Ignacio de Loyola Rodríguez Scull

He was born in Güira de Macurijes, Matanzas, and was a Cuban tres composer and performer who played an important role in the development of the so-called son montuno. His ensemble formation with several trumpets defined a sound that, viewed in perspective, laid the foundations for the development of what is known today as salsa. He was a prolific composer who wrote nearly 200 songs, most of them filled with humor and double meanings. He was considered an innovator of his time, able to fuse various musical genres and achieve a unique style that is still talked about today. As a child, Rodríguez became blind when a horse (or possibly a mule) kicked him in the head, an event that marked the rest of his existence. Later he became a musician and became one of the most renowned conjunto directors in Cuba. Among his achievements was the fact of incorporating to the traditional son grouping the congas or tumbadoras, the piano, and three trumpets, creating what is known today as conjunto. Among his musicians were, on piano, Rubén González and, later, Lily Martínez Griñán; on trumpets, Félix Chapotín and Chocolate Armenteros; on bongo, Papa Kila, among others. He also had collaborations from Chano Pozo and Machito, as well as his cousin René Scull as a singer. Upon Arsenio's departure to the United States, Lily Mártinez, who acted to some extent as his musical director, took over the conjunto in Cuba. Beginning in the 1940s, Arsenio Rodríguez became one of the key figures in Cuban popular music. Unfortunately, he is almost always mentioned as the brilliant tres player that he was, rarely as a composer, author of sones, son-montuno, afro, guaracha, boleros, rumba, which have left their musical imprint in other areas of the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, and had an impact on the diverse audiences for whom he performed at different moments in his artistic career, and in the 1960s he influenced the emergence of salsa in New York. This is a paradox if we take into account that Arsenio Rodríguez faced serious difficulties in penetrating the world of entertainment and the international recording industry, despite the importance and quality of his music. Rodríguez traveled to the United States in the early 1950s, as he had hopes of undergoing surgery and recovering his vision. After the medical diagnosis that informed him that it was not possible for him to see again, Arsenio, immersed in intense pain, composed one of his main themes: La vida es un sueño, with profound lyrics unlike the double meanings, humor, and signs of African religion that he was accustomed to addressing in his compositions. In the U.S. he continued publishing records, mainly for Tico and Blue Note. For the latter company he recorded Tribilín cantore and Palo congo, although the latter was released under the name of Sabú Martínez, despite the fact that Rodríguez composed almost all the pieces, sang, and played the tres and percussion. Among his most popular songs are Bruca maniguá—his first song to be recorded, originally performed by the Orquesta Casino de la Playa—, Mami, me gustó, El devorcio, Papa upa, El reloj de Pastora, Fuego en el 23, La yuca de Catalina, and the aforementioned La vida es sueño. At the end of the sixties the mambo "exploded," and Rodríguez continued playing with his typical style. He managed to record some unsuccessful boogaloos and the group's popularity declined. He attempted a new beginning in Los Angeles but died in 1970 and his body was sent to New York for his funeral. Much has been speculated about his economic situation during his last years, but Mario Bauza denies that he died in poverty, arguing that Rodríguez had, albeit modest, some income from royalties. Although Arsenio died in relative anonymity in Los Angeles, his music is considered today an inspiring work of art. He explored Afro-Cuban rhythms and emphasized the leading role of the tres, becoming one of the greatest tres players of all time. His songs and his rhythm still live in recreations of his themes in famous salsas, and his music and conception of ensemble inspire salsa musicians. After 1950, the big bands that were fashionable during the mambo era ceased to be so. However, the groups or conjuntos, thanks to the important role played by Arsenio in Cuban music, constituted a determining reference in what is today called "Latin music," especially salsa. He was intuitive and universal in the entire fusion process that was his music. Arsenio