Annotations for Places: Europe

Latin jazz great Mario Bauzá died July 11 of cancer in his Manhattan home, just blocks from where I live. Mario Bauzá, an integral part of New York's Latin jazz scene, was 82 years old.

I remember this great musician sitting on a milk crate outside a bodega, surrounded by friends, drinking coffee, and enjoying the simple things of life. You would've never known it by seeing him that this small, tender, smiley man had totally revolutionized American music.

In the 1940s, he influenced popular music by innovating a new musical style which mixed popular Afro-Cuban rhythms with American jazz.

Emilio San Pedro prepared this remembrance of Latin jazz legend Mario Bauzá.

[Afro-Cuban jazz]

Mario Bauzá was first exposed to American jazz in 1926, when he visited New York. In 1930, anxious to become a part of that scene, Bauzá left his native Havana for New York, frustrated that in Cuba, Afro-Cuban music was considered merely the music of the streets, not the music of the sophisticated nightclubs, country clubs, and hotels of pre-revolutionary Havana.

Had to happen outside of Cuba before the Cuban people convinced themself what they had, themself over there. They didn't pay no attention to that. When I got big in United States, Cuba begin to move into that line of music.

[Afro-Cuban jazz]

In the 1930s, Bauzá performed with some of New York's best-known jazz musicians, like Chick Webb and Cab Calloway. In fact, in those days, Bauzá was responsible for introducing singer Ella Fitzgerald to Chick Webb, thus helping to launch her career. It was also Bauzá who gave Dizzy Gillespie his first break, with the Cab Calloway Orchestra.

During their time touring and working with Cab Calloway, Mario Bauzá and Dizzy Gillespie, along with the Afro-Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, played around with Afro-Cuban rhythm and jazz arrangements and created something entirely new: Afro-Cuban jazz.

[Machito--Sopa de pichon]

In the early 1940s, Mario Bauzá formed the legendary band Machito and his Afro-Cubans, along with his brother-in-law, Francisco Perez, who was called Machito. Bauzá was the musical director of the band, and he composed and arranged some of the group's most memorable songs.

[Machito--Sopa de pichon]

The sensation caused by Machito and his Afro-Cubans and by other Latin musicians in the 1940s made New York the focal point of a vibrant Latin music scene.

It's the scene of the Mambo kings you know, and that's why a lot of people will say Mambo is not Cuban music or it's not Mexican music. Mambo is New York music.

Enrique Fernandez writes about Latin music for the Village Voice.

It was here that this kind of music became very hot, that it really galvanized a lot of people, that had really attracted a lot of musicians from different genres that wanted to jam with it, and that created those great encounters between Latin music practitioners and jazz practitioners, particularly Black American jazz practitioners, that brought all this stuff together that later on, generated salsa and it generated Latin jazz and a lot of other things.

[Machito--Si si no no]

Groups like Machito and his Afro-Cubans were responsible for sparking a Latin dance craze in the United States, from New York to Hollywood. Mario Bauzá's sister-in-law, Graciela Pérez, began singing with Bauzá's orchestra in 1943.

Pero jurate que la música de esta…[transition to English dub] The music made by Machito's orchestra created such a revolution that you could say people began to enjoy because dance schools sprang up to teach the mamba and the guaguanco and all that [transition back to original audio]…el guaguanco todo todo.

Graciela and Mario left Machito's band in 1976 to form their own group, Mario Bauzá and his Afro-Cuban jazz Orchestra. Achieving recognition came slowly for the new band as general audiences lost interest in the traditional Afro-Cuban jazz sounds.

But in the late 1980s, Bauzá's music experienced a resurgence in popularity. His orchestra played to packed houses in the United States, Canada, and Europe. And in the last two years, Bauzá still active and passionate about his music, recorded three albums worth of material.

Meringue, meringue from San Domingo. Cumbia's cumbia from Colombia. Afro-Cuban is Cuban. That's why I've got to keep a bunch of these Afro-Cuban rhythms. Danzón Cubano, la danza Cubano, el bolero Cubano, el cha-cha-cha Cubano, el mambo es Cubano, guaguanco Cubano, la Colombia es Cubana.So I've got to call it Afro-Cuban, yeah.

In a 1991 interview, I spoke with Mario Bauzá about his extraordinary musical output.

