[Dixielandjazz] Jazz and Flamenco

[Stephen Barbone]

Not OKOM, but probably of interest to list mate Kash in Madrid Spain,
and to list mates in South America as well as our broad gauged list
mates around the world.  It's about following a road, less traveled, to
performing jazz successfully. Having trouble with performing your brand
of jazz? Then like Mr. Gonzalez, why not reinvent it, by thinking
outside the box.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


October 18, 2003 NEW YORK TIMES

Finding Flamenco in Spain, a Jazzman Finds Himself

By BEN RATLIFF

      The Puerto Rican-American jazz trumpeter Jerry Gonzalez, who was
born in the Bronx, will give a kind of homecoming concert tonight at
Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem. But he is returning a different man.

Mr. Gonzalez is the embodiment of jazz's rakish past: he travels light
and lives heavily. When he left New York for Madrid in 2000, he
abandoned a city saturated with new Latin jazz bandleaders, many with
more reliable reputations than his. But recently his luck has turned: he
has not only reinvented himself as almost the only trumpeter in Madrid's
flamenco scene, but he is also helping shape flamenco's future.

"Jerry has never before had the level of acceptance that he's had in
Spain," said Nat Chediak, a film and music producer who worked with him
on the documentary "Calle 54" and on some recording projects. "Everyone
wants to record with him now. People want to adopt him: somebody gives
him a cellphone, someone offers to share an apartment with him."

Mr. Gonzalez, 54, grew up playing congas and switched to trumpet in high
school, playing professionally in the late 1960's with Ray Barretto,
Dizzy Gillespie and Eddie Palmieri. During the 1980's and early 90's,
his band, Fort Apache, played the major jazz clubs in New York, and he
was credited with auguring a change in Latin jazz. The band could play
Afro-Cuban clave rhythm and then cut into straight-ahead jazz swing; his
crew became musically bilingual, more so than any other group up to that
point.

But by the mid-90's, his prospects were declining. His last recording
with Fort Apache was in 1996, and record labels lost interest in him
after that. He wasn't rehearsing or writing new music for the band, and
club bookings were falling off.

When he was at the Lincoln Theater in Miami in 1994, the film director
Fernando Trueba happened to be shooting a movie nearby: "Two Much,"
starring Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. An avid Latin-jazz fan,
Mr. Trueba showed up at the concert with most of his film crew. And he
kept showing up at subsequent concerts.

All Mr. Gonzalez knew of Spanish music at that point was "Sketches of
Spain," the Miles Davis-Gil Evans record from 1960, and the
collaborations between the great flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla and
the guitarist Paco de Lucía. But after hearing some newer
jazz-influenced Spanish musicians like the singer Martirio and the
pianist Chano Domínguez, he became intrigued by the basic flamenco
rhythms; one, the flamenco tango, is related to rumba.

"There's a lot of similarities between flamenco and Afro-Cuban rhythm,"
Mr. Gonzalez explained last week. "It's just not in the polyrhythmic
aspect. In flamenco, their thing is acoustic and simple; you don't want
to put too much in there."

In 2000 Mr. Trueba made "Calle 54," a stylish documentary on Latin Jazz,
focusing on a dozen musicians from the Spanish-speaking world. Mr.
Gonzalez and Fort Apache were among them; the band's eight-minute
section and some of the sequences of Mr. Gonzalez in Puerto Rico, where
he was taking care of his ailing mother at the time, are among the
film's best.

The documentary didn't raise Mr. Gonzalez's stock in New York much, but
in Spain, where Mr. Trueba is one of the most celebrated directors, it
made him well known. Soon after the film's release, Mr. Gonzalez went on
a tour of the country, playing concerts for audiences of up to 2,000.

Mr. Trueba took a number of Spain's best flamenco musicians to the last
show of Mr. Gonzalez's tour, in Madrid. One, the singer Diego El Cigala,
is a hard-core representative of flamenco roots. He came backstage after
the concert, Mr. Gonzalez recalled, and urged him to stay in Spain.

"I was supposed to get on a plane back to New York the next day," Mr.
Gonzalez said. "That visit was only supposed to last a week, but it
ended up being seven months long." He soon returned to Spain and has
since spent far more time there than in New York.

He immediately started cruising the tablaos, the underground flamenco
clubs of Madrid, where Gitano (Iberian Gypsy) musicians play. He had to
contend with a deep skepticism about the idea of a trumpet's mixing with
the instrumental combination that has been typical of flamenco since the
1980's: guitar, cajon (a wooden-box percussion instrument) and voice.

But gradually, through the fame "Calle 54" bestowed on him, Mr. Gonzalez
was in a position to influence the aesthetically conservative flamenco
scene.

"The knowledgeable flamenco people say that Jerry's stay in Spain has
changed flamenco forever," Mr. Trueba said, referring to the traditional
style, "because he's opened it up to other musics."

The producer Javier Limon recorded with Mr. Gonzalez, El Cigala and some
other musicians in his studio; a CD of their sessions, "Jerry Gonzalez y
Los Piratas del Flamenco," was released last year on the Lola label in
Spain. This started a new working band (including El Cigala), which will
be heard tonight, along with the Fort Apache quintet.

In Spain Mr. Gonzalez projects the authentic intensity already
established in the national culture by the Gitano musicians.

"Jerry is the last bohemian," Mr. Trueba said. "This guy lives for
music. He only has music in his head. When he's playing, he's never
joking."

Mr. Gonzalez, laughing raspily, added: "Me and Cigala are brothers from
two different parts. We both grew up in rough neighborhoods. He's always
talking about how I'm more Gitano than the Gitanos."