)
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