(Uno de mis articulos para la revista francesa World Sound de mayo - junio, traducido al ingles. Antes de leer bajese este track del leyendario Papi Brandao de Panama!2, la nueva compilacion de Roberto Ernesto Gyemant para Soundway / One of my articles for issue #4 of french magazine World Sound. Go straight there for a refreshing Papi Brandao track from Panama!2, Roberto Ernesto Gyemant's new SoundWay delivery)
Besides a canal and the 80s-like memory of an ill-mannered general, or shall we say somewhere between the two, in the 60s and the 70s Panama has produced authentic musical gems, mixing wah wah guitars, drum breaks and calypso among others. Apart from this period where it played the role of a musical crossroads, the adventure goes on today between dancehall in spanish and "conscious" reggaeton. With a few days remaining before crucial elections, we hade to take the readers there.
The wings of the plane caress the mosaic of lights that reflect on the ocean at night. Somewhere in the brain, the echo of Sonny Crockett's voice and the shitty greenish grey suits of Ricardo Tubbs on patrol in Miami keep bouncing back and forth, until the pilot's voice blows the bubble. I almost felt there! Bienvenidos a Panama, with its humid heat, its green bill and its race for the ugliest high rise.
As you go out for a tour though, the landscape offers more contrasts. In the partly popular Casco Viejo, by the sea, the colonial buildings from the 19th century, where large families live on top of each other among drying panties and socks, reminds the wanderer of La Habana. As you walk a dead end street, the feeble public light reveals an old shattered basket ball playground, where the sound of little waves below can be heard. On Plaza Herrera, the stage at Baños Publicos -a garage bar stuck between walls in ruins- has a bunch oh hairy musicians on a vintage Santana latin rock trip, while the nonchalant assistance sips a 1$ Balboa.
One could actually say there are two Panama Cities, and it's not from yesterday. At the time of the famed Combos Nacionales, the separation was clearly visible between those of the militarized zone and the average Panamian. Kabir, singer of The Festivals, one of the most important groups of the Combo's era, remembers:" You even had a separation, in the Colon-Panama City train, between the personnel of the base, their friends and guests, and the rest of the people. The same thing for the public fountains. Back then I could get in the base because I had a sax player in my band - he was black too- whose father was working there"
Timbalero Francis "Bush" Buckley, another legend of that time, says the same " Each group had their own places for the party and their own music genres, well separated...rock vs soul, sort of...So it's kind of funny to see the so called rebel kids exclusively into rock. If only they knew where rock comes from in this country (laughter) !"
From Brooklyn to Panama, via Colon
Soul singer Kabir (he stopped calling himself Ernie King since he converted to Islam) participated to the boom of the Combos Nacionales, those bands that, at the end of the 60s, were blending soul, calypso, cumbia and later on salsa. For those of the first generation, goodbye pianos and bongos, welcome to the world of electric guitars and drum sets. Their name? The Exciters, The Mozambiques, Los Fabulosos Festivals, Soul Fantastics: "But there is a difference between bands like ours and bands like Bush y sus Magnificos that appeared later on. Not only were we playing a music that was deeply influnced by soul music or calypso, while they were playing Cuban; the fact is also, there was an amateur thing to our music, we came from the street, while they were more educated", Kabir recalls.
He had arrived in Colon from Brooklyn, where he had grown up with an authoritarian father, who wanted to force draft him in the army. But Corean war was over and the VietNam mess was next on the list. He was barely 18 when he fled on a boat thanks to a japanese man, soon after having declared himself member of Malcom X's Nation of Islam, a religion of which, he confesses now, he hadn't really understood the meaning at that time. It is quite logical, in this context, that he would keep on paying attention to soul music and manifestations of black pride upon his arrival.
In front of his barber shop in the popular San Miguel barrio, between two gunshots, pointing his chin at two hustlers running inside a dark bulding opposite us, he resumes, inviting us to go back inside the shop:" In the 70s president Torrijos (note: dead "accidentally" and replaced by Noriega) was backing us. He was from the country and had a deep respect for tipica and combos nacionales, while the radios were only interested by stuff from abroad. We would always open our shows with a concert of tipica: Yin Carrizo, Ceferino Nieto, etc. Today the radios have total power and they don't focus on the most interesting stuff, so to say."
But, how did the combos evolve towards a style much closer to that of Cuba? " The combos nacionales mix appeared mainly because most of the white hispanos, especially near Bocas del Toro, had an english speaking mother or father. They could play with us, and later, when a great number of musicians went to live in NYC, we had to call massively on to the spanish speaking musicians. The repertoire evolved in function of their culture."
