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Letters to Yeyito
Lessons from a Life in Music
Paquito D'Rivera, Rosario Moreno
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eBook - ePub
Letters to Yeyito
Lessons from a Life in Music
Paquito D'Rivera, Rosario Moreno
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About This Book
A captivating memoir from one of jazz's most beloved practitioners, fourteen-time Grammy winner Paquito D'Rivera's Letters to Yeyito is a fascinating tour of a life lived in music, and a useful guidebook for aspiring artists everywhere. Years after receiving a fan letter with no return address, Latin jazz legend Paquito D'Rivera began to write Letters to Yeyito in the hope of reaching its author, a would-be musician. In the course of advising his Cuban compatriot on love, life, and musicianship, D'Rivera recounts his own six-decade-long journey in the arts.After persevering under Castro's brand of socialism for years, D'Rivera defected from Cuba and left his beloved Havana for that other great city: New York. From there, the saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer launched a dazzlingâand still very activeâcareer that has included fourteen Grammys, world tours, and extensive collaboration with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Yo-Yo Ma, and other music legends who make cameos in these pages. Full of humor, entertaining anecdotes, expert advice, and the musician's characteristic exuberance, D'Rivera's story is one of life on the move and finding a home in music.
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MusikbiographienSherlock Holmes in Havana
Elementary, my dear Watson.
âArthur Conan Doyle
It was one of those sunny, windy Havana afternoons in April. In any other country just a bit further north, that might mean nothing more than temperatures somewhere between refreshing and warm. Depending on the subtle atmospheric variations of spring, we might even speak about some small, timid clouds that would cut a delicate white curtain of raindrops, graciously woven with the setting sunâs fine gold fibers (romantic, isnât it!). However, the Caribbean is a whole other story. April may be as hellish as August, or stormy enough to provoke a desperate request of Noah for the blueprints of his lifesaving vessel.
Now, on this particular day, after it had rained something akin to what had fallen on the Ark, there was so much sun in Havana I thought it could crack a rock. I had been recording all morning with Elena Burke at EGREM studios, on San Miguel Street between Campanario and Lealtad. When it rained, the national labelâs ancient studio had leaks that competed with Trevi Fountainâs gargoyles in Rome, and the air conditioning was hardly working perfectly.
Even so, it was much more pleasant inside than outside, where the scalding heat made it possible to fry an egg on the hood of a car (in the event you could find an egg in hungry and ruined Havana). I knew this because between songs we would go out on the terrace to poison our lungs with nicotine and the horrible stench wafting from the nearby bathrooms, whose lack of water contrasted with the incredible humidity.
The recording session had been long and laborious. The damn tape machine would get stuck every now and then, the tape would unravel, and Tony LĂłpez, the engineer, was at witâs end trying to make that piece of prehistoric electronics work. We were finally forced to stop. I left, ravenously hungry and in a foul mood. My stomach was screeching like the scratching old man Oscar ValdĂ©s had been doing on the gĂŒiro for one of the danzĂłnes we were taping for Elena. I got up, put my saxophone in its case, and left like a dog looking for a bone.
I had to make an urgent phone call, but my paranoia kept me from using the phone at the studio. I went downstairs, and, just as I got to the door, I glanced tentatively toward the silent phone waiting for me on a gray metallic desk. I thought Iâd better not, cautiously observing the man in the black beret behind the beat-up, grimy, ink-splattered desk reading a copy of the Granma newspaper. I didnât want anybody to have a clue about what I was up to and I was afraid that, even speaking in code, I might give away the secret, dangerous motive behind that call.
I forced a half smile and a wink to say goodbye to the man. When I got out to the narrow sidewalk, the rainstorm had stopped as quickly as it had begun, but instead of cooling things down, it had left a cloud of steam that felt like a Turkish bath. Now, with not a single cloud in that bluest of skies, the city was impregnated with the repugnant stench of burnt rubber. The humidity made my clothes stick to my skin; sweat ran down my face and fogged up my lenses.
I strolled toward the public phone on the wall outside the cafeteria at the corner of Campanario and checked to see that it was indeed, miraculously, working. I stress the miracle because finding a working phone in the capital in those days was like finding petrol (or water!) in your tub. The impoverished little eatery betrayed the anemic material emptiness that took up every inch of the once vibrant and noisy capital. Since there was a blackout, all of the neighborhoodâs radios had been silenced and the only sounds were from a hungry dog in the distance and the strident horn of one of the few buses left on Route 43âone of those that passed Neptuno Street once in a million years toward the far-off neighborhood of La Lisa, with people hanging off the doors and out the windows.
In spite of the dayâs blinding light, or perhaps for that very reason, the precarious little business was in shadows, and I was able to distinguish only the bright smile of the pretty, short young woman who attended to everyday nothingness from behind the well-worn counter. I thought I might choke from thirst, and, forgetting my important call for a moment, I practically begged the chubby girl for a glass of water.
