Kuatro

Listed
musical instruments participate in ensembles called hibaro . This term
used to refer to a person of peasant origin, sometimes in
derogatory, vulgar sense, like guajiro
in Colombia. However, today the meaning of the word “hibaro” has become much broader, it
denotes the Creole culture and folklore of the people living in the deep mountain
areas of the main island of Puerto Rico. Jibaro music includes several styles,
waltz, polka, paso doble, mazurka and polka, to which is added the singing of six
and eight-syllable verses and couplets.

Bomba ( bomba )
on sugarcane plantations about 400 years ago. In the 1600s, the Spaniards and
the French brought African slaves to the islands, who were allowed at any
time to drink rum from a huge cask set up for them on the plantation and
called “Bomb”. Slaves kissed her repeatedly, “satisfying the pain
and sorrows”, as well as arranging their own holidays and weddings near her, actively
self-expressing. Gradually, several fast and rhythmic musical and dance
bomb styles that use drums and maracas.

Plena ( plena )
song genre that originated in Puerto Rico at the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1880s around the city of Ponce
thanks to migrants from the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles archipelago has become
spread music similar to the Caribbean calypso genre. It was first expressed
only instrumentally, using guitars, accordions and tambourines, and in 1907 to
singing was added to the music. Over time, other captives entered the composition
Puerto Rican instruments, and their lyrical content began to be called “blind
newspaper” as it contained news, gossip and historical events.

Captivity,
jibaro and bomba are the pillars of Puerto Rican folk music, from
from which all other modern trends emerge. These pillars are
dances that accompany each of the musical genres, but the culture also has
other folk expressions. The myths and legends of Puerto Rico have much in common with
oral folk art of other Latin American countries. Yes, here
popular tale about Chupacabra ( Chupacabra ) – a monster that terrorizes
South America, the Caribbean and parts of the US: some people believe
that there is a terrible creature that sucks the blood of goats and other animals, leaving
after himself only a corpse with two barely noticeable wounds. However, in Puerto Rico
there are other folk tales, including a beautiful legend
about a religious procession in Old San Juan. In 1797 the island was attacked
British soldiers, and the outcome of the battle did not seem successful. Then peaceful
the inhabitants gathered for a procession with prayers. Sir Ralph Abercromby’s army and
General Henry Harvey saw the light of many torches in the distance, and the soldiers thought
that Spanish reinforcements had arrived. Deciding that they could not win, the British
retreated.

COCA LIST (ELEUTHERODACTYLUS COQUI) is
an unofficial symbol, or mascot, of Puerto Rico. It’s a tailless amphibian
the offspring of which appears from eggs laid on land, bypassing the stage
tadpole. There is a legend associated with coca about the “frog rain” that occurs
periodically in the El Yunque National Park: there are moments when in the air
there are dozens of frogs. The truth is that these animals live
high in the trees, and when spotted by their natural predators, the frogs
they just jump to the side rather than fleeing up the tree trunk. They are
so light that their jump creates the feeling of sliding through the air.

From
the legend of the hummingbird has been preserved on the island since the Indian era . Alida and Taroo
were young lovers from warring tribes who secretly met in
forest on the river bank. Alida’s father accidentally found out about these dates, very
got angry and appointed his daughter a wedding with a man from his tribe. Young woman
prayed to the gods to save her from this fate, and the gods heard her – turned into
Red flower. Taroo did not know anything about the events on the enemy side and all night
he waited all the time for his beloved on the shore, until the moon took pity on him and
told about Alida. Then the young man began to beg for help to find that red
flower, and the gods turned it into a hummingbird. Legend of Guanin became the source
inspiration for the Taino Indians to revolt against the Spaniards. Guanina was
Indian princess who fell in love with the Spanish officer Cristobal de
Sotomayor. Guanina’s brother hated the Spaniards and vowed to kill Sotomayor during
during his trip to another city. Despite his wife’s warnings, the officer left
and on the way he was killed, proving to all the Tainos that the Spaniards were mortal. Indian chiefs
called Guanina a traitor and decided to sacrifice her to the gods, but when her
found, she was already dead, and her head was resting on her husband’s chest. them together
buried under the seiba, and it happened in 1511.

