Tito Puente slated for five Indonesian concerts

Tito Puente slated for five Indonesian concerts

By Paul W. Blair

JAKARTA (JP): Perez Prado? Machito? Tito Rodriguez? Xavier
Cugat? Desi Arnaz? Tito Puente, now a super-energetic 72, has
outlived them all to become Latin music reigning monarch.

Widely known as El Rey, he has been dubbed King of Salsa, King
of the Mambo and King of the Timbales. Along the way, he has
recorded well over 100 record albums, won four Grammy Awards and
even had his star added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Now he is
in Indonesia with his band to begin a three-nation Southeast
Asian tour.

Last night's concert at Hotel Equatorial was the first of five
scheduled for Indonesia. Tonight, the group plays at Bandung's
Hotel Preanger. On Monday, Aug. 11, the venue is Hotel Santika in
Yogyakarta. On Tuesday, Aug. 12, the band appears at the Shangri-
La in Surabaya. Their last Indonesian stop is the Taj Mahal in
Bali next Wednesday, Aug. 13. Then it is on to the Philippines
for two shows and to Singapore for a single concert, on the
evening of Sunday, Sept. 17.

Born in New York's Spanish Harlem district, Puente grew up in
a Puerto Rican family as Tito, an abbreviation of Ernestito
(itself the diminutive of Ernesto, his given name). After a stint
in the U.S. Navy, he studied composition and arranging at the
Juilliard School of Music and eventually formed an ensemble
called The Piccadilly Boys that soon become the Tito Puente
Orchestra.

During the 1950s, as various Tito Puente groups helped fuel
the national craze for mambos and chachachas, they also served as
training schools for many of the sidemen who would go on to
become Latin music stars themselves: Mongo Santamaria, Willie
Bobo, Charlie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, Johnny Pacheco and others.

At some point in the early 1970s, the word salsa began to be
used (first by publicists and disc jockeys, then by the general
public) as a general catch-all term for all spicy up-tempo Latin
music, no matter what the source or style. Puente is one of many
musicians who says he is not entirely comfortable with so broad a
category ("When I hear someone talk about hot sauce, man," he
told one interviewer, "it just makes me hungry.") but admits he
is pleased that Latin music is finally reaching a broader
international audience outside the Latin community.

He is, incidentally, still collecting royalty checks for the
version of his tune Oye Como Va recorded by Carlos Santana back
in 1970.

By dint of his outgoing nature, Puente has become a familiar
face and personality even outside of music. He had a featured
role in the movie The Mambo Kings and he is one television talk-
show guest who can always be counted on to come up with lively
anecdotes with little prompting. His current publicity photo,
instead of showing him playing an instrument, merely depicts him
in a pose not unlike that of a stage magician preparing to dazzle
an audience.

Puente has always been best known for his exciting
improvisation on the paired bottomless drums called timbales,
from which he leads the band. Yet his work on vibraphone is
equally important to his group's trademark sound. Though he is
not a virtuoso vibes soloist who aims to impress listeners with
speed, his playing always adds color and excitement to those band
arrangements which include it.

Some of his best playing ever is currently available, even in
Indonesia, on a series of albums recorded by the group he calls
his Latin Jazz All-Stars for the Concord Picante label. Even with
just six horns (half the number in the typical jazz big band) the
ensemble playing is always rich and full, a tribute to the
imaginative arrangements throughout. What's more, Puente's
current group is full of soloists who bristle with good ideas.

In addition to originals, composed by himself and others in
the band, he is making it a point to adapt tunes from the
standard repertoire by other jazz musicians, among them Charlie
Parker, Charlie Mingus, Horace Silver, Benny, Thelonious Monk and
John Coltrane. The 1993 CD called Royal T even includes a
revitalized version of Stompin' at the Savoy, a reminder of
Puente's own long-running success at New York's famous Palladium
dance hall. One of the catchiest tracks on the 1994 CD called
Master Timbalero is his transformation of the old Japanese song
Sakura Sakura into a slinky bit of business called Cherry Blossom
Bossa Nova.

"Sometimes jazz can be boring," he told DownBeat magazine in
1991. "But I like to give it a new twist. Latin music can be
boring, too, because the harmony tends to be nothing but dominant
and tonic. But you take an exciting progressive melodic line,
then combine it with rhythms that grab you -- like Dizzy
Gillespie did years ago with the conga drummer Chano Pozo on
Manteca (I think this is a song) -- that's the marriage we're
after. And you've got to know about jazz to play these things."

No matter where in the world he performs it these days,
Puente's music is, to use the familiar clich, very New York: at
once exuberant and precise, always stylish and never without a
pronounced strut, even on the slowest and most languorous tunes.
Moreover, because the pulse is ever-present, virtually every
number is one that can easily be danced to.

With Tito Puente on his current Asian swing is a ten-member
ensemble that includes several of the top-flight musicians who
have been featured on his most recent Concord Picante albums:
trumpeter Ray Vega, saxophonists Bobby Percelli and Mario Rivera
(an excellent jazz soloist on piccolo, by the way), pianist Sonny
Bravo, bassist Bobby Rodriguez, conga drummer Jose Madera and
bongo player Johnny Rodriguez. Also onstage will be singer
Yolanda Duke.

Bill Saragih, Indonesia's own multi-threat jazzman
(piano/vibes/flute/saxophone/ vocals), has been recruited as MC
for the group's Indonesian appearances and will no doubt add
considerably to the merriment. The promoter also guarantees that
dancing space will be available for those who feel compelled to
move their bodies to the beat.