Rodríguez is, along with Ignacio Piñeiro, Ñico Saquito, Miguel Matamoros, María Teresa Vera, and Beny Moré, one of the fathers of Cuban popular culture. Discography Albums by Arsenio Rodríguez Dame un cachito pa huele/Cangrejo fue a... (RCA, 1946) Semilla de caña brava (RCA, 1946) Lo dicen todos: La vida es un sueño (RCA, 1947) Serenede (SMC, 1947) El cerro tiene la llave/No vuelvo a Morón (RCA, 1948) Esa china tiene coimbre/A Belén le toca ahora (RCA, 1948) Rumba palo cucuye/Tintorera ya llegó (SMC, 1948) Yo no engaño a las nenas/Tecoloro (SMC, 1948) Palo tiene curey/Él (RCA, 1949) Anabacoa (RCA, 1950) Caminante y labori/Mira que soy chambelón (RCA, 1951) Pa que gocen/Jagüey (Tico, 1952) Mambo en la cueva (RCA, 1956) Buenavista en guaguancó/Carraguao alante (Puchito, 1957) Tribilín cantore (Blue Note, 1958) Primitivo (Tico, 1960) Son pachanga (SMC, 1962) La pachanga (Tico, 1963) Arsenio dice (Tico, 1968) Sabroso y caliente (Antilla) Los barrios de La Habana (Orfeon, 2003) Arsenio Rodríguez y su conjunto. Vol. 1 (Ansonia) Arsenio Rodríguez y su conjunto. Vol. 2 (Ansonia) Quindembo/AfroMagic (Epic) Sesiones legendarias (SMC) Viva Arsenio (Bang) [editar]With Sabú Martínez Palo Congo (Blue Note, 1957) CD Compilations Among the countless compilations of music by this artist, the following stand out for their quality and availability: Cómo se goza en el Barrio (Tumbao Cuban Classics, 2004) Dundunbanza 1946-1951 (Tumbao Cuban Classics, 2004) Montuneando 1946-1950 (Tumbao Cuban Classics, 2004) Tribute Albums Orquesta Harlow: Tribute to Arsenio Rodríguez (Fania, 1971) Sierra Maestra: Dundunbanza! (World Circuit, 1994) Marc Ribot y los Cubanos Postizos: The Prosthetic Cubans (Atlantic, 1998) Marc Ribot y los Cubanos Postizos: ¡Muy divertido! (Very Entertaining!) (Atlantic, 2000) Tico All-Stars: Recordando a Arsenio (Tico) From his early hits like Bruca maniguá, created under the rubric of afro or Afro-Cuban, he was subject to veiled criticism by those who believed that African-descended culture was inferior and primitive; that is to say: it was a step backward. Going against the grain with the most retrograde sectors of society, Arsenio incorporated Afro-Cuban expressive forms into his sones, particularly the lexicon used in the religious practices of African descendants, which were generally incomprehensible to the white audiences "consuming" his music. An example of this is that the Orquesta Casino de la Playa had in its repertoire, for example, Bruca maniguá, performed by its house singer: Miguelito Valdés, whose lyrics the dancers did not understand. Another trait of Arsenio's personality was his identification with and commitment to the Afro-descendant population, a commitment that translated into maintaining an openly critical stance regarding slavery, colonialism, and the persistence of racism in Cuba and in other African diaspora settlements in this region; but this singular artist was above all and foremost a Cuban musician who made music, beyond the garments with which he dressed it. Arsenio had a much broader interest than his struggle against racism through his music, as he always showed a vivid interest in knowing his country's history, and it was frequent that he would ask his brothers and friends to tell him or read to him passages and anecdotes from Cuban history. Thus, when he learned that Cárdenas had been the city where the Cuban flag was raised for the first time, he composed the bolero Cárdenas. Arsenio explains the changes he introduced in the son: "I began to work on my new music in 1934, and already in 1936 I was achieving results. But the consolidation of my novel ideas within the son genre came in 1938." And he adds: "I organized a new ensemble system. I thought that the old septet format, with the trumpet, guitar, and tres did not have the necessary harmony, so I added a piano and three trumpets. I also incorporated the tumbadora […]." (4) Hence, the conjunto was an important factor in the stylistic innovations he set out to achieve and adapted to this format. In this sense, four aspects should be highlighted in this process: 1) he creates a style of playing the tres, different from that of the sextets and septets; 2) the piano blends with the tres while its harmonic and rhythmic figurations, in addition to arpeggios and tumbaos, are still today of surprising vitality and originality; 3) the style of Félix Chappottín on the trumpet stands out, who achieves, by using swing era scales, a distinctly Cuban way of playing; 4) the