MP3 Download –> “El Manisero de Potemkin”

. . .  con la colaboración especial de

Richard Dudanski (drums)

My roommate José Martinez Yañez was born in Granada but speaks English like a native Brooklynite. We first met through hip-hop, but became close friends through daily pick-up basketball games at the University of Granada.  We were born within 2 weeks of each other in 1984.  We both lived with our grandparents when we were growing up, which was a major influence on our musical tastes.  My first memories include my grandfather’s wedding ring tapping a 2:3 clave rhythm on his coffee mug, while my grandmother shuffle-danced around the kitchen cookie white rice and black beans [which btw, Cubans call "cristianos y moros"].

In Granada,  José’s grandfather listened to popular romance ballads, flamenco and other music from Spain, but when I told José my family was from Cuba, he immediately asked me about Antonio Machín.  “My grandfather loved Machín. He still has all the records.”  I was surprised, since Machín isn’t even that famous amongst Cubans, but in Spain he’s nationally known — the physical embodiment of Cuban music in the Spanish imagination…  [canyon]

“El Manisero” is the most recorded song in Cuban history, with hundreds of different versions performed by damn-near every Cuban musician of all time. It was the world’s first platinum-selling Latin song  — not CDs or LPs, but 1 million copies sold of the sheet music. With notes & lyrics originally composed by Moises Simons (the Cuban son of a Spanish Basque musician), the song was made famous across the globe by a guajiro named Antonio Machín.

With 15 brothers and sisters, Antonio Machín was born in Sagua la Grande, twenty minutes up the road from my mom’s hometown of Calabazar de Sagua, Cuba.  Born to a (black) Cuban mother and (white) Cuban father in the rural heart of (racist) Cuba, Machín was forced to abandon his early aspirations to sing opera and instead worked from a young age as street singer.  He eventually moved to the big city, where he became the lead singer for Don Azpiazú’s house band at the ritzy Havana Casino.

In 1930, Antonio Machín went to New York City and recorded a version of “El Manisero” that Victor Records turned into an international pop sensation.  Even though another version of “El Manisero” by Rita Montaner had just been released two years prior, it was Machín’s version that caught fire and spread across  global radio waves, sparking a rumba craze in American popular culture.  (Nevermind the fact that “El Manisero” is not a rumba, but actually a son-pregón. Victor Records advertised the 78 rpm record as a “rhumba-fox trot” which is not only musically inaccurate, but misspelled to boot).

As Ned Sublette writes in his definitive & highly recommended book Cuba and its Music, Antonio Machín is one of those Cuban musicians (like Desi Arnaz or Buena Vista Social Club) who achieved international success that went far beyond their popularity at home. After he became a global pop-star, Machín left Cuba and moved to New York, then Paris, London and finally Madrid, where he remained until his death in 1977.

Machín loved Andalusia, and the feelings are mutual.  Spain embraced Machín as Cuban music incarnate.  His popularity continued to grow in Spain long after he was largely forgotten in his native country.

While we recorded Granada Doaba, I asked the musicians about their earliest musical memories, about what records their grandparents used to play at home.   My roommate Jose Yañez Martinez, born in Granada in 1984, was the first person to tell me about his grandfather’s passion for Machín, and over time I was constantly surprised by how often my Spanish friends would offer Antonio Machín as musical memory from their childhood.

While I was struggling with the new sounds of flamenco and Arab music, Antonio Machín became something of a comfort blanket for me while I was in Spain.  I was gifted a copy of his 2-disc Greatest Hits compilation, which was promptly sampled into the Akai MPC and turned into 10 beats.  In the end, Granada Doaba only includes two songs based on Machín samples, but best believe that Antonio Machín vs. Beny Moré mixtape is coming soon from Gnawledge.

