Latin To Me

Honest; Latin music was always there, somewhere in the background of my life, never a thing by itself as much as part of the sound fabric. Desi and Lucy, Carmen Miranda, 'The Girl From Impanema'; this stuff swirled around me as a young kid. The television was always on, as was the radio. It wasn't just a barrage of rock & roll or soul music. Harry Bellefonte and 'The Banana Boat Song', mariachi bands; it was always there, just not in the spot light.

Classical guitar leans heavily towards the flamenco. 'West Side Story' reserved the best stuff for the Puerto Ricans. 'Flying Down to Rio', girls dancing on the wings of airplanes. It was ubiquitous, like breathing air. Your spine felt different, stiffer, no slouching. Eruptions of emotions equal to James Brown.

Tango rhythms seemed instinctual, going back to silence, Rudolph Valentino. Samba sneaking in to 'Break on Through to the Other Side'. Santana, the best way to get girls to dance when I was just hitting puberty. Something about the rhythm made your hips and feet move differently.

I have no idea when I was first aware of Latin music. It was all around, yet it was no one place. Dizzy Gillespie and his big band Latin. Surf music borrowing slightly strange musical scales, sneaking over from South of the Border. 'La Bamba' and 'Crackin' Up' by Bo Diddley. You knew Latin rhythm when it hit you. Trini Lopez, Herb Albert & the Tijuana Brass, all playing 'Lemon Tree'. How many western movies had those plaintive Latin ballads?

Watch 'Woodstock' again; both Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana have bands with additional percussionists. Jimi doesn't know what to do with them, doesn't know how to leave space for the extra instruments to be heard. Carlos does, keeping it cool until the music demands an explosion. Jimi knew how to play. Carlos knew how to arrange. Santana did a great deal of the heavy lifting in bring Latin music into rock, as well as bringing rock to Latin music.

In the mid 1970s, a group of friends used to gather to listen to weird music. Dissonant jazz, the Fugs, hypnotism records; the goal was to bring something 'far out' to listen to while we smoked up. Zappa, Beefheart, King Crimson were staples, as were early Funkadelic. Someone brought in Brazilian group Os Mutantes. I thought they sounded like a Latin version of the Mothers of Invention back then. Twenty years later, I stumbled across them in a record store, bought a CD. More mature, I thought they sounded like a Latin version of the Beatles instead. It was shocking how good and trailblazing they were.

When I started recording music in 2005, Latin certainly wasn't the first thing to emerge, but it was there in the mix. One song was called 'Bango Tango', more a funny name than a statement of purpose. Nonetheless, there is Latin there. The first version showed my lack of arrangement skills; it was done again to better effect in 2014, which is the version below.

I can heard the influence of Os Mutantes; I let the texture of the song become mysterious. There are two bass guitars, one carrying the bottom, the other a weird fluttering sound. The guitar is a secondary instrument here; the drums carry more weight. It is a hybrid, Latin-progressive.

All music is a series of clichés to be manipulated in either new or interesting ways. Latin music is no different from the Blues in that aspect. You can do it badly or you can do it well. I reserve the right to play with it, in a respectful manner, even if I am sometimes using the most hoary aspects of the genre. Or if I want to go over the top with a surf music tune, as in 'Mexican Viagra'.

One reason that Latin music is so appealing to me is that is prominently features guitar in many of the forms. As a guitarist myself, it's not hard to borrow aspects of it, even when wailing on Stratocaster, trying to break the whammy bar clean off with crazy bends. The musical form itself has enough internal integrity to withstand a little abuse from the like of me. And all the footage in that video was actually shot on the Riviera Maya.

'Bossa Nesta' is another example of a very guitar-oriented exploration of Latin music. Bossa Nova uses some tricky, weird guitar chords, more like advanced jazz than Mariachi music. There is also a romantic, tender aspect to the genre that I wanted to try out. This piece was written and first recorded in 2009, during the now-deleted 'Odd Even'/'Even Odder' project. Coming at the end of the rather long sessions, it was a good composition that didn't get the performance that it deserved. I redid it in 2014 to better effect.

There are a lot of passing chords as well as sophisticated harmonies going on, but I can still get a quiet but insistent groove happening underneath. That's perhaps the most appealing aspect of Latin music, the ability to cool down yet keep things happening in the quiet parts. There is a similarity to jazz in that aspect; I suspect that jazz drumming's wholesale borrowing from samba during the 1950s helped. Much of Latin music coming into the United States during that period, such as Anton Carlos Jobim, were marketed to the jazz audience first.

