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Overseas Report
The Afro-Cuban All Stars, Basingstoke, England
The Afro-Cuban All Stars is an outfit of around fifteen
musicians who play big band Cuban music–son, chachacha, danzon and
mambo. The bandleader is Juan de Marcos Gonzales, who also plays with
Sierra Maestra. He has ringlets, a big watch, a beret, a very loud
flowery shirt and a bouncy, good-natured manner. He’s one of the
younger members of the band, several of whom are in their seventies and
were stars in pre-revolutionary Havana night clubs, where they played
for the gangsters, whores, gamblers and dime-a-dance professional
dancing partners.
In order to have some idea of the concert, you should know what
Basingstoke is like. Basingstoke is a small town where low-level
bureaucrats go to live when they retire. In Basingstoke tea shops
grudging waitresses pour cups of weak tea and purse their lips if
anyone speaks loudly. Already in Victorian times it was a byword for
damp gentility: in one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas,
whenever the heroine shows signs of coloratura emotion, the other
characters say "Basingstoke" to calm her down. It was in
Basingstoke, on a grey rainy Wednesday evening, that I went to hear the
Afro-Cuban All Stars. It rains often, in Basingstoke.
This is not music that slams into you, like Jesús
Alemañy’s Cubanismo with its white-hot brass
section; instead it has the relaxed intimacy of the slower Cuban
dances. I took my seat next to a bank manager type who brought his
briefcase to the concert. The band was playing a bolero. Musicians
ambled about the stage adding a rhythm or delicate chord here and there
whenever it seemed right. Amelito Valdez, the wiry percussionist, kept
the beat languid. Ibrahim Ferrer was crooning Sinatra-style, his voice
sweet as sugarcane. His tone has thinned over the years, and he was not
helped by an atrocious sound balance, but he had all his heart-throb
charisma intact. Every sensible Basingstoke matron in the audience
wanted to put him in the pocket of her tweed suit and carry him away.
Ruben Gonzalez hit piano chords percussively as though playing a
cowbell, and then produced one of his trademark delicate and
sophisticated run sequences, Chopin goes to Havana.
It was during the all-percussion introduction to "Fiesta
della Rumba" that something else started happening. The timbales,
maracas, dumbek, conga, bongos and udu drum, improvising together in a
thicket of cross-rhythms, were conjuring some wild sad spirit out of
the night air. The drums crackled like burning logs.
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
I had to get up and dance towards the stage, the maracas were
sizzling
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
Balding exmiddlemanagers who’d never danced anything funkier
than a foxtrot stood up and shimmied
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
A man in a baggy ghostly-white suit with slicked-back hair and a
thin moustache appeared in front of a Basingstoke girl near the stage
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
He touched her arm and she shivered
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
Sparks flying, flames roaring
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
The back wall of the concert hall curled away and we could see
out into the Basingstoke night, the air was warm and humid
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
The plaster facade of the house opposite the concert hall
crumbled, a wrought iron balcony crawled across it
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
Palm trees and sugar cane sprouted in the municipal flower beds
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
Creepers ran along the concrete underpass and opened purple
flowers against the windows of the teashops
Oh fire, fire, fire, I’m burning
Flower patterns matching Juan de Marcos Gonzalez’ shirt
bloomed on the aprons of the sour-faced waitresses
I’m burning
As the waitresses poured tea into the teacups it turned into
1 crushed ice chunk
juice and zest of 1 lime
8cl light rum
1 shot cola
I’m burning
All the matrons in the tea shops lit fat cigars, holding them
delicately between three fingers
I’m burning
Cigar smoke snaked out of the tea shops and coiled around
Basingstoke’s central traffic circle, scarlet fire engines dashed
out of Basingstoke fire station with sirens squealing like trumpets
I’m burning
I’m burning
In the foyer after the concert some of the band were sitting
round a table, drinking rum and talking. They were still wearing their
berets and trilbys. My Spanish wasn’t good enough to follow what
they were saying, but I liked the sound, with complex rhythms and
pauses and repetitions. At first they all spoke sequences of just a few
words. Then Pio Leyva began a tall tale. After each of his phrases the
others repeated a chorus of encouragement, stoking up the tempo. He
gestured with his whole arm, like a preacher. Ibrahim Ferrer started to
argue with him in counterpoint, softly at first but with increasing
volume and passion. The others joined in supporting one or the other
side. Carlos Alvarez started–with dramatic timing–a new
subject of his own. Ruben Gonzalez made a breakneck-speed declaration
all in one breath, each syllable evenly accented. Everyone was now
talking simultaneously, responding to all the others, the rhythms more
interwoven and intense. After several thrilling minutes the speakers
one by one slowed down, paused, sipped rum, and smiled, until there was
silence.
They were experts, these old men. They could bring a conversation
to the edge of chaos just for fun, without ever losing their
equilibrium. They had spent the better part of a century perfecting the
art of sitting round a bottle of rum, and talking.
I walked out of the foyer and back to Basingstoke station. The
night was warm. On the station platform in a pool of yellow light a
pewter-haired man and a sensibly-suited woman were discreetly embracing
beside a potted palm.– Miranda Mowbray
Copyright © 1999 Miranda Mowbray. All rights reserved.
try these at home
The Buena Vista Social Club, World Circuit/Nonesuch
CD (see our review)
The Afro-Cuban All Stars
A Toda Cuba le Gusta, World
Circuit/Nonesuch CD
Ruben Gonzalez
Introducing..., World Circuit/Nonesuch CD
(see our review)
Jesús Alemañy
Cubanismo!, Hannibal /Ryko CD
Sierra Maestra
Dundunbanza!, World Circuit/Nonesuch
CD
New Sadler’s Wells Opera Company
Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore, MCA
CD
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