9023
Holidays Puerto Rico:

1
January – New Year,

6
January – Day of the Magi,

20
January is the main day of the San Sebastian Festival in Old San Juan,

floating
dates in February-March – Ponce Carnival,

floating
dates in March-April – Holy Week and Easter,

22
March – Liberation Day,

10
May – Mother’s Day,

25
May – Memorial Day,

21
June – Father’s Day,

4
July – Independence Day,

25
July – Constitution Day,

7
September – Labor Day,

12
October – Columbus Day,

11
November – Veteran’s Day,

19
November – Opening of Puerto Rico,

26
November – Thanksgiving,

25
December – Christmas.

“I was born in Puerto Rico” – for the Broadway premiere of Paul Simon’s musical

Paul Simon:

He was a child, this Salvador Agron, he was 16, he was Puerto Rican, he was in the Vampires gang. And he killed two guys. It was a noisy story.

Sergey Yurienen:

“I was born in Puerto Rico” – new music by Paul Simon.

“I was born in Puerto Rico

I was brought here as a child

I wasn’t even 16 when I got involved with the gang.

Oh, and we were wild then!”

The 98th year on Broadway will open with the premiere of Paul Simon’s musical “The Capeman” – “The Man in the Black Robe”. The enterprise is grandiose – 7 years of work, budget – 11 million dollars, co-author – Nobel laureate in literature, friend of the late Brodsky and representative of the Caribbean culture in the United States Derek Walcott.

The performers are the stars of the Latin American scene Marc Anthony and Rubin Blades.

Music for the musical has already become an event. After “The Rhythm of the Saints” released in 1990, this is Paul Simon’s first album, where he himself performs 13 of 39-ty songs for the musical “The Man in the Black Robe”.

“The Man in the Black Robe” – this is how the press called one of the most famous killers in the criminal history of New York, 1959. For the second year on Broadway, Leonard Bernstein’s musical “West Side Story” is a huge success – Shakespearean love against the backdrop of a romanticized war of New York street gangs – white and Puerto Rican … At this moment, the shock of reality strikes – the case of Salvador Agron. A member of a Westside gang known as the Vampires, Agron kills two of his peers, schoolboy Anthony Krestinski and courier Robert Young. At the crime scene, they find a Mexican dagger and a black robe with a red trim, which, according to eyewitnesses, was on a Puerto Rican guy at the time of the murders. The entire New York police force is on its feet, after 3 days Agron is captured. He doesn’t look like Dracula at all: tall, healthy, with a shiny comb and a spinner a la Elvis Presley. Holds cool, as in the scene recorded on tape with a reporter:

“How do you feel about killing those two guys?

– I feel fine.

– You don’t regret it?

– This is my own business.

– Why are you wearing that black robe?

– You’re wasting your time!

– How do you feel now?

– I feel like I want to kill you – that’s how I feel!”

New York is horrified, Agron’s case gains sensational notoriety when he becomes the youngest criminal to be sentenced to death in New York State. Composure does not change the 16-year-old Puerto Rican: “Electric chair? Don’t give a damn. Let my mother watch me burn.”

A 16-time winner of America’s top Grammy Music Award, Simon was born in 1941 in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in New York City – Queens. Together with classmate Art Garfunkel, he played from house to house and at school parties. They decided to record an amateur disc, which turned out to be so successful that they got their first contract with a record company. The first hit, recorded by them under the pseudonym “Tom and Jerry”, “Hey, schoolgirl!” sold 100,000 copies. Then the friends broke up, dispersed to universities, but in the early 60s they recorded an album called “Simon and Garfunkel”. A commercial failure, despite several songs that would become classics. Art returned to the university, Paul went overseas. It was then, in 1964, that Paul Simon was first seen and heard by my colleague and program producer Ruslan Geliskhanov.

Ruslan Gelishanov:

“I’m a rock, I’m an island …” I was 17, and for the first time I went abroad alone, to England. A friend in London dragged me to a club to see a band play. The club was called the Flamingos and was full of mod youth, well-dressed, courteous people. The group that my friend Jeff wanted to see didn’t show up, and a little kid with long hair, but already balding, with the face of a baby, appeared on the stage. A sort of miniature version of my Munich classmate Eddie Gorbarsky. He looked very funny, the guitar seemed huge compared to him, but when I heard it – I was stunned. He sang 4 songs, I remember two – “Am e rock” and “Sounds of Silence”. I don’t know what impressed me more: Simon’s poetry, which seemed deeply personal to me, or the guitar, my recently chosen instrument, which sounded luxurious, elegant, unusually virtuoso. I didn’t know at the time that the Sounds of Silence was inspired by the Kennedy assassination. But I understood the words: “if you do not speak, then silence grows like a cancer.” While Simon was in England, Columbia added a rock accompaniment to the song without their knowledge and re-released it, thus creating their first absolute hit with Garfunkle, Sounds of Silence.

