The mambo formula / Juancho Valencia

To get to the essence of a musical genre, it is not enough just to seek the strict domain of musical codes, one must inevitably transport oneself to certain eras. It seems like a platitude if it weren't for the recurrence of the error, because, unfortunately —at least in Cuba— in recent decades a part of the traditional genres has been emptied of content, beyond forgetfulness and fashions. Perhaps that is why chachachá sometimes no longer tastes like chachachá, or that some septets, despite the traditional format, cannot grasp a future of son that strips it of so much standardization, to cite just two examples.

However, when one listens to a record like The mambo formula (West One Music Group – Merlín Producciones, 2020) It can be thought that the cycles of certain types of music never end definitively. Everything seems to be said one day and, the next, some young person is in charge of making a reinterpretation, which is more effective to the extent that greater commitment is shown with the origins. It is the law of life, although in the meantime some lose faith.

Such is the case of the Colombian Juancho Valencia, who is becoming more and more known in Cuba (maybe not enough, despite all his work with Cuban music and for his two Latin Grammy Awards). His timba vocation with Banda La República, productions with Maite Hontelé, collaborations with Alain Pérez, are just part of his most visible links with Cuban music and musicians in recent years. However, the phonogram that I am reviewing here places it in a much more ambitious projection in its gaze towards the Island, obtaining an admirable result, in addition to the multiple meanings that it throws for the current state of this music that it decides to defend.

For this purpose in Havana it was known that The formula… (belonging to the project known as La Ciencia de Juancho Valencia, as well as another phonogram titled bolero enclave, both recorded in the Egrem studios) would resort to the format of big band and a refined selection of musicians.^[1] From the first bars of hot mambo —the first song on the album—, we can see a start with great punch, a very tight cadre of musicians, which is what is always expected of a good mambo.

The sound environment achieved is very striking, and I am referring not only to the arrangements and the performance of the instrumentalists, but also to that marriage that is sometimes so complicated between the orchestrator and the sound engineering. With an excellent clean mix, proof of the above is the subtleties achieved in the echo and reverberation effects, which seek to recreate the spatiality and spontaneity that recordings enjoyed in the 1950s, although some offbeat taps on the bell are brilliant.

Going back to the musical environment of those years through the formula chosen by Juancho, it would be difficult not to appeal to the chachachá given the indisputable space-time link between the two genres and, above all, because they share a close trunk and, consequently, rhythmic networks. Similar. That is why it is not only present in topics such as A little coffee —in its Spanish version happily interpreted, as is customary, by David Álvarez—, but rather in fragments of How lucky I am! and popular cinemar. The thick and pounding cadence of the chachachá, which is definitely the counterweight to the rhythmic simplicity of the genre, is perhaps better achieved in the latter track.

Chachachá and mambo have been the Cuban dances with the greatest international projection, as well as great visual appeal. This also explains the logical union in the phonogram, since its origin stems from a request with a high cinematographic vocation by the English label West One Music and its line of Latin music SOMOS to Merlín Producciones, the production house directed by the Juancho himself. The first bars of How lucky I am! they would be enough to locate in time and space the most uninformed of the listeners in that New York and gangster atmosphere of the 50s, so attractive and commercially exploited by the film industry.

This Juancho formula, notwithstanding its quality as a commissioned album, and with the inevitable limitations that the dynamics of what is known in Cuba as the “come you” entails,^[2] makes some very interesting winks. popular cinema brings together in a single piece mambo, chachachá and a fragment of danzón that alternate to give way to a montuno reminiscent of new-rhythm danzones, in the style of the Orquesta de Arcaño y sus Maravillas with the López brothers, one of the main sources of the mambo. Leaving in one of its eight tracks an allusion to this important moment for Cuban music is not only a welcome gesture but also an element that helps balance the multiple approaches to a fertile, intense and very diverse time in the album. As for the ways of understanding Cuban rhythms, whether from Mexico City, Havana or New York.

Another of these winks is miss mambo. Thanks to him, it can be said that the album frees itself from a certain formality or conventionalism in the arrangements. In its simple appearance, in my opinion it is the freshest and most playful theme of all. With the bass in its rhythmic role, achieving almost percussive accents and alluding directly to Pérez Prado, the reminiscence of Patricia is inevitable, as well as more commercial versions of the King of Mambo in twist time (Guaglione or In a little Spanish town) or to the times of dengue. It may be ironic this connection to the Pérez Prado more Light, the one that adapted to another era and left behind the fury of his mambo; however, Juancho achieves a kind of timonazo in miss mambo, and like a good paisa he gives the song a life of its own through rhythm, if you will even with a subtle air of cumbia, where others would have left it in a monotonous syncopation. This has been an intelligent way to honor Dámaso, who dedicated his entire life to disassembling every rhythmic cell that passed through his ears.

According to Juancho's own statements, despite the title, his album is not an attempt at museology or at “doing it the way it was done”. Even with Miss Mambo, The formula… He ends up betting on the New York sound (Tito Rodríguez, Machito, Tito Puente) that had its highest point around the Palladium. It is understandable if one takes into account that the creature, despite being born on the Island, grew up and developed outside of it; also understandable if we remember that Pérez Prado was its king, to a certain extent, due to the difficulty, unclassifiability and global —even though he was from Matanzas— of his music. Perhaps it can be adopted here, as Gustavo Pérez Firmat refers in his essential essay How delicious the Mambo, that nomadic vision, not only hybrid of Cuban music that comes to enrich the repeated approaches that emphasize its roots. Well, Leonardo Acosta said, «the mambo emerged in Cuba at this time because it was in the environment and it was inevitable, but today we can say that it flew very high since there was no way to plant it». ^[3]

Juancho gloats over his formula and has plenty of reasons to do so. It is his mambo and it has been very good. It is to be assumed that in Cuba the expectation for his future productions grows, and that some concern remains out there behind the trail of this album. And what to say after this? How is — or will be — the mambo?

Listen The mambo formula here.

^[1] The list of musicians is as follows: Juancho Valencia (Direction and arrangements), David Álvarez, William Borrego (singers); Bárbara Zamora, Dayron Ortega (choirs); Thommy Lowry, Julio Padrón (trumpet); Eduardo Sandoval (trombone); Yuniet Lombida (baritone saxophone); Yamil Scherry (tenor saxophone); Alfred Thompson, Harlinson Lozano (alto saxophone); Joshua Borges (flute); Emir Santa Cruz (clarinet); Guillermo del Toro, Eduardo Ramos, Eduardo Silveira (percussion); Roberto Vázquez (bass and double bass), Taymi Nodarse (three); Emilio Morales, Rolando Luna (piano).

^[2] Expression used in the slang of the musicians to refer to specific projects to which they are called that do not necessarily obey any type of previous connection with groups or with previous projects.

^[3] However, the mambo that was cultivated in Havana in these years, which also had its natural habitat in salons and cabarets, developed its own peculiarities and distinctions, as evidenced by several pieces by the Riverside Orchestra, the Castro Brothers Orchestra , Bebo Valdés and his Orchestra, the Casino Ensemble, among others. For very basic access to these topics, we recommend the compilation made by Elsida González on the CD that accompanies the documentary Mambo (Egrem-Mundo Latino, 2007).