‘Hammock House- Africa Caribe’ by Fania All-Stars, remixed by Joe Clausell

The term ‘Afro-Cuban’ was always something of a misnomer, and ‘Afro-Caribe’ is no different, applying logic to some past event that was probably anything but, what I call ‘back-filling’ logic. Need to fill a hole? I can get you a special price on some day-old logic. Seriously, though, I don’t think anybody sat around thinking and philosophizing and finally deciding ‘let’s mix some African and some Spanish or ‘Latin’ music together and see what we can come up with. No, like most all forms of evolution-whether biological or cultural- the thing was born and the whys and wherefores came later, even from the best little Darwinist laissez faire evolutionists. Probably the best that could be said is that a genre of music distinctly Cuban arose and its most distinctive propagators were of African descent. From there the name game goes downhill- ‘Puerto Rican music’, ‘chachacha’ and, God forbid, ‘Salsa’, a term as ambiguous as ‘zydeco’ (from les haricots- beans). Give me some dirty rice and I’ll have a meal.

The fact that this killer ‘Afro’ music originates in the Caribbean country with possibly the least percentage of African blood- Cuba- is something to discuss over drinks. In fact the Caribbean countries with purest African blood seem to prefer reggae… or gospel. Go figure. Sometimes a culture survives best where it is most threatened. Enter Fania Records and its house band Fania All-Stars at about the time of ‘salsa’s greatest popularity, the late 60’s and early 70’s. Consisting chiefly of Celia Cruz, Ray Baretto, Ruben Blades, Hector Lavoe, and others, Fania quickly set the standard for ‘salsa’, doing a great service by exposing non-Latin peoples to the ‘real thing’, as opposed to the pop stylings of Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine. The movement arguably peaked with Ruben Blades, and from there entered a period of long decline until 2005, at which point the assets were sold. Ironically that sale was the beginning of its comeback, as the archives have been opened for review, reassessment and marketing to an entirely new audience.

Hammock House ‘Africa Caribe’ produced and mixed by the legendary Joaquin “Joe” Claussell is the latest- and maybe best- attempt to revisit the Fania catalog. Clausell is not only of Puerto Rican heritage, but also one hotsh*t New York City DJ/producer, and what he’s done is admirable, arguably remarkable. In one fell swoop he’s almost single-handedly stripped the heavily ornamented ‘Salsa’ sound and returned it to its African roots. The African roots, of course, are percussion, something almost unknown in European ballad traditions until the cultures themselves were mixed. The more recent European orchestral tradition was heavily evident in Cuban mambo, until salsa trimmed it back and slimmed it down. Joe Clausell takes it a step further, until it actually begins to sound African again.

‘African Fantasy’ by Lou Perez opens the album and sets the tone, strong on flute and percussion, probably the world’s two oldest instruments (fife & drum, anyone?). Add to that a singular piano style and you’ve got something that can hold its own with the best of jazz, Latin or otherwise. ‘Undeniable Love’ by Jai Veda is a revelation to me, by an artist heretofore unknown to me. If that’s one of the goals of this remix, then they may be on to something. The voice is sweet and the guitar is transcendant. Who dat? ‘Mambo Mongo’ by the legenhdary Mongo Santamaria stays fairly faithful to the original, with a brassy jazzy mambo sound, while ‘Chango’ by Celia Cruz is positively astounding, a direct sonic connection to the recent ‘Afro-Colombian’ efforts of Toto la Momposina. Now I think we’re getting somewhere. This is the real thing, still jazzy enough for urban tastes, but the African dirt and pulse never hidden too far below.

‘Lucum’ by Eddie Palmieri has it all, except lead vocals- brass, killer keyboards, and guitar. Something only lightly acknowledged in the salsa literature, and forbidden in realated Afro-Beat forays, it’s no accident that ‘salsa’ arose largely AFTER the advent of Santana and his guitar. ‘Exodus’, by Ray Baretto, is a delightful interlude, at once a somnolent soliloquy and a rousing African wake-up call. It’s based on the theme to the 1960 movie, and much better without the Pat Boone lyrics (‘this land is mine’) IMHO. There’s more. And hopefully there will be MUCH more… in the future. This is what re-mixing is all about. Heretofore something of a skeptic, especially when big city club DJ’s are ripping off starving third-world musicians- without compensation- for the amusement of the rich and famous, I find projects like this to be a revelation, the stuff of archeologists and reconstructionists, putting a fresh spit-shine on musty archival material. That’s Hammock House ‘Africa Caribe’, remixed by Joaquin ‘Joe’ Clausell. Check it out. There’s really nothing quite like it.

