Why Latin America Owes A Big Thank You To West Africa

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Audio transcription below has been redacted and shortened for print.

By now, it is pretty common knowledge that American music wouldn’t be recognizable without African-American influence. Rock and Roll, Jazz, Rhythm and Blues were all birthed by talented Black artists who fought their way to the spotlight. In contrast, we very rarely hear how African influence has completely changed the diaspora of music worldwide, in particular, Latin-American music. The truth is that artists like Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, and even prolific Afro-Latinxs artists like Celia Cruz stand on the shoulders of African influence and suffering.

The Inclusive sat down with Eddie Torres Jr., choreographer to the upcoming Warner Bros. film “In The Heights,” to talk more about Afro-Latino influence in Latin-American music and pop culture today.

My name is Eduardo Naborit Torres, but my stage name is Eddie Torres Jr, I’m a professional Latin dancer – I come from a family of professional dancers. My father is a Latin dancer, my mother is a flamenco dancer, I was born into the music in the house and the dancing. I really took dance as a professional starting at 12 – which is a little late – but I really got into it and I just knew it was my destiny. I really had to make a life out of this.

My father Eddie Torres is known in the Latin world, as far as mambo, he created what we call New York style salsa. Since 12 up to now, I’m 27 now, I’ve been performing and teaching and watching documentaries of this music that goes way, way back.

(sound of rumba drums)

That leads us into the triangular slave trade that’s between Europe, Africa and the New World. Starting in the 1500’s, I think it’s 1526, the conquistadors went to Africa and took all these slaves captives and shipped 

Them off to different parts of the world. The slaves that were sent to the Caribbean were allowed the music, their hobbies, if you will, they allowed the dancing, the singing, the music, as long as they worked. And because of this, the slaves that were sent to the Caribbean started to produce a lot of the rhythms. If you look at it quickly you have ‘bomba y plena’ in Puerto Rico, in Cuba alone you have so many rhythms: rumba, bembe, guarache, son montuno, cha cha cha and mambo. 

The arrival of slaves into Cuba really marked the beginning of Latin music as we know it. These slaves invented what Eddie calls, “La Clave,” a five-beat syncopation created by the sound of two sticks. Dancers like Eddie depend on this clave to dance through different combinations of beats. The variations of this clave morphed into the different beats we hear in music today, and also played a key factor for slaves to hang on to their cultural ancestry.

Yoruba in itself is a language and they have their own beliefs. When the European and Conquistadors took the African slaves and shipped them out, remember they didn’t allow their culture, their dancing or their religion, so they were forcing Catholicism onto people that didn’t believe in that. They believed in deities, they call them santos and different things. They synchronized their religion called Lucumi which is the African religion in Yoruba -- They took each one of their deities and they synchronized them under a Catholic saint so that it can appear that they’re praying to Saint Barbara, but really they’re praying to Chango. 

As these slaves made generational homes in this new land, the music continued to take root. In Cuba, the evolution of rumba and other musical genres continued, including the creation of a more romantic sound called “trova.”

(sound of José Pepe Sánchez’s “Tristeza”)

The father of trova is a man named José Pepe Sánchez from Santiago de Cuba. He never had any formal training, but he popularized the genre. Soon, musicians in the city filled the streets and parks with soulful, romantic sounds. There are very few vinyls in existence of Pepe’s music, but if you listen closely you can hear an interpretation of one of his famous songs, “Tristeza.”

Thanks to Pepe, this mix of trova, son Cubano and boleros began to manifest in acoustic trios. Trio Matamoros was the first to make a splash, with classic hits like “Lágrimas Negras,” which became an international hit years later.

(sound of Trio Matamoros “Lágrimas Negras”)

This particular song describes the painful beauty of heartbreak: “I feel the pain of your misguidance, and even though you’ve left me deserted, even though you’ve killed my illusions, I’ll instead fill you with blessings in my dreams”… ouch.

(sound of Trio Los Panchos “Sin Ti”)

The popularity of the bolero reached its peak in the 20th century as it crossed over internationally to Mexico. Arguably the most famous trio to come from the era is Trio Los Panchos, who made the genre extremely popular after their formation in New York City. Without trios like Matamoros or Los Panchos, popular Latin American acts like Juan Gabriel, Sin Bandera or the prolific Luis Miguel would never exist.

(sound of Silvio Rodríguez’s “Ojalá”)

The trova genre, however, made its way back home to Cuba in the 60’s and 70’s with the creation of Nueva Trova, which was a much more dissonant, yet still romantic sound that was used as a double entendre to protest political and social changes after the Cuban Revolution of 1959. The fathers of the movement? Two men: Silvio Rodriguez and Afro-Latino Pablo Milanes.

(sound of Mercedes Sosa’s “Solo Le Pido A Dios”)

The politically fueled movement was soon adopted by musicians all over the world. All the way in Argentina was a young Mercedes Sosa, who eventually was exiled from her country for being deemed too political in her folk adaptations of Rodriguez and Milanes’s songs – along with her own original classics. In Mexico, Alejandro Filio was holding down the nueva trova fort, along with others in Chile, and the rest of Latin-America.

Meanwhile in the U.S., the influence of the Caribbean was only starting to explode.

