El Viento te da Sorpresas
A chronicle (una crónica) on how to keep your Puerto Rican ass alive: First, think of Viento de Agua. When I think of Viento de Agua, I think of precisely that. A salty-coco burst of Yemayá mist catching you by surprise on the waterfront in the southern coastal town of Arroyo, or mixed with a warm splash of Medalla in the back room of El Balcón del Zumbador in Piñones. The same Viento de Agua that lifts your entire Brooklyn apartment, jammed with everyone who has ever attended Boricua Fest in Prospect Park, up into the air for several seconds so high that you could say the orishas got possessed by us.
Viento de Agua is the Placita in all of us, the place where you get the necessary Fruta Madura and make your 3 a.m. dance a divine desahogo, a diasporic disparate that makes a melaza so sweet you no longer have to ask y dónde está tu abuela? She’s right here. And Tito Matos, flashing his pandereta like it was the center of the only cipher you need to know, won’t let you forget that. I can almost hear Victor Hernández Cruz saying “Areíto, anyone?”
VDA’s latest, Fruta Madura is a triumphant, experimental album that is traditional, avant-garde, and popular at the same time! It is a living bandera that channels José Campeche, Canario, Tite Curet Alonso, Maelo Rivera, Tito Kayak, and Juan Sánchez all at once. It’s everything you need to know, in this order: Plena, Plena, Bomba gracimá holandé, Plena, Plena, Bomba gracimá holandé, Plena, Bomba seis corrido-corvé, Plena, Plena, Bomba holandé sicá, and finally, Plena. It’s the fruit of life.
What was the recipe for Fruta? Take one part VDA street show, the “uplugged” version consisting of Tito and the crew, cats with names like Llonsi, Lagarto, Joko, Richard, Willie. They are the masters of the punteador and the seguidor, and the song of the migratory black workers that found their way to San Antón in Ponce at the real turn of the century (this last one was bullshit). They are the melody of rhythm and the rhythm of melody–their hands and their harmony tell the story of Puerto Rico.
Then you mix in part two, the compositional/arranging genius of Ricardo Pons, who gives Fruta Madura the feel of a symphony, a Berklee-ish air of majesty that can give you a serious hankering for the salad days of Batacumbele (Miguel Zenón and Jerry Medina in the house). It’s always been a mystery why Puerto Rican music is never considered world music unless it’s played in Hawaii, but this time no one can deny the global inevitability of the album’s reigning anthem, “Ciudadano del Mundo.” Finally, a song designed to end all future aquí-allá identity paradoxes!
Whenever circular migration comes up, I can hear Tito doing his best Sammy Tanco imitation–of course none of this would have been possible without Juango and Los Pleneros. They took the parranda from Santurce to the early morning light of El Sur del Bronx, or Los Sures, or somewhere South where the sun is always shining and there is no status, only a nation without borders, an island of millions that knows no North or South. When Tito (and Mariana) moved back to Puerto Rico after getting their PhD in Bregando Con Nueva York, the circle was complete.
There’s a line from track 2, “El Mareíto,” that you need to remember: “Dicen que muero, y no me muero na’/Es un mareíto que a veces me da.” The next time you think you can’t stand up anymore, the next time you’re served up that knockout punch, know that Tito and his band of functional plena-holics are not going to let you pass out. There’s too much at stake to leave this party early.
Viento de Agua will rock the house at Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture, 450 Grand Concourse at 149th St, Bronx, Saturday, December 4, at 7:30 p.m.