Making Tracks - mingling of cultures in popular music - Brief Article

Sunset, Oct, 2001 by Josh Gosfield, Kim Holleman, Lisa McLaughlin

The world does not exist. At least not the world that radio and record stores would have you believe exists, where American music resides in one aisle and the music of the rest of the globe in another. Worlds collide, melodies mix, beats blend. Nigerian star Fela Kuti met with the Black Panthers before popularizing his radical Afro-beat music in the '60s; rocker Shakira was born in Colombia, but is launching a run at stardom from Miami in 2001. What follows is a look at Making Tracks--key moments when cultures combined to make fresh new music, from Bob Marley's trekking to London to Paul Simon's going to Graceland.

The Jamaican reggae band Bob Marley and the Wailers is stranded in London when its tour goes bust in 1971. Island Records chief Chris Blackwell makes a deal with the group. The result is the album Catch a Fire, which melds reggae spirituality with rock-'n'-roll attitude. In later years a range of acts, from rock guitarist Eric Clapton to hip-hop-soul singer Lauryn Hill, draws from the Wailers' work.

Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim combines jazz classical music and samba rhythms to help launch the bossa-nova craze of the 1950s and '60s.

In 1978 Mick Jagger and reggae star Peter Tosh record (You Gotta Walk and) Don't Look Back, a duet that the pair also performs on TV's Saturday Night Live, giving many Americans their first taste of authentic reggae.

Raised in Spanish Harlem and trained at Juilliard, Tito Puente fronts his Latin jazz band for more than 50 years. His charismatic, flamboyant performances and masterly playing of the saxophone, congas, bongos and timbales earn him the nickname El Rey--the king--of mambo. Puente is instrumental in defining Latin jazz, and at the time of his death in 2000, he has five Grammys and 119 albums to his credit. He has inspired countless musicians.

Ricky Martin's explosive performance of The Cup of Life at the 1999 Grammy Awards rockets him to international superstardom and gives rise to a surge of interest in Latin pop.

Seventeen-year-old Ritchie Valens' Spanish-language hit tops the U.S. charts and makes him the first Latin rock star, one month before he is killed in an air crash with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper in 1959.

In 1996 American blues guitarist Ry Cooder gathers some of the greatest veteran performers in Cuban music to collaborate on the album Buena Vista Social Club. The success of the best-selling, Grammy-winning recording spawns a documentary of the same name by Wim Wenders, as well as a worldwide tour, and brings the lifting, sensuously rhythmic music from the old Havana of the 1940 and '50s to an international audience.

Famed bandleader Desi Arnaz creates a frenzy for la conga in Miami before bringing Cuban music to TV audiences on the sitcom I Love Lucy in 1951.

FIDDLE FOLK

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, vital forces in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk-music scene, blaze a trail for Irish music in America and inspire a number of other singers, including Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand.

Rebels with many causes--including anti-Thatcherism, racial unity and the Sandinista uprising--members of the British band the Clash take the raw anger of 1970s punk and harness it to a political and aesthetic agenda. Dabbling in Jamaican dub, ska, rockabilly and gospel, they infuse each genre with its ideology and pave the way for radical bands like Rage Against the Machine.

OHM-LA-DI

Physically drained and spiritually spent, the Beatles journey to Rishikesh, India, in 1968 to study transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Inspired by Indian culture, the Fab Four write most of the 30 tracks for The White Album. The release of that album changes the sound of rock 'n' roll forever, opening the genre to more experimentation. John Lennon later says, "I did write some of my best songs while I was there."

POP PRIESTESS

Sinead O'Connor's 1987 debut record, The Lion and the Cobra, masterly combines traditional Irish rhythms, Celtic mysticism, rap beats, folk minimalism and angst-ridden rock.

GYPSY JAZZ

Django Reinhardt, a Belgian Gypsy with only two working fingers on his left hand, becomes the first European to influence jazz in America. From the 1930s onward, he is one of jazz's most dazzling soloists.

SHINING A LIGHT ON SUN CITY

E Street Band member Little Steven gathers his boss, Bruce Springsteen, and a number of other rock and rap superstars, including U2 Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Jimmy Cliff RUN-D.M.C., to record the 1985 protest record Sun City. The project strengthens the coalition of musicians boy-cotting South Africa. It also helps combat color lines at home by offering one of the first videos on MTV to feature rappers heavily.

SMOOTH

Santana blends blues and rock, as well as Mexican and Afro-Cuban rhythms, to create a new sound and establish a career that spans more than 30 years.

SILK ROAD

The score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon wins a 2001 Oscar. "My music is to dream without boundaries," says composer Tan Dun in his acceptance speech. "Tonight with you, I see boundaries being crossed."