With the 70s comes the hey days of the Panama Carnival, and the main bands are now those of Maximo Rodriguez, Bush y sus magnificos, Bolita y su tentacion latina...bands that dig deeply into guaguanco, descargas and cuban music in general. Bush comments:" It was all based on soul, plus calypso and cuban son. Lots of blending, but it's only when we started singing stuff in spanish that the combo genre became a popular hit." Revolving around Bush's planet, important satelites: singer Camilo Azuquita, who introduced salsa in Paris in the 70s alongside sandinista leftist writer Pierre Goldman (brother of pop singer Jean Jacques), was participating in a tv show alongside Bush, the #1 at that time. Ruben Blades was practicing his vocal skills in Bush's Salvajes del ritmo, before hitting NYC for the career everyone knows of.
The Message, part 3
Back in 2009. With 30 years of difference, rapper DJ Black isn't but crying out his own "Message", after the one Kabir and the Festivals sang in their own 1972 cover of Cymande's classic. With its irresistible beat, Black's "La chucha de su madre" - a highly provocative and contagious motto that can be interpreted as "fuck that", has taken by surprise a country barely used to verbal excess, even less in the case of a song that is pushed by a social message of despair. From the underground to number one, Black was not the least surprised by this sudden success, as today's context favors the reggaeton hits, devoid of any meaning and content.
Like a reflection on life in the ghetto, denouncing the apathy of the politicians, La chucha is a jab in the so calle Panamian miracle's liver , based on real estate's boom, global trade and tourism to which the country was trying to believe, as optimistic tv clips featuring Ruben Blades were flooding the tv networks.
The success of the song should then be considerered the result of the combination of a higly danceable beat and the scandal effect of lyrics that stick to the reality and took the upper and middle classes by surprise, generating controversy and consequently, popularity “In this country there's like a fucking problem / and the people's telling you they're tired of this / we work like rats in construction / for apartments we'll never live in / we end up earning shit money / and every 4 years appears that clown / to tell us more bullshit / he begs for my ballot like a bitch / But you'll hear him snore at the congress / and he'll disappear with the dough."
Indeed! Panamian reggaeton (also called reggae or plena) seems to have a little bit of advance, as it demonstrates both its capacity to wake the minds up and move the bottoms, something rare these days...After all this is the place where it was born, as Black explains: "In 82-85, hip hop became important here with guys like Nando Boom, Renato and a bunch of other guys. They were rapping in spanish on the instrumental b sides of some dancehall 45s like "gimme punani" and stuff by Yellowman. Back then I was breakdancing, it was the moment of the US invasion here. One day Nando Boom came up with his own version of a Jamaican hit, Dem bo, and he changed it to " On the dole, raise your hand if you live on the dole !" He'd done that on a riddim which came to be the classic reggaeton beat we all know now, but back then we'd call it the Dembo ,and it was much faster." How did it cross the borders? “DJ Negro, from Puerto Rico, came here and brought it back to his island. Over there, it was hip hop that was the big thing...Rodney Clark took it, slowed it down, people liked it and it started there. The beat had been deliberately chosen in order to allow easy combination with different styles on the breaks."
Black is not blind regarding the dark side of the genre he's chosen, and confesses: " We have to admit too, that this is a music that was developped thanks to money laundering, people who were trying to recycle their money in PR. The same thing happened years ago, when Cuba was won by Fidel Castro, the music went to PR, which became the epicenter of Salsa to the expense of Cuba, a shift that came along the transfer of a whole fauna of casinos, parallel business and night life that had to leave Cuba (note: read James Ellroy and Hunter S Thomson). Well, PR was a safe haven for reggaeton pretty much in the same conditions, but with a different type of business, 30 years later."
Whatever may happen with present and past times music in Panama, the country seems to be a place where there will always be a up and coming generation of musicians that will offer something new. The ability of the local musicians, when it comes to receiving influences from abroad, tells it all.
PANAMA!2 the compilation
Record hunter Roberto Ernesto Gyemant is back with SoundWay label ! Panama!2 compilation is a logical follow up to its much acclaimed predecessor. Large portions of this one are dedicated to some of the heroes of tipica, a genre that blends columbian style acordions and african electric guitars, imitations of dog barking and guacharaca from cumbia tradition, for which a whole article would not be enough. The excellent track of Alfredo y sus Montañeros, using a classic tune taken from the carnival of the rural Herrera province, is an evocation of the rivalry between peasants from the high land (calle arriba) and those from the coast (calle abajo).
As for the combo nacional style, The Soul Fantastics play a hot version of Bill Withers' Ain't no sunshine. Amazing! And what can be said of Sr Jablonsky and his "Juck Juck", somewhere between jamaïcan music and the great mambo orchestras from the 50s. As for the Descarga by the Superiores, excelent tour de force psychedelic latino, it reminds us the group that ways playing at Baños Publicos (mentionned above).
also check DJ Black's La Chucha de su madre !
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