Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 260 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
Continuing our celebration of Caribbean American Heritage Month we move from the English-speaking islands to those that speak Spanish, and to father and son artists whose musical heritage is both Cuban and African—both are named Arturo O’Farrill.
The father of this duo, Arturo “Chico” O’Farrell, joined the ancestors on June 27, 2001. Music critic Ben Ratliff wrote his New York Times obituary:
Arturo O'Farrill was born in Havana to an upper-middle-class family; his father was from Ireland and his mother had a German background. His parents sent him to military school in Georgia, where he learned to play trumpet and heard big-band jazz for the first time. His parents, horrified that he was consorting with black musicians instead of pursuing a career in law, did not share his excitement, although his father arranged for Mr. O'Farrill to study arrangement with the Cuban composer Felix Guerrero.
He plunged into Havana's nightlife, which was teeming with American jazz, and played trumpet with several dance bands, including Orquesta Bellemar, Armando Oréfiche's Lecuona Cuban Boys and Los Newyorkers. At the time he was mainly interested in jazz.
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Mr. O'Farrill, who had studied arranging in Cuba, used his knowledge in a job with the Benny Goodman band, writing ''Undercurrent Blues,'' a popular number for Goodman's bebop-inspired ensemble. (It was Goodman who bestowed the nickname Chico.) But most of Mr. O'Farrill's work, as he recalled, was ghostwriting for ghostwriters, writing arrangements for arrangers like Walter (Gil) Fuller, Quincy Jones and Billy Byers, who already had too much work on their hands. Soon he connected with the impresario Norman Granz, who helped put together a Machito recording session including Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips and Buddy Rich. ''The Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite,'' the piece they recorded on Dec. 21, 1950, was Mr. O'Farrill's first masterpiece as a composer, an ambitious work that took the graduated crescendo of Latin big-band music and applied to it a classical sense of contrasting themes and sophisticated harmony.
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He worked with Gillespie as well, writing ''The Manteca Suite.'' In 1955 Mr. O'Farrill left New York, ducking marital and legal trouble, ending up back in Cuba and, two years later, Mexico. He stayed in Mexico City until 1965, recording albums there with Cuarteto D'Aida, the pianist and singer Bola de Nieve and the percussionist Gírardo Rodriguez. He also composed another of his major works, ''The Aztec Suite,'' for the trumpeter Art Farmer, as well as ''Six Jazz Moods,'' a 12-tone piece.
AllAboutJazz continues his story:
His best-known piece of the period, "Manteca," was written with Dizzy Gillespie and has become perhaps the signature number of Latin jazz. At the height of the mambo craze, O'Farrill formed his own band and played in the U.S. and Cuba. Around 1955, he moved back to Havana, and then to Mexico City, in part to avoid various legal and romantic entanglements. He did whatever writing and conducting jobs it took to get by, although he did manage to compose another of his major works, "The Aztec Suite," for the trumpeter Art Farmer, as well as "Six Jazz Moods," a 12-tone piece. He also worked with pianist Bola da Nieve and the Cuarteto D'Aida. He returned to the States in 1965, where he continued to arrange for Gillespie, Basie, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and Gato Barbieri. He also delved into the commercial market.
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It was not until the critically-acclaimed 1995 release, "Pure Emotion," that O'Farrill really emerged from obscurity. "Pure Emotion" was nominated for a Grammy, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center program commissioned him to write a piece, “Trumpet Fantasy,” featuring Wynton Marsalis.
