Passage III

HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Mambo King" by Oscar Hijuelos (©2001 by The New York Times).

In 1966, at the age of 15, I was a member of a rock group in the South Bronx. We used to practice our songs in the basement of an apartment building off 169th Street and Third Avenue.

Once or twice a week I would make the trip to the Bronx from Manhattan with my father, and while, down below, we youngsters pursued our noisy musical education, through buzzy amplifiers and $10 microphones, the adults gathered upstairs in a third-floor apartment and ate, talked and listened to music. On our breaks, we would head upstairs to grab some food, and in that congenial atmosphere, we mixed with the adults, who seemed amused by our preoccupation with rock. While we chatted and ate, their music played out of a stereo console—Cuban charangas and sons, Puerto Rican plenas and the music of the great mambo orchestras, led by the likes of Machito, Noro Morales, Mario Bauza and the upstart bandleader, already a star, Tito Puente.

Of course, as teenagers smitten by American pop culture, we sort of only half-listened to that music; we considered Latin music: archaic—the music of our immigrant parents. It was the kind of music we had been hearing every day of our lives in the city, on the streets, in people's living rooms, out of car radios. “Time for something new" is what went through our heads. Latin music was so much a part of growing up in New York that we, or at least I, took it for granted. What was happening now, the music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and so many others, was what we aspired to.And yet, on one of those afternoons when our bandleader, breathlessly late for rehearsal, burst into our dingy practicing room and announced: "Tito Puente’s playing a block party! Come on, let's go," we swarmed out behind him, anxious about missing something special.

The block party was up on East Fordham Road, around Roosevelt High School. We arrived while the band was performing one of Tito's classics, "El Cayuco” or “Oye Cómo Va" or ”Ran Kan Kan." A crowd filled the street—vendors were selling hot dogs, pasteles, chorizo sandwiches, sodas; women danced; most of the men too, in T-shirts OI guayaberas, weary from their week of work but happy to be there. It was a hot day, and we worked our way through all the people toward the stage. There, on the plumber's-pipe platform, were a trombonist, a saxophone player, a few trumpeters, a pianist, a fellow banging the congas and bongos, then a bassist, a man playing a standard drum kit and Tito Puente himself, drumsticks in hand, poised before the thin kettledrums that were his timbales, beside the vibraphone on which he would also perform the sublime “Hong Kong Mambo."

When you're a young musician—or think you are—you watch everything a real musician does.So I observed Tito Puente carefully. There he was, performing regally, as if his working-class audience were kings and queens, as if that street were the greatest venue in all of New York. He was already a legend, so much a part of the history of New York and of Latin music (for he had been a hallmark performer in the glory days of the Palladium ballroom in the 1950's) that it would have been easy for him to slough the music off. But he played his heart out. He froze time, dissipated heat and cheered hearts.

He went into jams—long, sustained mambo sections, during which his instrumentalists improvised一and played his drums as if there were no tomorrow. He sweated, dabbing his brow with a kerchief, and off-handedly introduced his own formidable compositions if they were simply little tunes. That music flew as toward us like elongating barrels of mischief, like singing angels, like mysterious sonic hieroglyphics, all transmitted: from some sacred musical place for our amusement. From the time we arrived, he and his band played for another hour, and not once did he give the impression that he wanted the beautifully, when the band had finished its last encore, when everybody, party to be over. Most even the kids hanging off the rooftops, were chanting “Tito!" he bowed to the audience, sent kisses flying and then began to walk off stage. That's when our lead singer, Santiago, who had passed the concert jumping up and down in place, scrambled toward him. He caught Tito's ear with the phrase "Soy borinqueño!" — ”I'm Puerto Rican" — and Tito, nodding, called him aside and listened to Santiago's story—19 years:old and I want to be a great musician like you and what I, eavesdropping, heard from Tito were the words, "I'll look out for you, kid. Y exitos“—much success.