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BARRIO BRASS: AN AMERICAN TRADITION
May 1, 2007
Despite its constant flux, New York remains at heart a city of neighborhoods. The Carnegie Hall / Citi Neighborhood Concert Series, a program of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, is one way in which the Hall celebrates this notion, showcasing a diversity of music in the city’s many communities through dozens of free concerts each year.
East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio, is one such neighborhood, uniquely storied in Latin music. On Friday, May 4, audiences at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre will thrill to the brassy big-band sound of what is perhaps the premier inheritor of that music’s golden era, East Harlem’s Harbor Conservatory Latin Big Band.
The event is one of three Neighborhood Concerts presented in conjunction with another program of The Weill Music Institute: Perelman American Roots, which is dedicated to enriching the appreciation of American history, culture, and society through the country’s wide array of musical traditions. The other two events showcase blues singer Shemekia Copeland and bluegrass royalty Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver. By pairing Latin big band with bluegrass and the blues, these concerts recognize how richly varied America’s musical tapestry is and how its many threads have often been intertwined—a fact not lost on fans of the television show Dancing with the Stars, which regularly features the mambo and the cha-cha alongside the foxtrot and quickstep.
During the heyday of Latin big band in the mid-20th century, this confluence of cultures was apparent. “What they were playing was music brought from the Caribbean that was merged and married with some of the jazz styles that were here already,” explains the Conservatory’s Director, Ramon Rodriguez. “It was everywhere in Puerto Rican and Cuban neighborhoods in the ’40s and ’50s. It’s part of New York’s music.”
On Friday, audience members will experience what has become an all-too-rare sound—with selections from the music of the late Tito Puente, himself an East Harlem institution, in addition to big-band pioneers Frank “Machito” Grillo and Chico O’Farrill. Many listeners will be experiencing this music for the first time. “The interaction among the 13 horns up there is an incredible sound to hear,” Rodriguez says. “It’s a unique experience.”
Part of the uniqueness derives from the Harbor Conservatory’s mission to keep alive the culture of the live Latin orchestra, according to Rodriguez. After the Second World War, dance clubs and their massive 21-piece ensembles flourished in New York, with venues like the Palladium and the Park Palace providing popular sources of entertainment. When they lost favor over time and were shuttered, a gap was left in the city’s live-music scene that the Harbor Conservatory Latin Big Band, led by musical director and conductor Louis Bouzó, now hopes to fill.
Prior to the band’s May 4 performance will be an excerpt from the PBS documentary Mi Mambo!, which tells the stories of five neighborhood students who find a lifeline in the heritage of Latin music and dance through the youth programs of the Harbor Conservatory.
“God forbid in a couple years no one will know who Tito Puente was,” says Harbor Conservatory spokeswoman Nina Olson. “We want to make sure that the music will continue.”
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