Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 14, 2000

Volume 28, Number 28

Puente enjoys spotlight
during visit as Chubb Fellow

The audience that gathered on April 6 for the Chubb Fellowship symposium on "The Life and Music of Tito Puente" was treated to a surprise when the "Mambo King" himself requested the microphone after panelists completed their presentations and then amused his audience with some stand-up comedy.

"These people and all this talk -- that's me they were talking about!" said Puente with evident delight, and proceeded to tease each of the speakers in turn. He then talked about some of his pet peeves:

"Salsa" is a food, he insisted, not a style of music. "Anybody who mentions anything to me about 'salsa,' they don't know what the hell they're talking about!"

The hit song "Oye Como Va" is his tune, even though Santana recorded it in the 70s, and Puente hates to be asked to play "that Santana tune," he said.

He loves to perform for big, lively crowds, but small corporate gigs compel him to make what he calls "hotel music" instead of the sizzling stuff he loves. He joked about having to turn the volume "waaaay down" and mute the horns at a corporate party, and he imitated how squashed his tunes sound under those circumstances. When he finds himself at such an event, he said, he turns to his 12 musicians and demands to know, "How will this advance my career?"

Puente's monologue followed five very different presentations, some academic, others personal. The program was introduced and moderated by C. Daniel Dawson, curator, filmmaker, arts administrator and scholar.

Steven Loza, professor of ethnomusicology at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of "Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music," spoke of the musician's symbolic significance. "Tito Puente is the future of the world," said Loza of the five-time Grammy Award-winner, who has performed for more than 50 years. Loza added that Puente has created a new kind of "trans-ethnicity," bringing together Puerto Rican, Cuban and African rhythms and making them accessible to people of all cultures.

Marta Moreno Vega, professor of Black and Hispanic studies at Baruch College in New York, called Puente's music a "new paradigm for looking at cultures," adding, "The African diaspora comes together in his music." She called Puente "the king of cultural activism" and said his music provided a "framework of inclusiveness." Vega then reminisced about growing up in El Barrio (Spanish Harlem) and how exciting the music was to her and her siblings. She was too young to go to the Palladium ballroom, where Puente played, but her older brother would dress up and go out for an evening of music and dancing. She and her sister would huddle under the covers late at night, waiting for him to telephone from the club so they could hear Puente's band "smoking." She said she pictured smoke literally rising from the instruments, the music was so "hot."

Other speakers at the symposium were Rene Lopez, producer of traditional and popular Caribbean music and a consultant on Latin jazz; Andy Jerrick, former Palladium dancer, who got up and did a little demo; and Robert Farris Thompson, the Colonel John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale and master of Timothy Dwight College. Thompson gave a tour de force lecture, with slides comparing African art to mambo, accompanied by selections from Puente's music to illustrate his point.

That night, Puente gave a concert at Woolsey Hall to a wildly enthusiastic capacity audience that cheered, clapped in rhythm and occasionally got up to dance to his tunes. He opened with "Babarabatiri," moved on to "Ran Kan Kan" and "Mambo Diablo," and, after several other favorites, closed with "Oye Como Va."

Puente visited Yale as a Chubb Fellow. The Chubb Fellowship, established in 1936 through the generosity of Hendon Chubb (Yale 1895), is based in Timothy Dwight College.

-- By Gila Reinstein

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