Sergey Yurienen:

After parting with Garfunkel in the 70s, Paul Simon sets out on his own to find new means of expressing his ideas. From Jamaica he brings reggae to America – the first experience of integrating ethnomusic into big rock and roll.

In the mid-80s, Paul Simon discovers South Africa for himself and the world, where the music of the black majority, and in particular the Ladysmith Black Mombazo choir, makes a stunning impression on him. “I didn’t suspect anything like that,” he says. “I’m just crazy about this music.”

Recorded with South African musicians “Graceland” in the 87th receives a Grammy Award, and becomes the “Album of the Year”. At the same time, Simon becomes the object of fierce controversy, while South Africa is still an apartheid country, a country against which sanctions have been adopted.

His concert in New York’s Central Park, year 91, gathers 750,000 fans.

“Graceland” And “The Rhythm of the Saints” – these albums change the image of Simon. An angry New York intellectual and aesthete, he becomes a pioneer on the path to world music. American avant-garde composer Philip Glass.

Philip Glass:

Paul Simon is to me one of the leading songwriters of our time, setting the standard in music more than anyone else in his generation. To compare him with someone, you need to remember such composers as Porter, Gershwin and Berlin. Paul Simon is now at the forefront of musical internationalism, thanks to which the very perception of music has changed, now and forever the music of the world. His albums “Graceland” and “The Rhythm of the Saints” are like two pillars of musical innovation. I would not guess where Paul will go next, he is in the middle of a creative journey. And yet – what is its uniqueness – it is impossible to predict its future.

Sergey Yurienen:

“The Man in the Black Robe” The songs of the musical were written by Simon in collaboration with Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. These are monologues and dialogues of actors set to music – from rock and roll to mamba, salsa and bamba – the rhythmic heritage of the Caribbean. As Paul Simon said: “If the sound is right – we will believe in this story.”

Puerto Rico is a two hour flight from Miami. This island, washed from the north by the Atlantic, from the south by the Caribbean Sea, historically and by choice of the population is the territory of the United States of America. The official languages ​​are Spanish and English. A resident of Puerto Rico has an American passport, civil rights and obligations of US citizens, excluding the right to vote in presidential elections and the obligation to pay taxes. Since 1950, 2 million Puerto Ricans have moved to live in the US, mostly in New York.

The hero of Simon’s saga – Salvador Agron – was born in Puerto Rico in the 43rd, grew up with his sister in a house called “Azilio de bres” – “Shelter for the poor”, his mother worked for 8 dollars a week. Salvador was an unbalanced boy, not for his age, he wrote in bed for a long time. When he finished first grade, his mother took him to the States, where she remarried and settled in New York. El Salvador continued his education in schools for the difficult to educate and institutions for juvenile delinquents. There, he began to hallucinate: voices were heard and demons were seen. He began his brief criminal career as a member of the Sand Street Angels in Brooklyn. Having moved to Manhattan, where his sister lived, he got along with the Vampires gang. Paul Simon says that, like many New Yorkers, he remembers the Man in the Black Robe case from his youth.

“If you’re a cool guy, come, stand by, stand by our block.

If you are a tough guy – come, stand by, stand up for our quarter. “

The Vampires are a Hispanic Harlem street gang on the upper West Side of Manhattan. So, the hot New York summer of 59 is coming to an end . ..

“I slept on the roof of the house,

it wasn’t that hot there.

I watched the sunset,

and, leaving behind the skyscrapers, the sun became gold dust at my feet.”

“Sutten sumer night” – “Satin summer night” – a doo-up song, a purely New York style of the 50s in the Caribbean version:

“Oh baby, baby, baby,

be mine.

You cross the street

I like your walk

I like the way you carry yourself.”
“This is Nueva York Island,

we go through the blocks,

coming out to their roots.

