pt at large

7th Annual Roy Carrier Tribute Dance

7th Annual Roy Carrier Tribute Dance Organized by Troy (Dikki Du) Carrier and Dick Brainard

Last year's Roy Carrier Tribute Dance  http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2015/12/6th-annual-roy-carrier-tribute-dance-at-slims-yi-ki-ki.html

Seventh Annual Roy Carrier Tribute Dance
Feed N Seed Lafayette
106 N Grant Street
Lafayette, 70501

December 29, 2016

Southwest Louisiana is a petrie dish for heritage music. Mainly Cajun and Zydeco but a big enough dish to include honky tonk, country swing, even some rock n roll. The roots of Cajun and zydeco music are generations deep.

The Carrier family of Opelousas has been steeped in the zydeco tradition since before WWI when the Carrier Brothers played “La La” music at house parties, another piece of traditional life in the region. Over the years, "La La" morphed into zydeco music and, like Cajun music, is played in scores of cities and towns in southwest Louisiana.

In 1980, Roy Carrier, a cousin of the Carrier brothers, opened The Offshore Lounge in Lawtell, way out in the country. Every week, he invited young musicians to play with his band The Night Rockers, helping them learn their craft with the encouragement of the veterans. Somewhere along the way, Roy enrolled his sons Chubby and Dikki Du to join his band. Each son now fronts his own band, something that Papa Carrier would indeed be proud of.

Dikki Du, who, with Dick Brainard organizes the annual tribute, began playing the rub board at age 9 when Roy’s brother couldn’t get to the show. Nineteen years later, Dikki Du is still at it, as is his elder brother Chubby, now both accordion players.

Tonight’s tribute features Dikki Du and The Zydeco Krewe; Double Trouble, a young zydeco band fronted by twin brothers; The Corey Ledet Zydeco Band; and Jeffery Broussard and The Creole Cowboys, all well-known bands in these parts.

You may have never heard of zydeco or Cajun music. For many down here in southwest Louisiana, it’s mother’s milk that nourishes, an oasis where you can leave the troubles of the world behind, and offers a place to meet others who share the joy of listening to and dancing to the music.

Feed and Seed...

Members of Double Trouble; Jeffery Broussard (red shirt, son of pioneering zydeco accordionist Delton Broussard); Dikki Du Carrier; Corey Ledet on stage...gives us a chance to hear how zydeco music evolves over two generations. Speaking of heritage music, Corey  Ledet lists Clifton Chenier, Rockin’ Dopsie, Leon Sam of The Sam Brothers Five, Buckwheat Zydeco, Beau Jocque, John Delafose, and Boozoo Chavis as his major influences. Heritage? Check out these links and you'll see the growth of zydeco from its beginnings and be amazed at the family connections - fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, and in-laws in this unique community.

Laura Carrier, pt and Corey Ledet with Laura...Laura and friends prepared tasty gumbo and red beans and rice that fueled dancers all night long.

Jeffery Broussard and band; Jeffery's son on rub board...another generation on the way...

The band is primed; the whole place is jammed...

Wildly talented fiddle player D'Jalma Garnier gets a chance to shine...

The house is rockin'...

Dikki Du and Dick Brainard invite everyone to the stage for a group photo.

PS

Willis Prudhomme, at 85, joined Zydeco Trouble onstage for a song. As accordionist and vocalist, Willis had his own band in 1970, before most on stage tonight were born. His style was more traditional rhythm & blues-ish with plenty of waltzes. By tracing his history as a son of a poor sharecropper, his own experience as a soybean and rice farmer, learning the rudiments of playing an accordion from Cajun accordionist Nathan Abshire, playing with legends John Delafose and Leo Thomas, fathers of two of today's most popular zydeco accordion players, you can see the arc of this regional genre that now plays before audiences in the USA and abroad.

Every member of every band on stage tonight is within not six but two degrees of separation from other musicians in southwest Louisiana...heritage music by family ties and friendship.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Cuba Chronicles: Buena Vista Social Club Reincarnated - The Videos

The Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. "Chan Chan", the opening number of the revue that will feature singers, dancers, musicians, ensemble and solo,  and often involve the audience. OK it's a little touristy but lighthearted and a ton of fun. Compay Segundo, one of the original members of the Buena Vista Social Club movie, performed Chan Chan in Paris in 1999! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q61JRKpWg-s

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15.  At the 1:29 mark the voluptuous singer walks into the audience and begins to dance with a surprised patron - and keeps right on singing! -much to the delight of the audience, while musicians and dancers perform on stage. Everybody gets involved in the show!

