Photo: Rolling Stone
English below, or
hereMuere 'Cachao', la gran estrella del mambo
El músico fallece a los 89 años tras sufrir una enfermedad renal
Diego Manrique- Madrid - 23/03/2008
Israel López Cachao era un señor afable pero circunspecto, muy lejos de la exuberancia que se atribuye a las figuras de la música cubana. Parecía un buda de caoba, constantemente sorprendido de que la fama le llegara cuando ya había pasado la edad de jubilarse y la salud le traicionaba. Contrabajista y compositor de 89 años, fallecía ayer en un hospital de Miami, víctima de una dolencia renal.
El músico habanero era el vivo retrato del instrumentista modesto
El espíritu puritano y autoritario de la Revolución le impulsó al exilio
Cachao, uno de los últimos supervivientes de la edad dorada de la música afrocubana, puede ser considerado uno de los inventores del mambo, aparte de popularizador de las descargas, el equivalente latino de las jam sessions jazzísticas. Sin embargo, nunca alardeaba de sus logros. No tuvo ningún resquemor contra Pérez Prado, al que reconocía su habilidad para convertir el mambo en un ritmo aceptado mundialmente. Ni se veía como propietario del concepto descarga: "Era algo que hacíamos muchos músicos habaneros, por puro relajo".
Habanero del 14 de septiembre de 1918, pertenecía a una familia musical, donde todos dominaban al menos un instrumento. Se estrenó en grupos cuando todavía llevaba pantalones cortos y recordaba poner música a sesiones de cine mudo. Estudió solfeo y, como muchos de los López, se inclinó hacia el contrabajo, ingresando en la Filarmónica de La Habana.
Corrían los años treinta y Cachao complementaba sus escasos ingresos clásicos tocando en orquestas de música popular, en teatros y salas de baile. Con su hermano, el pianista Orestes López, entró en Arcaño y sus Maravillas y juntos desarrollaron sincopados danzones propios: eran temas como Mambo (1938), que ellos encuadraron modestamente en la categoría de "ritmo nuevo". Fueron otros músicos, como Pérez Prado, los que dieron forma comercial al mambo, convirtiéndolo en una de las músicas más salvajes de mediados del siglo XX.
Por temperamento, renunció a dirigir una agrupación y prefirió ser un pluriempleado, trabajando en las bandas de Mariano Mercerón, José Antonio Fajardo o Bebo Valdés. La música afrocubana había integrado el formato de jazz band y Cachao, hombre curioso, se interesó por otros hallazgos del jazz. Participaba regularmente en descargas y decidió grabarlas. Convocó a los músicos tras sus habituales trabajos nocturnos, los reunió en un estudio y realizó varios elepés que servirían de inspiración a mil discos posteriores.
La llegada de la revolución castrista, con su puritanismo y un desmedido afán regulador de todas las actividades, le impulsó al exilio. A finales de 1962, dejó a su familia y se subió a un barco rumbo a España. Instalado en Madrid, tocó en La Riviera y otros locales de ocio. Pero aquel no era un buen ambiente para crear: Cachao se alojaba en una pensión y todos los días debía aguantar los sermones de otro cliente, un cura fanático que le aseguraba que iba por el camino de la perdición.
En cuanto arregló los papeles, se trasladó a EE UU. En Nueva York sabían quién era y encontró trabajo fácilmente: Machito, Tito Rodríguez, Cándido, Tito Puente, Chico O'Farrill, Eddie Palmieri o Lou Pérez fueron sus nuevos jefes. Por su habilidad para improvisar, tuvo más oportunidades en el mundo del latin jazz que en el de la entonces pujante salsa, aunque se puede encontrar su nombre en algunas contraportadas de Fania.
En los años ochenta, buscando un clima más benévolo, se trasladó a Miami. Pero la industria de la música latina de Florida no tenía hueco para un veterano de su categoría y terminó ganándose los frijoles en lo que él llamaba "un grupito de la BBC, de Bodas, Bautizos y Comuniones". Siempre profesional, hasta se aprendió canciones judías, para complacer a la numerosa comunidad hebraica de la ciudad. Incluso renunció al voluminoso contrabajo para tocar instrumentos más transportables.
