#“ ⍀ aesthetic. « the air out here is like amphetamine.

[jefferyryanlong]

Fresh Listen - Various Artists, Si, Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba, Vol. 1 (Light in the Attic, 2010)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a weekly review of recently and not so recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

A piece of music rarely comes across to me as greater with repetition. Beautiful music tackles you, jars you, arrests you. It does not require you to have coffee with it to get to know it better. Beautiful music compels a visceral reaction upon first listen. Nevertheless, repeated engagement with albums sometimes can provide insight, especially when it sets within you an unfamiliar vibration.

Critics will sometimes go on about how many times they listened to a particular record, in an effort to make their endeavors appear as real work. I like to think that multiple, befuddled listens may bring one closer to identifying a thematic or musical through line in a long-playing audio recording, perhaps only to pinpoint some buried layer of appeal or pleasure. Perhaps to reveal an artists’ secret message in all of its intricacies, delivered only to the listener at hand who has the heart to surrender.

When your average modern rock fan walks cold into the middle of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, they may find themselves mystified, adrift. Musicians squawking at one another, in alternating solos, in an alien language several steps removed from traditional chord changes and instrumental melody lines. The magic, for the listener, may not be apparent the first time around. But A Love Supreme rewards, and continues to reward, multiple revolutions over time, multiple experiences. Regardless of the sophisticated architecture of A Love Supreme, the music, being in itself a supplicant’s devotional, is not a frozen piece of art designed to be admired--it exists to be comprehensible to everyone, to be related to less as a jazz masterpiece than as a life force with a bloodstream of bass notes, hopes manifest in full-fingered piano chords flung upon the rapid progression of time, the single wailing question “Why? Why? Why?” metamorphosed concurrently into keening saxophone notes of pressure and air.  

While some pieces of music will hit you on the head with a blackjack and proceed to rob you blind, there exist other more complex expressions that require patience and substantial metaphysical dream power in exchange for an album’s  worth of transcendence.

Given that the compilation record Si, Para Usted is composed of the work of artists from Cuba, I had no immediate affinity with the music beyond a recognition of electric guitars and disco beats. I had to grapple with what was being communicated to me, since I’m less than familiar with the Spanish language and would not be parsing the lyrics for thematic interpretations. I am equally green to the most basic Cuban/Latin musical aesthetics (though I have been, many times, moved by them). Beyond this collection propelling me into a raving dance frenzy, I thought I might delude myself into understanding how some of these songs worked on a universal level (through my primitive filter of British/American rock-based music), what the songs themselves were referencing, and what an album like this could mean to an American listener with a moderate grasp of Cuban history and politics, though zero grasp of its language and arts.

I can only go partway toward explaining why I think Si, Para Usted is a nifty collection full of sonic surprises and a ceaseless rhythm that defies you to experience it stationary, without surrendering to the organic energy of your body in sync with the perpetual beating of drums, cajon, congas, and cowbells. Suffice it to say it is among the most natural marriages of rock music and dance music, a favored expression among many indie bands today that is generally unsuccessful.

My first question, formulated while the horns and guitars blasted through my ear buds on the King Street bike lane while my pedals, their resistance lifted by the music, turned effortlessly underneath me, was “how did they determine the songs for inclusion on this record?” In his experiential and exceedingly sensible Uproot: Travels in 21st Century Music and Digital Culture, Jace Clayton casts a suspicious eye on “world” music that has found some popularity in the United States. Clayton argues (and here I would quote the author if I did not press the book onto a friend) that international artists popular in the West are sometimes neither popular nor representative of the musical environment in their home countries. The reason for their notoriety in the West has to do with the narrow grasp Americans and Europeans have of the music forms of other countries, or a predetermined aesthetic that non-Western artists either consciously or unconsciously incorporate into their music that translates easier to the expectations of the Western listener.