(Sound of Mario Bauza’s “My Time Is Now”)

In the U.S. you have the blues, which evolved later on into jazz, and there’s this one guy, Mario Bauza, he’s Cuban and comes to New York, and he makes the connection between the rhythm and the jazz. He basically created a hybrid. Back then, you have swing, right? And it’s very beautiful but the rhythm section is very simple, so you have a “boom, boom, boom, boom.” So all it is, is having the accent on the “up” beat. And all the melody is beautiful – and you have all these jazz improvisations on top of that. Mario Bauza comes in and says, “let’s change this rhythm section because you need the Afro-Cuban rhythyms. This guy takes afro-cuban rhythms with jazz improvisations and puts it together – and this is the 1930s – and it becomes a whole movement. His band was called “Machito and The Afro-Cuban Orchestra,” which was looked down upon during this time. He created this band and that became a huge movement, Dizzie Gillepsie joined, you had all these jazz musicians jump in on what was called ‘latin jazz.’

(Sound of Machito and The Afro-Cuban Orchestra)

Thanks to musicians like Mario Bauza and other mambo greats like Arsenio Rodríguez and Perez Prado, the New York scene saw venues like The Palladium rise in popularity.

The Palladium was a ballroom on 53th street and Broadway. We call refer to the Palladium as the home of the Mambo. This is where all the magic happened. You had a lot of people from different cultures coming together, which at that time wasn’t as normal as today. They were united through the music, this is how good this new sound was. From there, everybody got involved, celebrities got involved, politicians got involved. Mambo became a really big deal. 

(Sound of Perez Prado’s Mambo Number 5)

Going back to Perez Prado, he would do this thing, “mambo… uuuh! And it was called Mambo number 5. I think every artist has this sort of vocal signature and Perez Prado went back to the mambo -- it was very raw to just do that “ahhh, uhh!” …. And a lot of people liked it. It became very popular.

The Palladium closed in 1966. During this time, Mambo was starting to die down. At this point the hustle came in, the Disco era of the 70s. We also had a new sound called Boogaloo, or Latin Boogaloo, because there’s different boogaloos. Boogaloo is an invention of the street – specifically Puerto Ricans in “el barrio,” who wanted a sound for themselves, they didn’t want to copy the mambo from the 50s. So what they did was take the cha-cha-cha as an Afro-Cuban rhythm and then they created a design on top of it. It’s a fusion of rock, funk, blues, do-wop. And why is this important? Because it brought attention back to Latin music. 

(Sound of Boogaloo music)

Out of this started the word “Salsa.” Fania All Stars was a record label that took all the Latin rhythms ever created and they marketed under one umbrella. They did this to help market it because a lot of people didn’t understand the differences of each rhythm. In Cuba alone you have guaracha, membe, you have son montuno, mambo, there’s so many rhythms and it was a little complex for their audience. They created one word, salsa, to put it all together. I think as far as marketing that was smart because not everyone wants to go to the root of the root of these things, they just want to dance. 

It was very good for business, but we lost a lot of context behind the history. Salsa blew up in the 80s, we have salsa movies, salsa appealed to all nationalities everywhere. It became a movement. In terms of marketing it was great because a lot of people started to gain interest again, it was like a fresh comeback. But a lot of the heavy hitters weren’t fans of this salsa thing, because they were trying to keep a culture alive, it wasn’t just about money. It was an issue of appropriation of the whole culture, not just the music. 

Then you had Marc Anthony come in, and when Marc Anthony came in, he just blew everyone away.

(Sound of Marc Anthony’s “Si Te Vas”)

His voice is incredible, very appealing guy. But again, with Marc you’re not going pure in the root, it’s a new fresh sound, which I personally like. A lot of people were upset, especially the Cubans, because it’s years of suffering that you’re covering up with the word ‘salsa.’ Marc Anthony came out with his long hair as a sort of “papi chulo.” And he’s is still doing his thing, he just came out with a new song with Daddy Yankee, it’s like a fusion that’s like salsa, but it’s new. They’re still playing with this concept of salsa and making it new.

Even Cardi B, she took something from the 70’s and brought it into today and it sounds fresh.

(Sound of Cardi B’s “I Like It Like That”)

My job as a dance teacher is not to teach a bunch of steps, but to actually communicate a movement and teach a culture. And we can’t lose that. It’s not about anything flashy, forget the rhinestones, this is a story you’re telling. Anything that has a drum is African, whether that’s a real drum or a computer sound, cause now you press a button and make beats now, but even the word beats – you’re talking about an African root here. It’s African. It’s all African. 

There’s something very ancestral about everything we’re talking about. Aside from all the facts and the details, when you hear the music, it’s like having communication with your own ancestors. And being able to pay homage to them and respect to them in that way just by moving, and being free, because our freedom itself is homage to our ancestors, just to be free and keep their music from a time they weren’t free, just the fact that we can do that today, in freedom, is such a blessing. It’s something that needs to be emphasized more. 

Latin-American music definitely has major flowers to give to its African and Caribbean roots. You can catch Eddie, his choreography and his smooth moves in the new film, “In The Heights,” hitting theatres later this year.