Word: players
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...dented amp, surging until the drummer can't help joining in with the five-beat clave that is the backbone of all music here. And then the camera swings to the timbalero with a pink star dyed into his fade, cracking into the rhythm, and here comes the bass player--whose father and grandfather were famous singers with Orquesta Aragón--now he's thumping the ones and threes. This thing is really moving now; the horns punch in, and the camera pans across the room to the three singers by the door, with Oscar in the middle, improvising over...
...known Oscar Muñoz, the lead singer, for a long time. In 1999, in the middle of a short and ill-fated career as a saxophone player, I was one of a wave of American musicians who made the pilgrimage to Havana. I was a worse player than most, but luck was with me--I quickly fell in with Oscar and a traditional band called El Septeto Tipico de la Habana. I played out the summer at their regular gigs in the mansion district called Vedado, west of the old city...
...survive. On Avenue G, the roqueros gather to get high and watch rock videos on makeshift outdoor screens. On the Malecón in front of a gas station, a band called Aria thrashes out garage rock for a small crowd outside while upstairs at the Jazz Café a saxophone player named César López heats up the stage with squealing Ornette Coleman riffs. More ominous to the salseros is the Riviera, Meyer Lansky's citadel to Vegas chic in Havana. The Cuban-music venue inside is shuttered, but in the front bar, there's house music mmph-ing loudly...
...tracked Eddy, the flute player, to an apartment in Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city. He hasn't seen his family in two years. Every Tuesday he goes to the immigration office to try to get temporary visas to bring them to Mexico. But the Mexican bureaucrats keep asking for bribes. And he's not sure how his wife would even adjust--she's too communist, he says, laughing. She would miss her friends and co-workers in Cuba too much. For her part, she told me when I visited her in Santa Clara that she always knew it would...
...Munich. He says that only loyalty to the group brought him back home. But as soon as they got back, the band absconded to Mexico. Some say Hanry started drinking after that; he says he was just disgusted with the betrayals. Whatever the backstory, Hanry, a powerful and precise player in his prime, left music altogether for a few years...