Here’s O’Farrill’s and Gillespie’s “Manteca” classic:
Jazz fans who celebrate Charles “Yardbird” Parker (or just Bird) may not be aware of his work with Chico. Musician and jazz critic Raul de Gama at LatinJazzNet reminds us of something often overlooked:
The Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite is largely remembered as a Norman Granz commission. The reason for this is that the legendary Charlie Parker participated in the first Suite, completed and recorded in December, 1950. Moreover, even many of the musical arts cognoscenti will recall this first Suite as music performed by Machito. Most listeners forget that it was Chico O’Farrill who wrote, arranged and conducted the piece first for Machito and his Afro-Cuban Orchestra. Then in 1952, Mr. O’Farrill arranged and conducted what he called The Second Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite, this time with the vastly expanded Chico O’Farrill Orchestra
Give it a listen:
After many years out of the jazz public eye, Chico O’Farrill’s “Pure Emotion” album in 1995 spearheaded his comeback. Richard S. Ginell at AllMusic posted this review:
After not having led a recording session under his own name in 29 years, O'Farrill came from seemingly out of nowhere to lead a terrific Afro-Cuban big band date on this CD. O'Farrill claims that he turned down offers to lead standard seven or eight-piece salsa bands on records over the years, preferring to wait until a big band opportunity came along - and clearly, he was bursting with accumulated charts dating from the 1960s through the 1990s. Not too much has changed since O'Farrill's exciting string of albums for Clef in the 1950s; if anything, his arranging hand has become surer, more sophisticated, thoroughly in touch as ever with a wide variety of influences. Most striking of all is how O'Farrill was able to build a fire underneath the musicians in the band, which includes leaders in their own right like trombonist Robin Eubanks, conguero Jerry Gonzalez and drummer Steve Berrios, as well as Tito Puente's tenor sax/flute player Mario Rivera and O'Farrill's son Arturo Jr. on piano.
“Perdido” from the album, has me up and dancing!
I found a great clip of Chico conducting his band in NYC—sadly haven’t been able to pinpoint where and when this was recorded.
Chico’s son Arturo O’Farrill was born in Mexico on June 22, 1960. Here’s a segment of his biography from his website:
Arturo O’Farrill, pianist, composer, and educator, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Arturo’s professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte.
In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music. [...]
In December 2010 Arturo traveled with the original Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra to Cuba, returning his father’s musicians to his homeland. He continues to travel to Cuba regularly as an informal Cultural Ambassador, working with Cuban musicians, dancers, and students, bringing local musicians from Cuba to the US and American musicians to Cuba.
NPR featured him in a Tiny Desk concert back in 2013:
NPR video notes by Felix Contreras gives some context of the concert:
The octet you see in this video is a stripped-down version of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, which is at least twice as large — don't think I didn't try to get the whole band behind Bob Boilen's desk — and dedicated to both preserving the legacy of the elder O'Farrill and documenting the younger musician's efforts to move the music forward.
The musicians with whom Arturo O'Farrill surrounds himself all play with intensity that draws from both traditions. It was a thrill to hear such tremendous late-night music so early in the morning — and an honor to have O'Farrill ask me to sit in with the band and share the conga chair with Tony Rosa. Playing with musicians of this caliber always steps up your game, and on this day, I did my best and had a lot of fun in the process.
In 2015 he was featured on NPR’s Jazz Night in America, opening a musical dialogue in Cuba:
The video notes:
The pianist and composer Arturo O'Farrill knows better than almost anyone that over 50 years of a trade embargo between the U.S. and Cuba hasn't fully prevented the exchange of jazz between the two countries. He's known it since he first visited Cuba in 2002. Not that he's happy about the relationship. Years of fruitful dialogue between musicians have been lost, and as the leader of a big band known as the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, that's a problem he wants to address.
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Arturo O'Farrill's latest record with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra is called Cuba: The Conversation Continues. He got six composers to envision, in their own ways, the continuation of a musical conversation that Gillespie and Pozo started. And he recorded it in Havana -- just days after President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. was seeking to normalize relations with Cuba
This 2016 article about him posted at HuffPost is very relevant in today’s political climate:
The creatively vibrant leader whose big band does a weekly Sunday night residency at Birdland (however, November is dark), Arturo is the outspoken son of the late Chico O'Farrill, the Afro-Cuban jazz legend who composed and arranged in the lineage of Duke Ellington and who wrote the extraordinary "The Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite," which jazz icon Charlie Parker played on. While dad was a quiet, slight, soft-spoken man (with a terrific sense of humor), son has become not only one of the pack of forward-looking Afro-jazz leaders and mentors but with his boisterous personality also a socio/political critic of the sorry state of the fracturing union--from support of the Black Lives Matter movement response to the escalation of police killing unarmed black men to vehement critiques of the madness of this year's zany presidential race. His favorite target? Naturally, Donald Trump.
