Chaping

I. I'll take you to Los Van Van, and then to the ballet

As I am only beginning to run the marathon that decolonizes and declasses, my ear, listening to this album before writing, still cheats me and I think of Riverside and Aragón a moment after having thought of Wagner and Deep Purple.

German is brought to me, of course, by the violins, especially in the choir of After all, when behind Yeni's voice they sound dizzy and intoxicated. The passage - because cultural links, unlike web links, are arbitrary, indirect and shifting - immediately takes me back to the spectacular opening of the opera Tannhäuser, to that devastating oscillation of the strings sustaining the song of the metals (the day I see that live I'll make sure to have the paramedics nearby). In the British band I think when the second chorus of Chaping, the homonymous theme that opens the phonogram, not because of the choir itself, but because of the unexpected way in which it appears, just like the famous riff by smoke on the water, which cuts sharply into the chorus when we think Ian Gillan is going to say “… and fire in the sky”. Thus, mutilated by surprise, there is also the bridge where Robertón, half singing, half speaking, says: "That's the way I am, strong as the guayacán, that's why I come batting, I come batting everything, but I come with I will go”, since there, without further ado, the chorus breaks: “Van Van is opening a new path again'…” and one is left as if out of place, waiting for another turn, the product of a kind of anonymous inertia, or excess of imagination. Los Van Van grabbed me in a similar way, when I was waiting for another comeback of metal, or of anything else, I didn't really know what, but not popular dance music.

It is normal for a brat like the one I was to reject the most convening proposals that are given in his time and place, just because of the rebellious gesture of excommunication (which is completed in the recognition of other excommunicated, and in the subsequent alliance between they). Part of being a brat is that; the cute part I had read The Miserables I was in eighth grade and had itchy spirits apparently unrelated to most other brats, therefore I was not going to participate in the gregarious ritual of Cuban popular dance music, and in that direction I presented myself to others and to myself. Instead of showing their identity card, the fascinating brats say I like this, I don't like this other, I hate that, because they live in a time where they already know succinctly the most important thing that everyone should know, but they still haven't learned how to say it. The point is that it works that way. For example, when I say I only like Buena Fe worse than Charanga HabaneraI thought I was already saying it all, and I was partly right. In that language, undoubtedly modern —insofar as it appears with the massification of cultural consumption— although at the same time primitive, somewhat atavistic —insofar as it depends on performances of meaning prior to language, on prejudices, intuitions, reflexes—, to say i like van van it is a sterile communicative venture, because, well, everyone likes it. However, the opposite: I don't like van van it is a manifesto, which has changing implications depending on the firmness of the sentence.

Amaury Pérez's cheo, when interviewing Juan Formell on his program, affirmed (Amaury always affirms, even when he asks) that he had never read a bad review about the work of the orchestra. And although what Amaury means is easily refuted, given that he has not read a treatise on the low salinity of the Black Sea either, which does not mean that the Black Sea does not have low salinity levels, it is true that we understand perfectly. Note that it is not just a matter of liking everyone in the wide catalog of musical (and generational) affinities of the Island, but the vast majority also believe that El Tren de Cuba is the greatest expression of popular music that has existed here. I don't think even Benny does that. You can go out on the street and ask about Irakere, and someone will tell you that it is very avant-garde; by Celia Cruz, and well, yes, but in the end they hardly listen to her here; by Pablo Milanés, and someone who doesn't, who is very intellectual; but when you ask about Los Van Van, everyone —whether from a mansion in Miramar or from a arrive and put in El Fanguito—they will tell you more or less the same thing: sentences that will always contain the words better, village, dancer, rich, street, life. Therefore, who says I don't like van van (there will be someone, for sure), he does it, in the best of cases, sincerely, guided by an aesthetic mold that I respect as much as I do not understand, and at worst, by an absurd desire to fuck, a faulty interpretation of the role left-handed, so sublime, literary, heroic, but so poorly executed at times, as Ray Fernández recently did, one of my last pains.