When I consider how Si, Para Usted was curated, I wonder about the through line that ties these selections together. Are they all, as the title suggests, “funky?” (Primarily so, though there are some pieces, especially near the end, that exude “funk” not in their rhythms and basslines, but through a timeless kind of strangeness). Have they all to do with the revolutionary messaging of the Cuban state apparatus? (No, given that several of these tunes are instrumental, and those with lyrics don’t espouse explicitly Communist beliefs). I myself assume that choices were made--and wisely so-- to provide the American listener a survey of popular Cuban dance music over a period of years, with especial emphasis on effects-laden electric guitars over smooth basslines, hovering above the scummy confines of rock and roll by a percussive sophistication that challenges our samba-deficient sensibilities. On Si, Para Usted, an angular experiment like “Sondeando” can coexist with a straightforward disco number like “Con la Luz del Manana .”

Fortunately, not all the songs on Si, Para Usted reflect the neutered production values of dancefloor-ready “ Con la Luz.” The collection kicks off with the seemingly lazy horn riff of “Son a Propulsion,” before the insistency of an electric guitar carries the simple arrangement to some dark funk playland, its shadows enhanced by a noir-ish 70′s soul progression. The forceful, almost intimidating energy of “Bacalao Con Pan” is the result of its layered, heavy rhythms battling for sonic supremacy of the track against chanting back-up vocalists spurring on--enraging, almost--the sweaty yells of the lead singer, who commands as much as persuades. In contrast, fleet drums allow “Y No le Conviene” to sneak up on the listener like a pickpocket, and the track’s equally covert strings suggest rock classic “Inna Gadda Da Vida” alongside a prominent bass.

Except for “Amor Mio,” a love song in Spanish not so congruently shoehorned into a soul-funk arrangement, the collection is heavy on beats and light on melody. "De la Fiesta Mejor," maniacally driven by what seems to be an amphetamine-fuelled obsession, is a race between instruments to oblivion. Composed of one chord, its late key modulation does not carry the proceedings to a higher level, but squeezes them closer to total chaos. The title track, "Si Para Usted" doesn't strike me as one of the stand-out recordings. I wonder if the secret to the song is some lyrical content I can't, in my ignorance, comprehend. The English translation of "si, para usted" is "if for you," a meaning that to me seems equally cryptic. "Rompe Cocorico" revisits the single chord non-progression, the chord stabbed repeatedly by a clav figure, punctuated by laser beam synths. "Baila Ven Y Baila," with its shouted choruses and guttural spoken verses, is the overseas cousin to "Mongoose" by New York psychedelic band Elephant's Memory, split in the middle by an extended wah solo.

The last batch of songs on Si, Para Usted are the most musically diverse. Here the Latin rhythm conventions function as a step into another kind of music altogether. "Pocito 11," which begins with a deceptively simple cowbell tattoo, evolves rapidly into a kind of sharp, precise jazz, harmonic complexity modulated by swift changes. "El Tino" is the aural equivalent of a nocturnal adventure along the lines of Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out." Slowly building horns and keyboard pattern pull the night down over the city--and the streetlights, the window lights, are ensconced in mystery.

"Sondeando," its rough sonic texture the result of an aged tape or bad mastering, is red meat for listeners like me--its hazy production emphasizes its exotic spark, its flutes evocative of a fantasy space that exists in Cuba and simultaneously exists all over the world, that headspace into which we all retreat to remind ourselves of the magic.

The final track, "Casina Y Epidecus," suggests a shining temple slowly revealed in a clearing after a long jungle journey, sitars and chimes in concert with the dawning dread and ecstasy, the somewhat menacing sounds overcome by the god-like voice of an omniscient narrator. Her secret and its meaning is lost as the album reaches its end.

Si, Para Usted is not necessarily a dance record. It doesn't rock particularly hard. It's not rich with hooks and catchy choruses. it isn't practical--it strains against expectations, it doesn't apply to a strict category of music. What makes the record so remarkable is its humanity. The musicians here, distilling their inspirations into Latin-accented funk rock, impart upon the listener the happy message that if you step out of your comfort zone and pay attention closely, you will find in the alien the universal, and that the heart of music will beat through any instrument at hand.