Le rescató de la oscuridad un amante de los viejos sonidos y percusionista aficionado, el actor Andy García, que le dedicó un vibrante documental, Cachao: como su ritmo no hay dos. A través de García, conectó con Gloria y Emilio Estefan, entonces reyes del Miami latino, que le dieron bola en Mi tierra, el primer disco retro de música cubana pensado para el gran público, y que continuaron recurriendo a sus servicios. Cachao aglutinó entonces unos deslumbrantes discos estelares, los volúmenes de Master Sessions, que le dieron un reconocimiento tardío. Pudo recorrer todo el mundo, dándose el capricho de volver a actuar en La Riviera madrileña, pero como primera figura.
Con una excepción. Aunque ganó el premio Grammy, en Cuba siguió en el ostracismo. Incluso en los medios musicales, donde le confundían: allí existe otra generación de contrabajistas con su mismo apellido, como su sobrino Orlando Cachaíto López.
English, from the Miami Herald:
CACHAO | 1918-2008
Legendary Cuban musician 'Cachao' dies at 89
Bassist Cachao was revered as an icon of Cuban music and was most widely known for helping invent the mambo in the 1930s
Posted on Sun, Mar. 23, 2008
Israel "Cachao" Lopez pauses beneath an original framed mambo score in his Coral Gables apartment that he composed with his brother.
The death Saturday of the Cuban musician known to the world by his nickname, Cachao -- the legendary instrumentalist, composer and bandleader Israel López -- marks nearly the bittersweet end of a golden era of Cuban music.
''Arguably the most important bassist in 20th-century popular music,'' according to historian Ned Sublette. Cachao died Saturday at Coral Gables Hospital of complications resulting from kidney failure. He was 89.
Cachao, born into a musical family, was one of the most important figures in Cuban music, on or off the island. Conservatory-trained and a child prodigy, he played popular music professionally from the age of 8 and joined a symphony orchestra when he was 13.
And not only was he innovative in Cuban music, but Sublette, who has published a book on the evolution of Cuban music, said Cachao also influenced the now familiar bass lines of American Rhythm and Blues, ``which have become such a part of the environment that we don't even think where they came from.''
Cachao's passing joins other greats of that golden era, including Celia Cruz, who died in 2003; composer René Touzet, who also died in 2003; trombonist Generoso Jiménez, in 2007, and percussionists Carlos ''Patato'' Valdez, 2007, and Federico Arístides Soto, known as Tata Güines, this year.
Of that glittering generation, only a handful are left, most notably chanteuse Olga Guillot; pianist, composer and bandleader Bebo Valdés; trumpet player Alfredo ''Chocolate'' Armenteros; and percussionist Cándido Camero.
ORIGINS OF MAMBO
Cachao and his brother Orestes are most widely known for their late-1930s invention of the mambo, a hot coda to the popular but stately danzón that allowed dancers to break loose at the end of a piece.
It debuted in a chic Havana night club -- and flopped.
''Nothing happened,'' Cachao told The Miami Herald in 1992. ``Here was this 180-degree turn. The whole orchestra was out of work for six months after that because people didn't understand that type of music.''
Typically modest, Cachao always credited bandleader Dámaso Pérez Prado for making the beat world-famous in the 1950s.
''People think there could've been some antagonism,'' Cachao said. But ``if it weren't for him, the mambo wouldn't be known around the world.''
A possibly more important musical moment took place in 1957, when Cachao gathered a group of musicians in the early morning hours, pumped up from playing gigs at Havana's popular nightclubs, for an impromptu jam at a recording studio. The resulting descargas, known to music aficionados worldwide as Cuban jam sessions, revolutionized Afro-Cuban popular music. Under Cachao's direction, these masters improvised freely in the manner of jazz, but their vocabulary was Cuba's popular music. This was the model that would make live performances of Afro-Cuban-based genres, from salsa to Latin jazz, so incredibly hot.
This majestic influence came from a man of sweet demeanor and an unassailable sense of humor. Fronting his band at a fancy dance in Coral Gables when he was already in his late 80s, he seemed so frail that he had to lean his whole body on the contrabass to keep from falling. But his beatific smile and closed eyes proved that he was in heaven already, embracing his instrument like a lover, like a strong friend.