off-beat accentuation and the structure conceived for the different instrumental sections of the ensemble are features that stand out as defining traits of Arsenio's musical style, which is concretized in the son-montuno. Since then, the son has undergone an evolutionary process that has not yet ended. Worthy of special mention is another of Arsenio's musical innovations, the diablo, the name given to the section that closes the typical arrangement of son-montuno and which is characterized by a certain rhythmic anarchy. The importance of this innovation is significant, in that the sonic climax that the diablo represents in the son-montuno became an essential aspect in the emergence of mambo, which crystallized in Dámaso Pérez Prado, and in the New York salsa movement. But it was not only the expansion of the instrumental format that he contributed, but also—and this perhaps is the most important—a new repertoire and greater variety of rhythms and harmonic concepts that enriched not only the son, but also the bolero, the guaracha, and other generic combinations such as the bolero-mambo. It is important to highlight the impact of Arsenio and his music in New York during the emergence and popularization of mambo in the 1950s, and his influence on the popular music that was heard and danced in that city. However, the relatively limited presence that Arsenio had in that scene is striking, perhaps due to his reluctance to enter the "light" music market, and his lack of stage charisma, which explains, to some extent, his exclusion from the star system that prevailed during the reign of mambo. In reality, Arsenio's audience was the communities of Cubans and Puerto Ricans in Harlem and the Bronx, for whom his music represented an alternative. The last years of his artistic career were spent between the cities of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. In this stage of his life he sought to approach the very complex Latin music industry prior to the salsa boom and the different musical spaces of Latinos that made up the music scene in the United States and the Caribbean in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which coincides, moreover, with a moment of transformation in the Latin music industry, marked by the closing of one of its emblematic places, the Palladium. In this turbulent scenario, Arsenio and his musicians struggled, without any success, to attract the attention of young dancers, increasingly seduced by the pachanga and the boogaloo. Another important aspect to highlight is the scarce reception that the music of Arsenio Rodríguez had among the Cuban community that went into exile in the United States following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Perhaps one of the reasons was that the dominant attitudes that shaped race relations in Cuba were transplanted to the exile, where they were magnified. The so-called "historical exile" was predominantly white and upper and middle-upper class, and a dissonant voice like that of Arsenio and his conjunto, which openly questioned the idyllic visions that exiles projected about a pre-revolutionary Cuba without apparent class or racial conflicts, was uncomfortable for them. Likewise, Arsenio's determination not to take a political position, either for or against the Revolution, contributed to his exclusion from Cuban musical circuits in the Miami exile. In those years, Arsenio's audience continued to be represented by Cubans who had emigrated to the United States before 1959 and by the first generations of Puerto Rican immigrants. It was a time of great turmoil and political, economic, and social changes in the United States, from which music did not escape, and young people began to become interested in rock, bossa nova, the new song, and salsa, a phenomenon from which Arsenio was excluded, despite being one of the most influential musicians in the birth of salsa. The early salsa scene in New York must be understood as a culture oriented fundamentally to young people, that is, to the second and third generation of Latin American immigrants living in that city. The generational aspect and the importance of image, combined with the lack of support that Arsenio had within the Latin music industry, allow us to better understand why he was marginalized from the emerging salsa industry in the United States. The paradox lies in the fact that his music had capital importance in the emergence of salsa, a phenomenon on which nearly all musicians agree. Source: Wikipedia, Cubarte