Brass Trax

The boogaloo, like so many crossover styles before and since, was destined to have a short lifespan. A fusion of Latin and African American music forms, boogaloo was the sound of a certain part of New York City in the late sixties, and nobody personified that sound quite as completely as Joe Cuba, the author of the genre’s greatest hit. Cuba died last year at the age of 78, but his legacy has recently gotten a new packaging: a two-disc box set from Fania Records that covers the entirety of his career.

The set is called El Alcalde Del Barrio, or “The Mayor of El Barrio,” and the appellation is fitting. Cuba lived the majority of his ebullient life in Spanish Harlem, “El Barrio,” that area between East 96th Street and the Harlem River and 5th Avenue and the East River that has long been the geographic center of New York’s Puerto Rican diaspora. Located, as it is, next to the epicenter of Black culture in the city, it was only a matter of time before Nuyoricans—the term wasn’t yet in the popular parlance—would appropriate the culture of their neighbors to the west.

In fact, the origins of Joe Cuba’s best-known composition, “Bang Bang,” was the direct result of this cross-cultural proximity. As Cuba’s bandmate Bobby Marin explains in the liner notes of El Alcalde Del Barrio:

In 1964, “Bang Bang” was introduced during a Joe Cuba Sextet performance at New York’s Gardens Club (years before it became the celebrated Cheetah nightclub). During an intermission, Joe’s timbalero/vocalist, Jimmy Sabater, noticed a lack of interest in their music by the predominantly African American attendees. Jimmy approached Joe and pianist Nicky Jiménez with the idea of coming up with a sound that could get the spectators on the dance floor. What they came up with was the vamp you hear at the beginning of the tune. Jimmy bet [Cuba] a beer that it would work, and they opened up the set with it. From there, they winged it as they noticed the dance floor fill up and the dancers chanting “She freaks, ah! She freaks, ah!” during the musical breaks.

“She freaks, ah!” became “Bi, bi, ah,” the quasi-Black Power slogan “Ungawa” (lifted, naturally, from Tarzan) was added, and the tune was cut to vinyl in 1966, complete with a busy vocal background that sounds like nothing but a house party. “Bang Bang” crossed over not only to the African American dancefloor but to the Anglo market as well, and, suddenly, record labels had cash in abundance for boogaloo and its musicians.

Listen to “Bang Bang”

Joe Cuba struck again in the aftermath of “Bang Bang” with “El Pito (I’ll Never Go Back to Georgia),” a smoking, vampy number built around the melody to Dizzy Gillespie’s “Manteca,” and anchored by a catchy whistled intro. Consider that Cuba’s hit song riffed on a jazz standard that included lyrics that are explicitly about the Black diasporic experience; Cuba had likely never been south of Staten Island when he co-wrote “El Pito,” let alone Georgia. But consider, too, that Dizzy’s tune was the best-known piece of Latin jazz at the time. Cuba simply repurposed it for the dancefloor and the beach.

Listen to “El Pito (I’ll Never Go Back to Georgia)”

In fact, Cuba was acutely aware of the context in which his music would be played. Marin recalls in the liner notes a moment when Cuba arrived at the studio with a set of three-inch speakers to test the final mix of a record that they were cutting together. According to Marin, Cuba said, “My fans listen to my music through portable radios on Orchard Beach. If the final mix sounds good through these speakers, it’ll sound great on the beach.”

While Cuba is known best for his boogaloo, his repertoire encompassed styles both timeless and passing, from boleros to mambos. Alongside Cuba’s hits, El Alcalde Del Barrio includes some of his rarer, weirder material. An homage to Speedy Gonzalez, “My Man Speedy!” for instance. In the hands of Joe Cuba, the racist caricature becomes a parable about a dapper womanizer who will “snag your broad when you least expect.” The track “Psychedelic Baby (You’re Psychin’ Up My Mind)” attempts to crossover twice—into both the R&B charts and the hippy’s rec room.

Listen to “My Man Speedy!”

Flexibility was a requirement for a working musician after boogaloo fell out of fashion, the victim of older musicians’ animosity and the rise of salsa. Cuba kept his sextet relevant with smoking party tracks like “Ariñañara,” a mesmerizing clave workout that would not sound out of place at a contemporary salsa party. Other tracks, like the bachanga “Macorina,” haven’t aged quite as well, but still sound stunning as artifacts of a fad long passed.

Listen to “Ariñañara”

The story of Joe Cuba is also, in part, the story of his vocalists. Cheo Feliciano might be best known for singing “El Pito,” but it’s his panty melting performance on the bolero “Aunque Tú” that steals the box set. Jimmy Sabater, who co-wrote much of Cuba’s material, gets his share of cuts on the compilation, and he more than justifies the title of the 1967 album Joe Cuba Presents the Velvet Voice of Jimmy Sabater. Willie Torres might be the least distinguished of the three, but he knows how to rock a party. If you need evidence, just check out “La Malanga Brava.”

Listen to “Aunque Tú”
Listen to “La Malanga Brava”

Joe Cuba’s boogaloo might have fallen out of fashion and his Barrio might be a shadow of its former self, but his legacy, carefully preserved by Fania, remains a vital and rewarding example of cultural fusion and dance music at their respective best.

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