She answered, her voice dripping with sarcasm, âWater? What planet are you living on, mi corazĂłn? Better yet, wouldnât you rather have a ham and cheese sangĂŒichito with a nice cold Coca-Cola?â
It had been years since anybody had offered me a sangĂŒichito, and the words Coca-Cola sounded in my ears like the echo of a distant past, leaving me entranced for a few seconds by the effects of my hunger and thirst. I could still see the image of my rosy-cheeked, smiling teacher Rosita, and my jaw went slack with the memory of her extending the sangĂŒichito and Coca-Cola theyâd give us as a snack at the elementary school I attended in Marianao.
I must have been drooling when a guffaw from the chubby girl came from the shadows to wake me from my dreams and remind me that Centro Habana only got water a couple of times a week, brought in these huge, beat-up trucks everybody called pipas. Whenever anybody saw one of those trucks and yelled, âWaaaaaater,â the neighborhood experienced something like the sailors who came over with Columbus must have experienced when Rodrigo de Triana, sitting atop the caravelâs mast, screamed, âLand ho!â
The chubby girl, whose name was Yudislexis (ah, those Cuban names!) offered me a worn plastic glass with a yellowish liquid whose chemical composition would have been a mystery even to NASA scientists. This âbrake fluid,â as everybody called it, was nearly always available at places like that to wash down some even more mysterious fritters people called âApollo 12 croquettes,â like the American spaceship, because they insisted on defying gravity and sticking to the roof of your mouth. The brake fluid would assist the tongue in scraping the viscous substance and help break it down. That day, the astral croquettes were also available in the cafeteria, but since the oil ration to fry them hadnât arrived yet, and it had been more than a week since the gas truck had come by, it was impossible to cook and serve them. It was a Kafkaesque situation, or magic realism, as GarcĂa MĂĄrquez would say, nodding his head as he lay by the pool at the impressive visitorâs mansion the government had at his disposal in Miramar.
After thanking Yudislexis for the brake fluid, I excused myself and, after a good look around, picked up the receiver on the public phone to make my urgent call.
âThe old man says you should get your ass over here and that your dresses are in the freezer.â
The young man on the other end was Andresito, AndrĂ©s Castroâs son, who, like his father, played trumpet. The âdressesâ he referred to were meat his father got under the table from the neighborhood butcher. The butcher was part of an underground network for illegal meats (beef, chicken, pork), which was controlled by the very Committee in Defense of the Revolution that oversaw the tenement called El Trueno, or The Thunder, one of the rougher parts of the neighborhood.
âAnd donât take too long. The electricityâs out until who knows when, and those dresses could spoil, you feel me?â Andresito added.
âOkay, Iâm on my way,â I said, hanging up the phone and laughing to myself as I tried to imagine the face of the police snitch listening in.
âHey, music man⊠Want some Perla paste?â asked Yudislexis.
âSome what?â I asked loudly.
âSsshhh, hey, lower your voice, baby. Weâre fucked if they hear us. Toothpaste, ten bills at the twinsâ place over at El Trueno. You know, those twins are something. They say that they stole a truck in daylight, right in front of the factory, and it was filled with bath soap, Perla toothpaste, Bebito cologne, and Snow White deodorant.â
âDid you say Snow White deodorant?â I asked, knowing full well that the deodorantâs brand nameâif in fact it was deodorantâwas a joke. âHey, sweet thing,â I said. âYou tell the twins at El Trueno they should spill some of that Bebito cologne around here. It stinks so bad I wouldnât be surprised if Snow Whiteâs dwarves had died and their cadavers were rotting all over Havana.â
The chubby gal laughed loudly. As she told me a story about her adolescent son, the result of a love affair with a Russian sailor, Yudislexis slowly but surely moved closer to me. A warm, salty breeze blew in from the sea and her long black hair softly caressed my face. Her exuberant and generous breasts brushed against my right arm, and I sincerely believed that Midas was a woman. Everything she touched with her magic tits turned to gold, making the misery all around disappear. In that moment, I could smell the deliciously fresh scent of the cologne combined with the delicate dew of her body; it had to be the same fragrance Iâd smell in paradise.
âItâs only ten pesos, papichuli,â she whispered in my ear, as she dropped something in my pocket. âAnd for ten more, we can resurrect all those dead dwarves, whaddaya say?â
But then we heard (and saw) Yudislexisâs boyfriendâa jealous, violent guyâabout a block away. The brutish Mongo Mandarria, which was his nom de guerre, was pulling a rustic wooden cart on two old skates cut in half. On the cart was a fifty-gallon steel tank he filled with water whenever the trucks got to his block.
âShit, itâs so damn hot,â I thought as I went down Campanario toward Ănimas, where the Castros lived. All the while I was trying to adjust the Bebito cologne bottle and the Perla toothpaste Yudislexis had shoved in my front jeans pocket. I thought to myself, âThis girlâs like an old stove; she gets you hot but doesnât cook.â She got her way after allânever gave me what I wanted and ended up selling me something. It seemed like Mongo Mandarria always showed up at the moment of truth, dragging that damn cart, noisier than General Zhukovâs tanks entering Berlin.
The heat and the humidity continued their assault, and the sax case on my back was weighing me down. For rather complicated reasons, I had to get rid of the original instrument case some time back. So a carpenter who specia...