OMAR FARUK TEKBILEK GOES BEYOND THE NEW AGE IN ‘RARE ELEMENTS’ REMIX

Omar Faruk Tekbilek has been pleasing Western audiences, particularly those of ‘new age’ orientation, for some twenty years with his Sufi-inspired Turkish-derived melodies. So why does he need to have his work re-mixed a la mode by a bunch of urban-oriented DJ’s? Short answer- why not? You get a greatest hits collection and something extra in the process, two for the price of one, more bang for your buck, and Mr. Tekbilek hopefully gets a new audience for his tunes. Almost as short and maybe more to the point- he doesn’t need the DJ’s. They need him. Obviously the raw material for DJ’s is previously recorded material, which they slice and dice and stir together in the audio equivalent of a hot wok. As such their work is by definition derivative, maybe one reason it took me so long to recognize the value of their art (and it IS art). Or maybe I resented them taking center stage (and much credit) while some poor (perhaps starving) artist gets sampled, swished around the mouth like so much product, then spit out. But as they say, all’s fair… , all’s well… , if you can’t lick them… Of course what they’re doing here is not DJ’ing; here they’re producing, but using the techniques they’ve mastered as dance-club DJ’s, not typical studio producers, i.e. techniques that evoke the ‘live’ and spontaneous feel of a dance floor.

Re-enter the pre-eminent role of the producer into the sound of music, something that lay dormant for decades since the 60’s when George Martin was the ‘fifth Beatle.’ That’s a good thing. With the advent of cheap CD’s came a rash of self-produced albums that blurred the line, at lease in terms of final product, between amateur and professional. Of course back in the ‘60’s it was more than knobs and buttons and production technique; it was physical acoustics, which varied from room to room. If you wanted a ‘Buddy Holly sound’, you had to go to Clovis. If you wanted a Stax sound, you went to Memphis, ditto for Muscle Shoals, Detroit, Nashville, etc. In the 90’s artistry returned to the studio and someone like Daniel Lanois could put Bob Dylan back on the charts and U2 in the history books, largely through the beauty of his soundscapes which, like a good makeup artist, shows the client at his best. At the same time, rap and hip-hop were removing the melodies from songs to allow for more lyrics, so the overall sound took its place in importance, and the best hip-hop music moved quickly to enhance production. It’s no accident that some of today’s best urban recording artists, e.g. Kanye West and Danger Mouse, are also producers.

DJ’s have come a long way from radio stations to clubs to production studios. But what can they do for Omar Faruk Tekbilek? He already creates soundscapes. His songs ARE productions. And he gets dissed for it sometimes, too, “middle Eastern music for western tastes,” etc. One particularly comprehensive- and highly opinionated- popular music historian whose Italian name I’ll leave out (I don’t enjoy busting people’s chops lest it come back…) even accuses him of “selling out his traditions.” Ouch! Of course this particular historian also dismisses the Beatles as “trivial pop,” and Holly, Costello, and Beck fare little better, so go figure. Though I also slip into the petty communistic dictate (i.e. jealousy, resentment) to simultaneously exalt the lowest and humble the highest, more important is the democratic principle that the audience is always right and the only choice that really matters is that of the ultimate consumer. You can never please all the people all the time, so “damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead.” All art, all creation even, is ultimately the art of combination, ‘re-mixing’, hybrid vigor and all that, the more the better. No one is truly original or totally bound by tradition. Everybody is dealt a hand, and everybody plays a hand.

So Tekbilek’s already atmospheric music gets squeezed, stretched, enhanced and manipulated into something a little bit different than the original. Apparently he even had to request that his own instrument, the ney, be mixed back into one of his signature songs. These are no docile producers after all. These are DJ’s, masters of their domain, and they’ve remixed and produced for many of the biggest stars of the music industry. Some (Joe Clausell, Nickodemus, Jordan Lieb) were also part of the first Rare Elements album which consisted of re-mixes of Ustad Sultan Khan, the world-reknowned sarangi master. They know what they’re doing. What was once two-dimensional now has three. What was already three-dimensional now has something extra, something indefinable, almost like being plugged in, like acoustic going electric.

The advent of re-mixing and electronic music (and Internet) is all part of a paradigm shift rippling through our fabric of time and space like one of those time travel movies where the ‘time-line’ is literally like some heat-wave ripple changing everything in its path. That’s what they’ve done to Faruk, submitted him to the musical uncertainty principle. After all, how do you know that the first version was the ‘correct’ one? Best of all, now you can dance to it. My favorite track is Cheb i Sabbah’s version of ‘Shashkin.’ Why is that not surprising? This album may not be what a Sufi mystic might have had in mind originally, but I bet he likes it. Omar Faruk Tekbilek’s vision of a ‘tree of patience’ is the overriding metaphor, both the tree and the patience. All branches lead to God, sooner or later.