At this year's North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, Holland, where the orchestra played two nights, the New York-based O'Farrill's delivered his composition "Trump, Fuck Trump," a tune he expounded on by saying he was heartbroken by that "horrible fat-fingered man with an orange toupee and orange skin whose heart doesn't care and who brings people to divide." With a dissonant and fractured piano open, a stop-and-start whirl of horns, turbulent percussion, ALJO instrumentally blasted the Republican Party presidential candidate, and as if on cue, a dog outside the Congo stage tent incessantly barked throughout the song.
In a curated conversation at the festival, O'Farrill told me, "Do politics and music go together? Oh yeah. Think of the history of jazz--this music that was born in a bordello in New Orleans at a time of extreme racism and segregation. That's about the most political thing you can talk about. So jazz is a subversive, politically charged music. You can't separate it. People may commodify it to make it safe, but this music is revolution. You can't play or listen to this without understanding the struggle of blacks and whites and poverty. I can't ignore this in good conscience even if it may hurt my career. But it's really about the music and the truth in social causes. It's because I care."
O’Farrill held an absorbing conversation last year, at the Library of Congress’ music division. Here’s hoping that these kinds of programs can continue.
I’m a fan of live Latin music, and especially like to see it brought into communities where people can get up on their feet and dance, so here’s a clip of Bilongo performing the Afro-Cuban classic “La Negra Tomasa” live in New York’s Bryant Park last year.
Journalist Brooks Geiken recently covered O’Farrill in this review of his tribute to jazz composer, pianist, and organist Carla Bley:
Mundoagua Celebrating Carla Bley, Arturo O’Farrill and The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra’s fifth record for the Zoho label, is a triumph, plain and simple. The album is divided into three sections: the first, Mundoagua, focuses on the political/global implications of water; the second comprises four Bley compositions entitled “Blue Palestine Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4”; the third, Día de Los Muertos, is inspired by O’Farrill’s childhood growing up in Mexico City.
In “Mundoagua I: Glacial” the entire trumpet section struts its collective stuff. Adam O’Farrill, Rachel Therrien, Seneca Black, and Bryan Davis all take turns playing hot jazz for a decidedly cold-titled song. “Mundoagua II: Mundoagua” benefits from the cliché-free work of baritone saxophonist Larry Bustamante. Finally, during the final part, “Mundoagua III: The Politics of Water,” a jarring version of “The Star Spangled Banner” emerges during the performance of the main composition, resulting in a chaotic musical statement.
The next section, “Blue Palestine,” consists of four Bley compositions and, given the situation of the world today, these pieces could not be more timely. Bley was a gifted and politically engaged composer, a dedicated fighter for human rights through the Liberation Music Orchestra. In these four serious compositions she has brought the dire situation in Gaza directly into the listener’s ears. In the third movement, Bley’s daughter, Karen Mantler, solos on harmonica and then beautifully states the melody on organ.
The primary riff in “Día de Los Muertos I Flowery Death” was inspired by Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo’s “Manteca.” O’Farrill distorts the tune just enough to fit his own modern sensibility and it is a fascinating interpretation. The second section, “Día de Los Muertos II La Bruja,” begins with Sergio Ramírez’s lilting acoustic guitar intro and Rachel Therrien’s muted trumpet work. O’Farrill writes in his notes that the last movement, “Día de Los Muertos III Mambo Cadaverous,” is pure cartoon. Check out J.M. Posada’s drawings, which include dancing skeletons, and you will get the idea. A rumba rhythm precedes the entrance of the orchestra, which proceeds to play in a jaunty, up and down manner, suggesting the jiggly movement of the skeletons.
Give a listen to the title track, “Mundoagua:”
In closing, I want to note that a third O’Farrill, Adam, has entered the musical conversation:
Join me in the comments section below for more latin jazz, and for the weekend celebration of musician birthdays and departures.
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