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. Everybody gets involved!

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. An 80-year-young singer shows that perhaps music is the fountain of youth! Music on this island is a language all its own and personifies the spirit of the people and the country.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. A feisty drag queen takes to the runway.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15.  A vocalist performs a lovely ballad, accompanied by the troupe behind him on stage. The entertainers are giving us a big time Cuban revue, with an ever changing variety of singing, dancing, musicianship.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. This drummer has to be the crown, and perhaps clown,  prince of percussion in Havana...you'll see...

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. I didn't manage to film the funniest part of his act but this drummer was a showman extraordinaire... a born showboat.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. "Is anyone here from Mexico?" the MC asks. Lots of fun ensues when a Mexican fellow steps up on the stage.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. The MC makes sure we all get into the act...and we love it.  In a few minutes, we'll all be on stage!

Videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Cuba Chronicles: Buena Vista Social Club Reincarnated

Buena Vista Social Club: Incarnation at Café Taberna in Havana

September 30, 2015

The Buena Vista Social Club…everyone on the Road Scholar tour knew about an iconic collection of music made famous by the album produced by Ry Cooder. Produced on the fly in 1997, it hit the shores of America like a tsunami with the quintessential and definitive beat of pre-revolutionary Cuba.

For a few years, songs from the album got airplay on an amazing array of radio stations. If you weren’t aware of it by then, you got under its spell in 1999 with the release of the documentary film of the same name. For months, the lyrical, playful, nearly mystical arrangement of reeds, strings, piano and percussion dominated my inner airwaves. Check this out. http://www.buenavistasocialclub.com/video/

Most of the original artists have passed away but there is indeed a place called The Buena Vista Social Club in Havana. As our bus headed back to the Melia Cohiba Hotel after a full day of touring, our unflappable group leader Carole Cloonan reminded us it was our first night with no planned itinerary, that we were on our own.

From the back of the bus comes, “How about we go to the Buena Vista Social Club!”

What happened next is now legend amongst us. Cloonan pauses. Moments of silence as we rumble down the Malécon, the 100-year-old seawall to our right, and crumbling, still colorful, mostly abandoned residences on the other.

“Well…it’s not included in the tour…but I suppose we could consider it educational…” She pauses again. “If you can be in the lobby ready to go at 6:30, we’ll board the bus and go to the show.” The cheers that erupted made a busload of AARPers sound like a bunch of excited teenagers.

Thirty minutes after we returned from nine hours of touring, there we were ready to go.

The original Buena Vista Social Club was widely known for it’s music and closed in the 1940s. These days, the Café Taberna markets itself by that name, doing its best to trade on the aura of the original club. After I learned of this reincarnation, I couldn’t have cared less. We were treated to a full blown Cuban music club revue. If it got a little touristy, who cared. Certainly not the hundred or so spectators from South America and Europe (and one couple from India with a woman wearing a traditional sari) and us, the only Americans in the joint.

After climbing a set of stairs, we walk into a modest sized room with a stage runway that projects into the middle of the room and is surrounded by tables filled with diners who’ve paid 35 CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso, equivalent today of about 35 USD) for dinner, drinks and the floor show. I've dreamed about breathing the air and feeling the weight of Cuban history inside such a place for years. Just sitting down in the high backed wooden chair, taking in the sight of the ruby red curtains and anticipating the show, I barely hold back tears of joy. It's not the only time it happens in the next 7 days.

I have no idea who the performers were. I do know we were entertained in grand Cuban style. Musicians, dancers, singers, an MC with a flair for the dramatic, even a drag queen with a deep voice and saucy dance moves. A few minutes in, I was transported back to the aura of the original club and happy as hell.

In the coming years, Cubans will have the first chance in their history to create their own destiny from the grass roots to the head of the government. The spirit of the people seems bound to the rhythms and words of their music, a nearly sacred art form impervious to politics. Perhaps its spirit will help Cubans resolve to remain free of outside influence and chart their own future.