There is also an experimental side to Latin music that I explored, such as in the following song, 'Malaga', named after a city in Spain that I visited. Done in 2009, this was recorded during the period where I was shifting from drum loops to actually playing my own percussion. Often there was a shortage of drum beds; this song uses white noise and a very insistent Latin style bass to hide the lack of drums. Latin doesn't needs layers of percussion to have a groove.

The guitar, all bends and volume swells, is very expressive and tender. Latin music allows emotions to go over the top safely, not sounding completely out of place. This was a very experimental piece when I did it, and it still holds up well, both as a performance and as a piece of music. The video features my wife enjoying the sights down near where the Cape Fear spills into the Atlantic.

'Fear the Gear', the following video, takes the notion of experimental music even farther. There is a firm 7/8 beat underneath. The syncopation lends itself towards exotic scales, pushing the composition into Latin territory. The bass keeps things slightly rigid, which doesn't come off as awkward in Latin music as it would in rock, while the guitar can roam over the top, repeating motifs while getting a few fiery solos in.

Using a keyboard with a digital delay, playing with the time nob, creates a white noise bed, but unlike 'Malaga', this one adds musical textures as well. I let this one build to a couple of internal climaxes. One version of this song had vocals, a twisted fairy tale. In retrospective, I enjoy the instrumental better; there's enough going on to keep a listener entertained as it is.

The simpler forms of Latin music, playing with clichés, can be rewarding as well. 'Cosmic Cha Cha' was created in 2011 as part of a progressive rock collection. It's really not progressive at all, sticking to a Latin-light sound. It IS different from what I normally do. I get to play around with percussion in a new and novel way. That alone makes it an exploration into unknown territory, hence progressive.

The long play-out at the end was also something new when I did this. Just letting the music simmer down to a natural conclusion was an arrangement trick that I had never applied before.  As I said before, the secret to Latin music is in the arrangement; room needs to be left for all the instruments to be heard. Playing Latin music helped with my skills as a musician, teaching me a much-needed lesson; where NOT to put noise.

By 2014, it was obvious that Latin music was an integral part of my musical DNA. I used the rhythms and the elements very comfortable, so I planned a Latin/World album. Visiting my daughter in Los Angeles, I couldn't help but notice the prominent Latin cultural presence. The city teems with a culture foreign to this East Coast boy.

I had heard about Santa Muerta before, but it was still unnerving to see how much the unofficial patron saint of the cartel/drug trade violence was present on the streets. Makeshift spontaneous shrines were everywhere. The image, as well as images of popular cultural figures combined with skeletal sections, were plastered everywhere. My interpretation; we need an outlet for all the violence that is too commonplace in our world today. Santa Muerta fills that void.

Deciding to do a song called 'Santa Muerta', let alone name an album after such a phenomenon, was tricky. This was all done with the best, purest artistic intention. This couldn't be simple cultural appropriation. There must be an honest reaction on my part to the overwhelming emotional experience I felt in Los Angeles. I planned the song, writing a few sections on the piano. I first set down the bass, insistent and driving, providing that stiff backbone. The drums and percussion were all done in one pass using a table setting on the electronic kit.

Then something strange happened; while doing the very first take on the piano, this solo emerged that continued for over seven straight minutes. Honestly, I'm not much of a piano player, never touching the instrument until I was twenty, never taking a lesson. I can play something simple, if given enough takes and time. Doing a seven minute solo on the fly, with absolutely no preparation, have never happened before, nor since.

I was smart enough, watching me do things that I wasn't really capable of, not to stop playing. Musicians will tell you about watching their hands play with no conscious control from the brain. I've had this disconnect many times on guitar. It has only happened once, on this song, in the first take, and it scared me shitless.

Finishing, I added a touch of Wah guitar as color, adding to the supernatural vibe of the song. The experience was frightening, going in to do music, emerging with this voodoo thing that seemed to appear on its own. It was a killer song, exceeding my expectations. The album also turned out rather well. I was so flabbergasted by the experience that I added a reggae version of 'Amazing Grace' immediately after this song, as a tonic, as a way to ask for forgiveness for sins I don't even know if I committed. That is the absolute truth.