Ned Sublete begins his 690-page history of Cuban music with: “Long story short:  Spanish father, African mother.”  Cuba was considered Spain’s most prized colonial possession for hundreds of years, first discovered by Columbus in 1492 [and described as "the most beautiful place human eyes have ever seen"].  During its most lucrative years of colonial plunder, Spain prioritized Havana as the only authrized port of depature for ships returning to Spain with New World booty.  Filled with pirates, conquistadors and transients of all types, Havana became quite the party town, the sort of place a Spanish explorer would spend a few weeks waiting for government authorization to return home.  Whore houses.  And lots of music.

The clave, the central percussive instrument of Cuban music, was invented/discovered by ship builders in Havana’s port.  The small wooden pegs were used to join together planks of wood to build the boats that shipped gold back to Spain.  Their dense wood, when clanked against each other, produced a sharp piercing sound that could cut through all the other sound coming form a big band, counting time with its trademark 2:3 pattern.

Music from around the world made stops in Havana’s port, which absorbed influence from every which way.  Cuba earned a reputation in Spain for its musicality, an impression that continues to represent the Cuban people probably more than any other in the global imagination.

While Simón Bolívar led successful revolutions that led to independence for most of South America in the mid 19th century, Spain refused to relinquish its prized Caribbean island, crushing Cuba’s rebels in the first War of Independence in the 1860s.  It wasn’t until 1898 that Cuban freedom fighters, led [at least philosophically] by poet José Marti, finally won enough battles to bring victory within their grasp.  Rather than allowing Cuba to strike the final blow and become an independent nation, the United States intervened, rebanding the War of Independence as the Spanish-American War.

With pomp & circumstance, the US rough riders led by Teddy Roselvelt stormed the already nearly-defeated Spanish army and struck the final blow, forcing Spain surrendered control of its “Pearl of the Antilles” in 1898.  But as the Spanish flag came down, it was the American flag — not the Cuban bander — that was raised in its place.  A four year “transitional” period of American control continued until 1902, when America finally granted Cuba its independence, predicated on their adoption of the Platt Amendment into the new Cuban consitution.  The Platt Amendment granted the US Government absolute freedom to intervene in Cuban political affairs at any point deemed necessary and gave the US military indefinite control of Cuba’s deepest harbor: Guantanamo Bay.  For the next 57 years, Cuba was run by an succession of corrupt presidents pre-approved from Washington DC that presented Cuba as a neo-colonial playground for American tourists and mafia.

In 1959, Fidel Castro’s revolutionary army overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencia Batista, who fled to Spain with suitcases of gold and retired peacefully until his death in 1977, the same year Antonio Machín (“El más cubano de los españoles y el más español de los cubanos”) also died.

My dad gave me some good advice before I moved to Europe: “Make friends with your neighborhood barman.”  Richard Dudanksi owned Potemkin, a tapas bar downstairs from my bedroom studio in Granada.  With impeccable music and beautiful artwork on the walls, Potemkin is infamous around town for its delicious tapas by master chef Hidetomo Nambu, a Japanase flamenco guitarist who prepares fresh sushi in a Russian-themed bar owned by a British ex-punk.

On Sundays, there were no tapas at Potemkin because it was Hidetomo’s day off.  The chef was busy practicing guitar scales at home or playing along with the other aficionados at the weekly flamenco jam session at El Upsetter, a reggae/flamenco bar with a deep cave.  With no chef, Richard Dudanksi had nothing to offer at the bar except free peanuts.

“El Manisero” means “Peanut Vendor.”  It’s a public pitch for mobile salesmen hawking salted nuts in the streets, a Cuban tradition that has somehow survived the island’s Communist revolution.  Selling cheap peanuts in a paper cone is one of the only examples of non-government controlled commerce in Castro’s Cuba, a low-level capitalism so ingrained in Cuban culture that la revolucion hasn’t dared to ban. If you’ve ever been to a baseball game, you get the gist of the song: “Peanuts… get your peanuts!”  But like everything in Cuba, selling snacks on the street is done with a danceable rhythm.