 
Dinner is served on the second floor of a surprisingly intimate space; the runway in the middle of the room will soon be filled with performers...

a singer steps off the end of the runway to dance with an unsuspecting, but delighted, patron; the energy level is high.

Solo singers often parade down the stage with a range of saucy songs and traditional ballads; at the end of the show, the ensemble asks the audience to step up to the stage - in minutes a conga line starts at the stage and snakes around the room.

 Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

VIDEOS

UPDATE: Video from 1997 with several members of the original Buena Vista Social Club movie, featuring Compay Segundo, an absolute JOY to watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIzUc9t7oS8

 

Cuba Chronicles: The Perlis of Post Castro Cuba

An ongoing chapter that will post links to stories deliberating the cultural consequences of the impact of tourism, especially American, on Cuban culture.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/columns/2016/11/26/fidel-castro-footprints/LLk3BHpDa4HW0pf9emzNTI/story.html

Why Fidel Castro mattered. The last paragraph is sums up 50 years of Cuban history. "Fidel Castro mattered for the world and for his people. For some, he was a demon; for others, a hero. He once compared himself to Don Quixote, righting wrongs, fighting against giants. Some of those giants, for him as for Don Quixote, were imaginary. Many of those efforts led to senseless death and cruelty. Many of those endeavors also stopped South African apartheid and sent health care personnel to serve without charge in Haiti. He mattered above all because it is difficult to render a single, simple assessment of his worth as a human being."

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/graphics/2015/07/cuba-on-the-cusp/

A MUST READ: "Cuba has spent more than five decades largely isolated from America, yet unable to escape its shadow. Cubans freely admit that the ideology and economic constraints of the past 50 years have left the socialist country with a fractured economy. At the same time, they’re fiercely proud of their gains in education and health care, and are determined to safeguard the soul of the country they love. This rare moment of transition, as diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States resume, provides an opportunity to see old and new Cuba, past and future, through the same lens."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2016/05/20/vin-diesel-chanel-spark-fast-and-furious-debate-cuba/HJKLYazNJW5LImaYgSALAO/story.html

Mixed emotions about who will benefit from increased tourism

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=122290

"HAVANA TIMES — Fifty years after it was implemented to protect refugees who were escaping the Communist regime, the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) has been subject to serious questioning and its permanence could be on the table as a result of immigration restrictions that president-elect Donald Trump promised during his campaign." A detailed commentary.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fidel-castro-apologists-is-your-position-principled_us_583de476e4b048862d73fbd0

"As the son of Cuban immigrants it is nearly impossible to avoid having a visceral reaction to all of the reports and articles being released in the wake of Fidel Castro’s death. Admittedly I have tried to avoid reading anything that would appear even remotely objective on the subject. Although I take pride in working hard to understand perspectives that differ from mine, it is simply impossible for me to accept that there can be anything but repulsion for a man that by all accounts ended the lives of thousands of his own citizens." A detailed denouncement of Fidel's reign.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/26/boston-area-cubans-remember-castro-with-mixed-and-complex-emotions/pKUDFjJbiDBdlOIBtouqyH/story.html

"A bottle of sparkling cider had waited for two decades at El Oriental de Cuba restaurant in Jamaica Plain for the day Fidel Castro would be no more. Saturday, the cork finally popped." Exiled Cubans rejoice.

http://translatingcuba.com/recipe-for-forgetting-fidel-castro-14ymedio-yoani-sanchez/

http://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-economy-idUSL2N17P0KJ

Analysis of evolving Cuban economy (April 2016) Excerpt below.

"The new food rules will make some items more accessible to more Cubans, reducing some prices at hard currency stores by around 20 percent, including for chicken products, hamburger meat and cooking oil. At peso stores, rice and chickpeas will become cheaper.

Local residents welcomed the measure but said it was not nearly enough."

"It is good they reduced prices a little, but this measure does not completely meet the needs of a large segment of the population,", said Migdalia Calderon, a retiree from the the education ministry with a pension of 280 pesos a month, equivalent to just under $12.00."