Yet he no longer owned a bass.
''That's outrageous,'' said jazz legend Charlie Haden when he heard this at the time. ``I'll give him one of mine.''
But a contrabass took up too much room in his small Coral Gables apartment. Besides, what need did he have to rehearse? Cachao carried his bass, his music, inside him.
GROWING UP
A marvel of the 20th century, Cachao was born in 1918 in the same Havana house where Cuban poet and patriot José Martí was born. He was the youngest of three children in a family of distinguished musicians, many of them bassists -- around 40 and counting in his extended family.
As an 8-year-old bongo player, he joined a children's septet that included a future famous singer and bandleader, Roberto Faz. A year later, already on bass, he provided music for silent movies in his neighborhood theater, in the company of a pianist who would become a true superstar, the great cabaret performer Ignacio Villa, known as Bola de Nieve (Snowball).
His parents made sure Cachao was classically trained. When he was 13, he joined his father and brother in the Orquesta Filarmónica de La Habana -- The Havana Philharmonic -- playing contrabass under the baton of guest conductors like Herbert von Karajan, Igor Stravinsky and Heitor Villa-Lobos. He had to stand on a box to reach the strings.
He was equally at home playing in a dance band, changing out of his coattails at the end of a concert to play with Arcaño y sus Maravillas. When they weren't playing, Cachao and his brother created some 3,000 danzones.
''One day, I was in my own home and I turned on the radio,'' he told The Miami Herald. 'And I heard a danzón that I liked. And I said, `Who is that?' -- and at that moment, the announcer says it's mine.''
ALWAYS A MUSICIAN
After a rich musical career in his home country, he left Cuba in 1962. His brother Orestes stayed. As retribution for leaving, Cachao said, the Cuban government removed his name from all of his recordings, leaving only Orestes on the label. That, he said, was a ``big tragedy.''
Cachao eventually landed in Las Vegas because, as he admitted, ``I was a compulsive gambler.''
Though cured later in life, he nearly gambled away every penny until his wife whisked him away.
For a while, he had two distinct musical personae. In the New York salsa scene he was revered as a music god, with homage concerts dedicated to him and records of his music produced by Cuban-music collector René López. In Miami, he was an ordinary working musician who would play quinceañeras and weddings, or back up dance bands in the notorious Latin nightclubs of the Miami Vice era.
It took a celebrity, Miami's own Andy García, to integrate his musical personality into one: that of a legendary master. In the 1990s, García produced the recordings known as Master Sessions, accompanied by big concerts honoring his legacy. Cachao's star rose again.
But he remained a working musician, if at a much higher level of appreciation. Though already frail and distraught at the funeral of fellow legend, trombonist Generoso Jiménez, in September 2007, he headlined a rollicking concert in Miami a week later.
Earlier this month, just days before he was hospitalized, the multiple Grammy winner was in the Dominican Republic receiving a life-time achievement award.
''It was not only a great musician who died,'' said producer Emilio Estefan, who was at his bedside, ``but a great señor -- a gentleman.''
Cachao, whose wife of 58 years, Ester Buenaventura López, died in 2004, is survived by their daughter María Elena López, grandson Hector Luis Vega and his nephew Daniel Palacio.
Services are expected to be held early in the week, with details announced at a Monday news conference.
Lucía Pulido (the singer, who did an amazing set with her trio on Saturday at MACSEM) recommended this to me: a documentary on the life of Manuel Zapata Olivella, an incredibly important black Colombian intellectual, who traveled Colombia, hung with Langston Hughes in Renaissance-era Harlem, wrote short stories, plays, and novels (most famously Changó el gran putas, translatable as Changó, One Bad Motherfucker), and founded an Afro-Colombian performance group and took it not only to Bogotá (where they'd never heard any of that stuff before), but to Russia and China, and was an all-around polymath, activist, ethnigrapher, and philosopher. You can find the doc (subtitled), photos, writings by and about him, and a lot of other resources here. Enjoy.
Video | Cachao rehearses for 80th anniversary concert in 2007
Slide show | Curtain call for Cachao
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