You've brought out these great musicians, you've helped create or created Afro-Cuban jazz, brought Latin music and Latins to Broadway.

That's it.

And you're 80 years old.

Yes.

Many people at 80 years old are sitting by the pool or in the rocking chair and whatever. You don't look like it.

You know me. It ain't going to be like that.

What else could you do at this point, what more?

I don't know. I ain't through, I ain't through. I just wanted my music to be elevated. That's why I want to record this suite now. I want to see the word, music is music. You tell me what kind of music. I like any kind of music that we're playing. And that's what I tried to do, present my music different way. Some people might don't like this, don't like that, but when they hear that, they have a right to choose for. That's what I want them to do.

[Mario Bauza--Carnegie Hall 100]

Mario Bauzá worked steadily until his death. He recently released a compact disc on the German record label Messidor called My Time is Now.

For "Latino USA," I'm Emilio San Pedro.

[Mario Bauza--Carnegie Hall 100]

The simple fact is that we must not and we will not surrender our borders to those who wish to exploit our history of compassion and justice.

At a time when polls show many Americans favoring curbs on illegal immigration President Clinton is calling for tighter controls on who can come to this country and stay legally. The President says his plan will reduce the number of undocumented immigrants and also smugglers and terrorists who take advantage of present laws and enforcement capabilities. From Washington, Patricia Guadalupe has more on the President's new immigration plan.

President Clinton's immigration initiative seek to prevent illegal entry into the United States, remove those with criminal records immediately and increase criminal penalties particularly for those who smuggle undocumented workers.

We will treat organizing a crime syndicate to smuggle aliens as a serious crime and we will increase the number of border patrol equipping and training them to be first class law enforcement officer.

To accomplish this, President Clinton is requesting an additional 172 million dollars. 32 million dollars will be directed to the immigration and naturalization service to implement a program that seeks to crack down on fraud by promptly removing those who arrive in the country without legal documents. Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein of California supports President Clinton's initiatives. Feinstein says California spends more than 300 million dollars a year on keeping foreigners in prison. She believes Clinton's new immigration initiatives address her concerns.

You've got to remove the option inmates have of doing time when they're here illegally and they're convicted of a felony, they can opt to serve in a state prison. I think they ought to go back, serve the time in their own prison of their own country.

Democratic representative Ed Pastor’s Arizona district includes 200 miles of the US Mexico border. He believes Clinton's proposals to hire and train 600 new border patrol agents will pump needed money and personnel into the border patrol department and cut down on abuse.

President Clinton said that there would be reviews of allegations when there would be abuse of civil rights, so if the president follows through with that and we have enough officers, hopefully then we won't have as many allegations of violation of civil rights.

But aside from acknowledging the need for increasing the number of border patrol agents, support from most Hispanic members of Congress for President Clinton's immigration plan was lukewarm at best. Although President Clinton publicly thanked them for their help, none were present at the plan's announcement. Hispanic Caucus Chair Democrat, José Serrano of New York said he worried expediting asylum claims at the airport would discriminate against those who arrived with legitimate claims of persecution, but for obvious reasons have no legal papers. But Republican representative Henry Bonilla of Texas with over 600 miles of the border in his district says the United States does not pay enough attention to its own people.

Illegal aliens in this country tax our local communities in a way that's really choking them. Hospitals, schools, economy- and we need to do something about it and I'm glad that he's paying attention to this problem.

Representative Bonilla's concern, along with many in Congress is about how to pay for these immigration initiatives, and Democrats are on the same wavelength. Clinton's immigration plan will be taken up after Congress returns from the month long recess in September. For Latino USA, I'm Patricia Guadalupe in Washington.

With us on the phone to discuss the implications of these proposals are from Washington, Warren Leiden, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and from Los Angeles, Attorney Viviana Andrade, the National Director of the Immigration Rights Project of Maldive, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. First of all, let me ask both of you, your general impressions of the President's new immigration plan.

Well, I think that it's quite a mixed bag. I think that there are a number of proposals that have been supported and called for for some time. I like the rhetoric with which it was introduced, respect for legal immigration and New Americans, but I think in its details, some of the proposals and especially the expedited exclusion proposal will have a negative impact unless it's amended.