Government attempt to lower food prices.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2016/12/08/cuba-surge-tourism-keeps-food-off-residents-plates/GTMCgzKaMhPVPi3wpPAxtJ/story.html
Distressing fallout from increased tourism in past few months...excerpt

'But the record arrival of nearly 3.5 million visitors to Cuba last year has caused a surging demand for food, causing ripple effects that are upsetting the very promise of Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

Tourists are quite literally eating Cuba’s lunch. Thanks in part to the US embargo, but also to poor planning by the island’s government, goods that Cubans have long relied on are going to well-heeled tourists and the hundreds of private restaurants that cater to them, leading to soaring prices and empty shelves.

Without supplies to match the increased appetite, some foods have become so expensive that even basic staples are becoming unaffordable for regular Cubans.'

to be updated as stories emerge.

pt

Cuba Chronicles: The-Merger,Three Artists, An Artistic Brain Trust

The-Merger
Ave 31 # 6602 e/ 66 y 66a.
Playa. Ciudad Habana. Cuba
September 30, 2015

You probably have to travel all the way to Havana to find a gallery like this. Three artists actually put their individual egos on the back burner and put the production of fine art bubbling vigorously on the front burner. They began collaborating in 2009, found that the resulting work was pretty damn good by their standards and those of the discerning public and they stuck with the program.  

Sculpture is their main medium but they play with watercolor, acrylic on canvas, gouache, drawings, silkscreen, tapestry and photography before committing a piece to black steel, stainless steel, bronze, aluminum, fiberglass, translucent silicone,  glass, marble, and wood. That’s quite a vortex of creativity at this small studio at Avenue 31, also known as The Vedado.

The three musketeers in the collective are Alain Pino Hernandez, Mario Miguel González Fernández, and Niels Molerio Luis, all in their mid 40s. Hernandez graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana; Mario Fernandez and Niels Molerio are self-taught. Art is supported in Cuba. In 1959, printmaking became a subject in the art education system, becoming an independent specialty later. The legacy probably benefitted Fernandez and Molerio. Their sculptures are signed as “The-Merger” with their three names inscribed. The public knows who they are. Pretty amazing.

The Merger artists have permission to travel abroad, says our Cuban guide Yohandra “Jo” Perez. They have exhibited all over the world and are part of permanent collections in America. Their works in progress show a voracious appetite for subject matter, style, and materials to play with.

The arts are a big deal in Cuba. For example, men can now aspire to become members of the ballet. If a young child has a special aptitude for art, his/her parents can have the child apply for art school in elementary school. They are given an aptitude test and if they pass they may enter. In addition to learning art, they also learn math, science and other basic subjects but their focus is on art.

The same thing applies to other disciplines, our guide says – music for example. Students in the music program study the basics of music, along with the core subjects, in high school they study classical and jazz and learn to improvise. At the University of Havana they continue. The days are long and demanding and some students drop out. Students may be in an arts program from the age of six years old to 17 years old.

As in galleries the world over, interpreting the art is often a personal voyage but there’s no denying the beauty of the sculpture we see (only a portion of their output).

I realize later that the inspiration for their out-of-the-box creativity comes from every Cuban’s experience of having to make do with what they have. From scarcity, they have become resilient and resourceful. When something breaks, whether a car part or washing machine or bicycle, there are no hardware stores to buy replacements. They fabricate something that will do the job. And it works

As with the Casa de Abuelos and Muraleandro we will visit later in our tour, they often do it as a community.

The way these three artists create is a reflection of how Cubans live their lives. I suppose you could call it an elegant socio-political statement. 

The range of media shows the artists' resolve to stretch their artistic boundaries.

Work is carefully placed inside - and in the small courtyard outside.

 
Even jewelry is part of the work; gallery director Sandra Hav explains how work is done.

 
Stainless steel, bronze, aluminum, fiberglass, translucent silicone, glass, marble...these artists love to mix it up.

and the finished product, as in the tool above, reflects Cuban need to re-purpose and reinvent.

 
"Revolución": The stainless steel and quartz glass sculpture was the show stopper for me - an ingenious metaphor using a common tool  to show how the revolution cut two ways in Cuba, liberated them from one form of government and subjected them to another.

Black and white photos of Revolución in The-Merger catalogue.

Thank you, gallery director Sandra Hav!

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.