Even when I said that I didn't like popular dance music, I never said I don't like van van. And it would be a very complicated exercise to try to find out now if I really liked him or not, regardless of what I said. Let's say, yes, that if they had given me a pullover from the orchestra (the one with both hands making the victory sign, for example) I would not have worn it. And let's also say that, although I was the one who sang the wheel of casino and, therefore, I was very busy making myself noticed, I was always going to manage to mark in the air —as if holding a drumstick with my right hand— the four impacts that I gave Samuel Formell on the timpani at minute 1:13 of Come on, come and love me. Timbale that reconciles the sound of plastic, wood and metal in four solid, indivisible beats. Impacts that, if we think in a utilitarian way, contribute nothing to the structure, to the skeleton of the staging, because time, although Samuel does not mark it, continues to run the same; but the percussionists are not here to think in a utilitarian way, they apply, in a much more entertaining way than the clock, dabs of oil on the absolute body of time; they are, because they saw his face, his slaves, Sisyphus condemned to uselessly reproduce his figure, that is why (because that is a very hard burden) sometimes they prefer silence.

My taste for the orchestra was in that diffuse region that ranges from the refusal to wear the t-shirt with its logo to the incidental humming. then i heard Chaping (Unicornio, 2004) complete, and because I wanted to listen to it, not in profile, because they put it in the disco, and I already said: I don't like popular dance music, except Van Van.

I spent some time in that new box, which (I thought) retained the position of an alternative boy and justified any enjoyment. My permanence there was legitimized by the collaborations of my idols with the band: Silvio Rodríguez, Carlos Varela, and —already on this same album— the guitar hero Cuban Elmer Ferrer and the exotic Diego El Cigala, who was breaking it at that time with the album Lágrimas negras (Calle 54/Ariola/BMG, 2003), which I didn't like that much, but I said yes.

I got into a group when I got my military service. We played, above all, timba. I learned a lot. I learned, for example, what is the bomb, that section where the bass becomes almost a percussion instrument, is silent most of the outfit, except the piano —which stays in the tumbao, with a thrust that we hadn't noticed until now— and the drums —which becomes serious, becomes outdated, ages, returns to the drum. Although I still don't understand (and deep down I don't want to) the relationship of the bomb with the mess, with the primary mechanism of the nervous system that makes the body ask us to let go of the couple when that part arrives and turn around, each one on their own, shaking their waists (go to minute 4:05 of The correct). It was learning two or three little things and that's it Chaping I thought it was a delicacy. Then I was moved by the Charanga Habanera's version of Paint your lips, Maria —especially when the trumpet rises an octave in the solo—, and the mambos of the enormous It is no longer necessary, from Bamboleo. However, when I was able to say I like popular dance musicHe no longer spoke that way.

1. a deep mound

As the Grammy Award at the beginning of the year 2000 was the end of a cycle for the orchestra, this album was the beginning of another. With him, Los Van Van entered the 21st century, without Pupi, without Pedrito Calvo, with a female voice for the first time in its history, and with too many rumors and doubts from fans. That is why Chaping, the theme, was born biased, with the exclusive function of informing us that nothing had happened, that they continued with the same punch as always. Note that the verse only has one sentence, the rest are choruses, as if they had been choked for a long time.

When Pedrito Calvo left, the band lost the best front man of the last, at least, 20 years (although later, after the failures of his solo projects, it was going to be known that he was already coming down the slope); however, Juan Formell does not seek to replace him. First, because there was no other Pedrito Calvo on the market, nor would there be again, since singers with superstar records were seen less and less in dance music orchestras and more and more in the urban genre; and, second, because Formell was not the type of sports club that sought to sign ready-made superstars, rather it was he who gave them that category.

Although the record has several songs that were real hits when they came out (I count six, but I haven't checked the Youth 2000 lists), none was more so than Come on, come and love me and, mainly, After all, numbers defended by the last two additions to the front line of the orchestra: Abdel Rasalps (Lele) and Yeni Valdés. Mayito Rivera, who was still by far the best singer, and now the most experienced in the group, loses prominence this time. Not only because it does not defend any of the hits of the album, but also because his solo voice appears quite late, in the fourth track (Don't ask for more loan), after everyone had arrived at the party and then, almost at the end, after, to sing, he had sung until fucking Cigala. It is a very eloquent gesture that Juan Formell was willing to allow the light record player to miss the performance of its most talented vocalist. These were the new Van Van. But the gesture, in my opinion, does not contain guaperia, that of: “It is what it is. If you like it, fine, and if not, too”; on the contrary, it is a balanced, authentic gesture, of a Zen elder who knows that he is right and only has to convince you, slowly. This is how Juanito has always convinced.