We are deeply troubled by the summary exclusion proceedings as well as with the increase in the number of border patrol agents unless there are improvements in civilian oversight in training of the agency and perhaps in restructuring the agency. I don't think that the president's plan really honestly addressed that. And obviously, our concern is that given this time of very precious federal resources that we ought not to be throwing good money after bad.

Let's talk a little bit more about the changes that this policy as announced by the president would make in the political asylum process.

Unfortunately, they have set a high legal standard that will return legitimate refugees to the country they came from. They employ a what's called a safe country standard. There'll be a list of countries, mostly western European countries that have some kind of refugee processing system. If your plane or ship touched at one of those countries, you can be sent back to that country without regard to whether in fact you would have a hearing or protection there. And so kind of washing our hands of you.

From my perspective and after having handled and participated in some litigation against the INS, I think that what I find the most troubling, and again, no one is going to disagree that the process needs to happen as quickly as possible. But the thing that I find most troubling as a civil rights attorney is the fact that the administration's proposal would make it impossible for us to sue them if they chose to adopt policies that completely violated their own laws. And it is the lack of those kinds of checks that I find particularly disturbing.

As you said, president Clinton's tone was very positive. He was careful to repeat several times during his presentation that he did not want to send an anti-immigrant message. However, could some of his proposals play into a larger scenario that could augment the backlash against immigrants in this country? Do you have any fears about that?

Well, I'm constantly in fear of that when the opportunist and people who are misguided target people instead of targeting laws, instead of targeting legal procedures, I become very fearful of that.

Particularly, here in California, the backlash against immigrants is extremely strong. It comes from cities that are banning day laborers who are clearly immigrant workers. It comes in the form of an increase in abuses against immigrants in the southern border in San Diego, and it's a real concern that we have here; that we ought to keep focusing on policy honestly and not on as Warren talks about, on people and on the individuals, and oftentimes it's a very daunting task.

Well, thank you very much for speaking with us, Warren Leiden of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and Viviana Andrade of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund here on Latino USA. Thank you.

When Congress reconvenes in September, they'll be taking up the merits of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. But free trade isn't just about consumer goods, and many artists and intellectuals are talking about a parallel structure to NAFTA, one that would deal with ideas and culture. Commentator Guillermo Gómez-Peña calls it a free art agreement for cross-cultural dialogue.

Mexican and Caribbean cultures can offer the North their spiritual strength, political intelligence, and sense of humor in dealing with crisis, as well as experience in fostering personal and community relations. In exchange, North American artists and intellectuals can offer the South more fluid notions of identity and their understanding of experimentation and new technologies. US and Canadian artists of color, in particular, can offer Latin America sophisticated discourse on race and gender. Through trilingual publications, radio, video and performance collaborations, more complex notions of North American culture could be conceived. This project must take into consideration the processes of diaspora, hybridization, and borderization that our psyches, communities and countries are presently undergoing. Chicanos and other US Latinos insist that in the signing of this new trans-American contract, it is fundamental that relationships of power among participating artists, communities, and countries be addressed. The border cannot possibly mean the same to a tourist as it does to an undocumented worker. To cross the border from north to south has drastically different implications than to cross the same border from south to north. Trans-culture and hybridity have different connotations for a person of color than for an Anglo-European. People with social, racial or economic privileges are more able to physically cross borders, but they have a much harder time understanding the invisible borders of culture and race. Though painful, these differences must be articulated with valor and humor. In the conflictive history of the north-south dialogue and the multicultural debate, American and European sympathizers have often performed involuntary colonialist roles. In their desire to help, they unknowingly become ventriloquists, impresarios, flaneurs, messiahs, or cultural transvestites. These forms of benign colonialism must be discussed openly without accusing anyone. Their role in relation to us must finally be one of ongoing dialogue and a sincere sharing of power and resources. As Canadian artist Chris Creighton Kelly says, "Anglos must finally go beyond tolerance, sacrifice, and moral reward. Their commitment to cultural equity must become a way of being in the world. In exchange, we have to acknowledge their efforts, slowly bring the guard down, change the strident tone of our discourse, and begin another heroic project, that of forgiving, and therefore healing our colonial and post-colonial wounds.

Commentator Guillermo Gómez-Peña is an award-winning performance artist based in California.