He has a reputation as a strict disciplinarian in the studio and
a savvy scholar who takes his music seriously—very seriously.
Even during a long-distance conference call from his Miami home, and
through an interpreter 4,000 miles away in San Francisco, it's clear
that bassist and bandleader Israel "Cachao" Lopez imbues
his music with a deep spirituality, speaking about "lost"
Afro-Cuban dance rhythms the way a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist
might describe the hidden codes or missing fragments of our collective
DNA.
He is, after all, the original mambo king, a string player, composer,
and bandleader whose monumental contributions to Latin music include
the chachachá and the jam-style descarga.
In 1938, Cachao—now 86 and enjoying a decade-long resurgence
of interest in his music—cowrote, along with brother and cellist
Orestes Lopez, the danzon called "Mambo," which
exiled Cuban writer G. Cabrera Infante calls the ür-mambo
or the mother of all mambos. The contagious song was a smash hit that
launched a dance craze reaching its peak in the 1950s when such brash
young bandleaders as Perez Prado, Machito, and Tito Puente drew hordes
of enthusiastic fans to the Palladium in New York and other steamy
dance halls.
The mambo—which originated in Africa, but is based on European
dances—is still very much with us today. Columbia University
ethnomusicologist Isabelle Leymarie notes that it can be heard in
modern salsa music as a theme played in unison by the rhythm section
and serving as a transition between two improvised passages.
And thanks to actor Andy Garcia, through a chance encounter at age
15 with the obscure Cachao album Jam Sessions in Miniature
(Descargas en Miniature) and an uncanny case of kismet, the
bassist is still helping to keep the mambo on the airwaves and the
dance floors.
In 1990, while on a break from the filming of The Godfather III,
Garcia—a Cuban native who has lived in the United States since
age five—heard Cachao playing at a dance concert in San Francisco.
He found himself unexpectedly taken by his longtime music idol. What
neither Cachao nor Garcia knew was that Garcia's father was an intimate
friend the bassist hadn't seen in nearly 40 years. Later, Garcia told
his father about the encounter and his plans to pay tribute to this
Cuban music master by making a documentary film. Garcia's father asked
the name of the musician. Garcia replied, "Cachao."
His father smiled and asked, "Where is that son of a gun?"
Garcia was astonished. It turned out that in the late '50s his father
used to book Cachao, then a member of the Arcano y sus Maravillas
Orchestra, at Sunday dances held at the Liceo Social Club in Havana.
"I had probably heard Cachao rehearsing at the Liceo while sitting
on my father's knees at the age of five," Garcia recalls in his
liner notes to Cachao's latest CD, Ahora Sí! (Univision),
"ten years before that fateful encounter with that crazy album
cover with its smiling genius."
Cachao has experienced a rebirth since then.
In 1993, Garcia produced the documentary Cachao . . . Como Su
Ritmo No Hay Dos. The film earned rave reviews, especially for
its music, and rekindled interest in the mambo king. Two years later,
Garcia produced the widely acclaimed Master Sessions, Vol. 1
(Crescent Moon/Epic), which astonished critics with its vibrancy and
earned a Grammy Award for Best Latin Music Album. Since then, Cachao
has made TV appearances, and won a Hispanic Heritage Award and a National
Endowment for the Arts award. He has been the subject of a Smithsonian
tribute, inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame,
and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
His latest CD, also produced by Garcia, is paired with a DVD copy
of Garcia's second and most recent documentary on the Latin-music
legend.
For Cachao, the close professional and personal relationship that
has developed between him and Garcia holds a special place in his
heart. "I love him as if he were my own son," he says when
asked about Garcia. "He is one of the few people who have provided
me with so much."
Yet the contrabass is his first love. Cachao started his professional
career at age 13 as a member of the Havana Symphony Orchestra bass
section, a position he held for 30 years until fleeing to Europe in
1962. By some estimates, the Lopez family has produced 35 bass masters.
"Bass is the base of all music," he says simply. "It's
just like if you were to build a house—the bass is the foundation.
It gives any song 80 percent of its forward motion."
And what message does he wish for those throbbing rhythms to convey
to fans?
"The only thing I ask is that they try to preserve the roots,"
he says. "In other words, that they remember the origin, the
beginning, the starting point. The music has such a diversity of rhythms
and I make every effort possible so all these rhythms can be exposed."