I don't like Yeni's voice. I'm not going to say that I can't stand her, because I do, with no problems (except when she makes that guttural fuss of a big, so-called rude woman, very common in timba singers, as if women were only strong when they emulate masculine gestures), but no I like it. However, she has been the most popular singer the orchestra has had in the new century. No one else hit like she did. No one left more riots, placed Los Van Van more in the spinal cord of the Cuban corner. There are still people out there saying, “Whaaat?!” Yeni was the last risk taken by Juan Formell. What - at least from the outside - seemed to be a cold play seeking to extend the range of Vanvanero's radar, turned out to be the best of the cards, the one that nobody expects, except the best players. Whether Formell was clear about it or not we will no longer know, but I think so, because Formell was a damned genius, and damned geniuses are always clear about it, even if they don't even know it themselves. I want to think that Juan, on the path of the compositional process of After all (a number that is pure Formell, with all its stylistic quirks, with the noble, unmistakable, inexplicable cadence of Los Van Van, which the grandchildren of our grandchildren will listen to, which is danceable only because the orchestra exists, but if it didn't exist it could survive perfectly as a bolero), she knew that this would be the blockbuster of her next album, and so she decided to change the genre of the narrator, writing “…and me sleeping alone”.

There is an instant of the mambo of Come come come (listen to minute 3:58) in which the trombones remain fiddling with two notes (Do-Si Do-Si Do-Si), which is the sonorous definition of the wiggle: the trombone turned into a waist, and vice versa. Other moments like this can be found on the album, but this is the clearest, the one that best paints the joy, the voluptuousness, the absolute freedom of movement. The profane wiggle here, aboriginal wiggle, maroon. An image that denies the conquest, that has not been aware of the Christian morality with which the south was vaccinated, nor of the Stalinist prudishness. That moment of the trombones, plus Robertón later saying “Look at Eloísa how she shakes!”, are some of the answers to the question “What does Van Van have that is still there?”.

When a record comes out, you never know for sure which of the songs is going to break the track, much less if we're talking about Los Van Van, which, as Oscar Sánchez would say, “what it has is velcro”. Of course, there are some who, since they are born, are already noticed with more chances of doing it, but the track, as we know, rules. There are plenty of examples in all genres of almost discarded songs that later became hits. However, some pieces do have it more difficult, because they are not functionally intended for “hit-hit”. In this record, those pieces are We will remember you, which is the one played by Diego El Cigala, and The Montuno, which is the one I want to talk about.

The first function of this song is to say goodbye to the album, an emulation indoors from the end of the concerts, where the singers introduce the musicians, and these, speculating a little with the solo, tell the people that it's a pleasure. The other is to make a statement of principles. Formell, by way of gratitude to his oldest ally the montuno (the hooky part of the songs), and with elegant irony, conjectures the possibility and the probable consequences that this essential segment of the danceable number was also “profound”. Mayito Rivera asks himself, because Formell has done it before: “Is it possible to organize the senses / and analyze the content / directly at the feet?”, and his voice (Formell's in Mayito's) —giving me a wink I dare to call it conscious, but nobody knows— assumes a melodic pose reminiscent of Nueva Trova, the least danceable music, the one with the most “content”. That subtle reference, and, more specifically, the end of the stanza that says: "And it's not that I want to complicate you / with a deep montuno / that maybe you can dance", answer by themselves the question that Mayito and Formell ask themselves . Yes it is possible, but not necessary, because the depth of the montuno always has to do with the body. You dance first and listen later. It's already profound if it lifts the most obstinate jerks from their chairs; So why "complicate"? Let Silvio and Pablo get complicated.