“Machín fue un eterno fugitivo. Con Don Azpiazu, triunfó en La Habana del Casino Nacional, fue el primer negrazo que cantó en aquel garito de terratenientes nacionales y gánsteres de importación, pero se fue a Nueva York. Triunfó en el Nueva York del Cuarteto Machín y sus 300 canciones grabadas tras el cucurucho de “El manisero”, pero se fue a Francia. Triunfó en Europa, pero buscó la tranquilidad y el amor en Sevilla”  Articulo

Compay Segundo le llamo “el embajador de la música cubana en España”

Mioses Simons, hijo de un músico vasco, al ver cruzar un emigrante asiático pregonando la venta de cucuruchos de maní tostado. Moisés escribió la letra en una servilleta. La melodía la fijó en su mente y luego la trasladó a su piano. El suceso tuvo lugar en 1928.

“El manisero se va… (tal como reitera el pregón) pero vuelve; vuelve, cada vez enriquecido por una nueva voz, por una nueva versión instrumental…“.

En diciembre de 1931 Alejo Carpentier, entonces corresponsal de la revista Social en París, envió a La Habana una crónica en la que informaba alegremente:

“¡Todo el mundo tiene un disco de nuestro “Manisero” nacional! Los pick-up de los boulevards lo repiten sin cesar; Mistinguette lo canta en el Casino de París; ha invadido Berlín, Bélgica, la Costa de Azur… Se escucha en Palestina, junto al Muro de las Lamentaciones; se ejecuta en Constantinopla, en los cabarés de princesas rusas, víctimas de la revolución; sus maracas suenan junto a los puestos de fritura que hacen toser a la gran esfinge de Egipto…”

la convirtió en la primera versión discográfica de cubanos que vendió un millón de copias lo que representó, a su vez, el primer boom de la música latinoamericana a nivel mundial.

Aunque en 1947 llegaría su gran éxito, en España. Se trata del inolvidable Angelitos negros. En principio fue una canción morisca, que con los arreglos musicales a finales de la década de los sesenta, convirtió en un gran bolero.

Antonio Machín - “El Manisero” (1930)

Hibari Misora - “El Manisero” (1952)

Skatalites - “El Manisero”

Quinteto Son de la Loma - “El Manisero”

Carlos y Jose - “El Manisero”

Maní, maní, maní…
Si te quieres por el pico divertir,
Cómprame un cucuruchito de maní…

Maní, el manisero se va,
Caballero, no se vayan a dormir,
Sin comprame un cucurucho de maní.

Richard Dudanski: “De crío me encantaba escuchar la música clásica de mi padre en el gramófono. Tenía 11 años cuando los Beatles y el pop Británico apareció en escena a principios de los ’60, así que con mis hermanos y hermanas terminábamos comprando un montón de esos singles, antes del cambio a mediados de los ’60 con the Who, Stones, Spencer Davis etc.

Me imagino que fue mi interés por las señoritas allá en la discoteca por lo que nació mi amor por la música soul negra americana- cualquier cosa de Tamla y Otis, hasta Stax y Northern Soul. Esto condujo al ritmo negro y ska, y desde ahí hasta al jazz y el blues que fueron mis favoritos para principios de los ‘70. Cuando empecé a tocar, eran los baterías del jazz los que estaban en mi colección de discos - especialmente los tíos de los ’50 como Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Roy Haynes, Max Roach etc. Ellos son los grandes baterías para mí, junto con Al Jackson Jr, el batería de session Memphis que tocó en prácticamente todos los hits de Stax de los 60!”

“Fue Antón Farah el primer árabe que llegó a Cuba con el propósito de asentarse en estas tierras. Lo hizo en 1879 y abrió un camino que hasta 1936 siguieron unas 40 mil personas… El libanés Isaac Estéfano, vendió al Estado cubano, en los años 20, el brillante que en el Capitolio de La Habana marcaba el kilómetro cero de todas las distancias del país”