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The only tie I've ever owned is the one I wore for my wedding. It's that I hate uniforms, like flags and religions.
This doesn’t say who I am, but it frames the character a bit. In short, I've never entered—and I don't think I ever will (although "never say never")—one of those venues where they dance Latin American music and group dances. I have nothing against those who go there; it's like with vegetarian restaurants: I simply don't go; and for years, I refused to buy a book that was talked about on TV or an album I heard on the radio.
A true connoisseur, keen defender of good taste: never watch a film that is topping the box office.
A moralizer: never buy a sports newspaper.
A minority by choice.
A habitué of the niche.
A fool.
Luckily, in life, one meets people.
“It’s like one not listening to De Andrè because he plays the same genre as Albano” – he said, observing my disappointment while handing me a “Los Van Van” CD – “Which of the drummers you admire so much could play this rhythm?” and then he started dancing. Maybe it was because summer had just begun, maybe because her legs seemed endless, maybe because the rum was good and plentiful, but I had never “felt” a rhythm like this.
Maite. A dream of café-au-lait with chocolate eyes, black as the night.
She explained to me that “salsa” was born in New York with a Cuban father and Puerto Rican mother, that the name means “mixture,” “concoction,” that the Cuban father is the “son,” in turn, a child of former African slaves and Creoles, half-Indian and half-Spanish. Like blues, jazz, gospel? No, Cuban blacks were freer and more integrated, blues, jazz, and gospel still made you feel the sound and weight of chains. And she told me about Antonio Maceo Grajales, the “Bronze Titan,” the first, great revolutionary leader of color.
“You play the posh with the music that whites have stolen from blacks,” and she explained that this is “black” music, that only juju or Yoruba are blacker than this, which is why there are wonderful African salseros.
Then she said to me: “You only listen to sad music. Either sad or angry. But what reason do you have to be so sad or angry?” and she looked at me like one looks at a child. But she was the sad one: thinking of her land where people, when they meet on the street, smile at each other; while here everyone was enemies and angry, busy and nervous, all crazy in her eyes.
A German grandfather, a mother black as pitch, a mulatto father, and a bit of Canadian blood somewhere: she "was" salsa. She embodied the spirit and rhythm, the wonderful mixture and joy of living despite everything.
And she taught me more things in a few days than a bunch of those books I insisted on reading. She also tried to teach me how to dance because to have good sex you need to know how to dance. And I listened and watched, not just because I’m a pig, she was liked by everyone: men, women, cats, tables, and everything in between.
Then she gave me this record. Because, she said: “This you can understand, start with this.”
And it's a beautiful album. Joe Bataan, the inventor of “salsoul,” an incredible fusion of soul and salsa, conceived by this crazy genius, son of a Filipino and an African American woman who spent most of his youth in reform school and who now spends what Music has given him to help the kids of that reform school which was home to him for so long. He recorded 16 albums, all of extraordinary quality, but if you want to play it safe, just look for the ones he recorded for Fania, with those you're always in good hands. “Saint Latin's Day Massacre” is from '72 and still sounds warm, sexy, and sleazy just like when it came out; inside there are things like “I Wish You Love, part 1 & 2” or “El Regreso” or an incredible cover of “Shaft” that brings the Caribbean sun to Harlem. You have to listen to it to understand what I'm talking about.
I'll just say that from this stuff, a few years later, they will take inspiration to invent Disco; music made by blacks, Puerto Ricans, and gays and, for this, hated by critics and the public. By those who believed they knew and instead were just, more or less consciously, bigots and racists. And they were wrong because that stuff became dance, then “pump up the volume,” then techno, then Warp, and then a lot of stuff that's so cool to listen to today.
So, when you listen to your white sulky and angry stuff, think that what keeps us away from this music is the fact that we can't bear its carnal vitality, the animal joy that must—with all the strength we have—be kept in check while we do “serious things.”
And Maite?
Who knows where she is! Maybe she went back to her land, or maybe she found someone who can dance better than I can.
(Dedicated to all those uncompromising rockers, like I was, who wouldn’t care about this stuff in the slightest.)
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