Today’s Video: Gracias Cachao

We will be off on Friday but we'll hopefully return over the weekend to examine news and notes from around the Americas.

On Thursday the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) added twenty-five audio recordings to its National Recording Registry including music from Chubby Checker, Van Cliburn and Janis Joplin.  The LOC also recognized influential Cuban musician and composer Israel "Cachao" López by including his 1957 album “Descargas: Cuban Jam Session in Miniature” to the registry.

Already a pioneer of mambo, López gathered a dozen fellow musicians fresh off their respective nightclub gigs to participate in early morning jam sessions at a recording studio.  Their short, improvised jams different aspects of Afro-Cuban music with songs from the island and the rhythms of jazz.

According to the LOC, the resulting album “has had a lasting impact on Latin music, especially on the Salsa style that emerged in the 1960s, and Cachao organized many similar sessions for further albums both in Cuba and in the United States, where he settled after the Cuban revolution”.

Below is “Trombon Criollo”, which is one of the tracks from “Descargas”:

López died in March 2008 due to complications resulting from kidney failure.  He was 89-years-old. 

Video Source – YouTube via user puchie82766
 
Online Sources - Library of Congress

Nuestro Cine: “Fruits” of Their Labor

On Wednesday the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) announced this year’s list of films added to the National Film Registry. Works by Latino directors Robert Rodriguez (“El Mariachi”) and Ramón Menéndez (“Stand and Deliver”) where recognized by the LOC for their historical and cultural significance.

Among the twenty-five selections made by the LOC is “Fake Fruit Factory”, a documentary on focused on Mexican laborers constructing paper mache fruits and vegetables. According to the LOC, the 1986 film directed by Chick Strand deftly combined “documentary, avant-garde and ethnographic techniques.” Furthermore:

In "Fake Fruit Factory," Strand employs a moving camera at close range to create colorfully vivid images often verging on abstraction, while her soundtrack picks up snatches of conversation to evoke, in her words, "the spirit of the people." "I want to know," Strand wrote, "really what it is like to be a breathing, talking, moving, emotional, relating individual in the society."

See for yourself why “Fake Fruit Factory” was deservedly added to the National Film Registry:

Video Source - YouTube via mdfdoyle

Online Sources- Reuters, Library of Congress

De Musica Ligera: Eddie Palmieri, immortalized

On Wednesday the U.S. Library of Congress named several pieces of music, comedy, and spoken word into the National Recording Registry. Among the notable inclusions are country music legend Loretta Lynn, alt-rock pioneers R.E.M., and the late rapper Tupac Shakur. Salsa music was also included on this list via nuyorican musician Eddie Palmieri and his toe-tapping "Azucar Pa' Ti":

Palmieri joins the likes of Tito Puente and Antonio Carlos Jobim to the National Recording Registry, which started in 2002 and currently includes 325 recordings.

Online Sources - Gawker, BBC News, YouTube, Wikipedia