No cantes nada sucio! - música latina, historia - TT: Don't Sing Anything Dirty! - TA: latin music, history

Latin Beat Magazine, Oct, 2000 by Cristobal Diaz Ayala

Since its beginning, the American recording industry took a keen interest in the market provided by ethnic groups forming the melting pot of the young nation, as potential customers. After all, the first best seller of the new media had been an unknown tenor, Enrico Caruso. According to a 1909 introduction by Pekka Gronow, as quoted on Ethnic Recordings, the Columbia Phonograph Company urged its dealers in the company's house magazine to "remember that in all large cities and in most towns there are sections where people of one nationality or another congregate in 'colonies'...

"Most of these people keep up their habits and prefer to speak the language of the old country. Speak to them in their own tongue, if you can, and see their faces light up with a smile that lingers and hear the streak of language they will give you in reply. To these people, records in theft own language have an irresistible attraction, and they will buy them readily."

And again, two years later:

"Don't wait until you have sold every American-born individual in your locality a Columbia before giving the one-time foreigner attention. You will probably find a good deal of much easier business among the people of foreign nationality."

But those dealers soon found out that in order to convince foreigners to buy the new talking machines or phonographs, you had to offer them some of their own music. That's why pioneer companies such as Edison, Victor, Zonophone and Columbia launched, very early on, an ethnic recording program that, thank God, was documented in Dick Spottswood's 7 volumes, "Ethnic Music on Records, 1893 to 1942," published in 1990. They started using the foreign talent living in the States but very soon, at the very beginning of the century, they were sending recording teams to the nearby Caribbean nations and Mexico.

As a new industry, it encountered many problems to be solved, but the foreign market had some of its own, the main one being the language, a mystery for the recording personnel. Gronow, the source mentioned before, tells us about it: "When Columbia engineers recorded the Cajun accordionist Dewey Segura in New Orleans in 1929, they told him: 'We don't know what you're singing, we ask you just one thing: Don't sing anything dirty.'"

Actually, Caribbean musicians did not sing dirty in these early recordings; but they certainly sang some bizarre things!

For example, they sang in African languages, mixed with Spanish, in many sones, including the one titled A la cuata co y co by Sexteto Boloña recorded in New York, circa 1926...

Me tengo que hacer un ebbó

con coco, maiz y jutia

Un gallo pa Yemayá

A la cuata co y co

Oya sile, oya deo

A la cuata co y co.

I have to take a liturgical bath

with coconut, corn and jutía

(a small rodent)

And a cock for Yemayá

(a goddess)

Son of Oya son of Oya

(another goddess)

Let's go half and half

Had a Cuban recording corporation recorded this, most certainly it would have been censored. But the Cuban government did not dare to prohibit the circulation of a Brunswick record. The hillbilly Cuban singers or guajiros took more liberties in their puntos guajiros. This form is probably the oldest original Cuban music, dating from the eighteenth century. Its ten-line verses deal with feelings of love towards one's woman, family or country, but they also praised the efforts of Cuban patriots during their struggle of independence against Spanish rule. As such, it was one form of protest song. After Cuba gained independence in 1902, the punto criticized Cuban governments, and since there was an American intervention from 1898 to 1902 and a second one in 1904, they also criticized the North American government's policies, as illustrated in the following punto, "Alza la vista al oriente recorded in 1906 by Antonio Morejón in an Edison cylinder:

Con cuanto amargo dolor

Pregunto yo en el momento (bis)

¿,Cuáles son los pensamientos

del gobierno interventor?

Contestadme por favor

no lo sometan a orgullo

que es muy triste el murmullo

respecto al americano

y ya es hora que al cubano

se le conceda lo suyo.

With quite a bitter pain

I ask at this moment

Which are the plans

of the intervention government?

Please answer me

don't let pride detain you

Because it is sad the rumor

pertaining to the American

and it is about time that the

Cubans

get what is rightfully theirs.

This expressive scheme was also used by many Puerto Rican musicians in New York, who recorded patriotic songs regarding the island's political status. Probably, the companies did find out what was going on sooner or later, but continued to allow it due to the United States' democratic tradition and history of freedom of speech.

Thus, what might have been a cultural limitation, was indeed a way for dozens of ethnic groups to perpetuate an important segment of their musical heritage. Indeed, the presentation of culture was not in the minds of the recording industry moguls, but fortunately, that was an important by-product of the thousands of 78s recorded at that time.

The manufacturers had some questions already answered: why they had to record (to sell talking machines and records), when (as soon as possible), where (in the States, if possible, or anywhere else) and how, (with the equipment available, or portable ones, in the case of overseas recordings). But they still had two questions to solve: what and who to record. At those times there were no A & R executives (perhaps fortunately) so talent scouting was probably left to the ethnic merchants distributing the phonographs of Edison, Victor, Columbia, or whatever. At least that's the way it was with Victor in Cuba, with Humara y Lastra Corporation, a general store that was their distributor. Probably the artists themselves chose what to record, and judging by the results, the system worked pretty well.