And counting the stars as silver dust

on my motorcycle boots”
“You be careful with this guy,

Trust me, this guy is very dirty.

Dirty!”

On the evening of August 30, Salvador Agron put on his red-trimmed Dracula cape (purchased, as the investigation will establish, in a sports store), and went with other “vampires” in cars, taxis and subways to the park on 45th Street, for a duel with the “Normans” – a gang of Irish teenagers from the Hells Kitchen quarter. The “Normans” did not show up for the disassembly, and the “Vampires”, pumped up with combat strength, attacked the guys who ended up on the playground. Salvador Agron stabbed three and badly wounded the third. Agron and gang leader Luis Hernandez, dubbed “The Umbrella Guy” by the press, are the subject of one of the most massive and intense police manhunts in New York City history.

Paul Simon:

I had just finished school and was going to university. This story was in all the newspapers and on TV. I remember saying to myself then: this guy is the same age as me, and he looks good in the photo. Salvador Agron had the look of a rock and roll bully, that was the image of the 50s themselves. Taking this story as a basis for a musical – I first thought about this in 89 when I was working on the album “Rhythm of the Saints”. I felt like it was a very New York story with great musical potential, with the ability to show the shift in musical styles as the story unfolds between Puerto Rico and New York. I was very pleased to write songs in the style of the 50s, in the New York style of du-up, in the Latin American style, and this New York subculture meant a lot to me in my youth and was attractive in its own way. While preparing the Rhythm of the Saints album, I worked with Brazilian drums and West African guitars, so it was not so difficult for me to switch to the music of Puerto Rico.

Song-monologue of the murderer’s mother:

“My name is Esmeralda Agron.

Signora, I know I have no right to say,
but my son is not at all the beast he seems to you.

Black robe, smirk, greased cook –

All this hides the baby I breastfed and bathed.

Signora, I beg you, do not hide your eyes,
your son went to the Lord God through my fault,
but my son is gone too – the authorities will take care of it.

Signora, we are obliged to live with this cross, which we call our life. ”

“Can I forgive him? No, I can’t. Can I forgive him? No, I can’t.”

Thanks to the intervention of powerful people, including the widow of the President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller commutes the death sentence to life imprisonment. After spending three years on death row, Salvador Agron becomes a model prisoner in prison.

“Killer wants to go to college,
he is seeking parole.

Killer wants to be on TV,
talk about your book,
make a picture out of your story.

I, the killer says, have style.

I, the killer says, have an appearance.”

20 years of Sing Sing became not only universities for Salvador Agron, in prison, according to him, he “rehumanized”.

“Now I am a different person: I have become mature, independently educated and, having drawn conclusions from bad experience, turned Evil into Good” – these words of Agron from the tape were literally included in one of the songs of the musical.

“I took Evil into myself and turned it into Good.

Although no one believed that I could.

And now I say goodbye to you.

Goodbye!”

Released early, Agron did not have time to realize his plans for the film and book. At the age of 43, he died of pneumonia in the circle of his family. Despite his “rehumanization”, in public memory he remained a murderer, “The Man in the Black Robe”, and Paul Simon in an interview has to answer questions about the choice of a hero.

Paul Simon:

I have spoken to many people who knew Salvador Agron or were familiar with the environment in which he grew up. I spoke with his mother and sister, visited the Sing Sing prison where he was imprisoned, visited his homeland in Puerto Rico several times. Then, three years ago, Derek Wolkett and I began to work closely on the plot of the musical and the lyrics.

Sergey Yurienen:

“This is a performance about serious things, not about what he did, but about what is happening in the hearts of people” – says Paul Simon. “There are strong social overtones in music, but the main thing,” Simon emphasizes, “is not the story of the murder, but the moral question: is it possible for us to have Purification at the end of the 20th century? “Look into yourself and find forgiveness there? Or is it simply impossible in our time to serve the punishment and be cleansed of sin?” Simon does not mention in the interview the predecessor of his Puerto Rican hero – a student from St. Petersburg and a repentant murderer of two, Rodion Raskolnikov. This will be remembered by critics and spectators, who at the beginning of the new year will see the musical as a whole. So far, one thing can be said – “The Man in the Black Robe” is one of the most ambitious enterprises of Broadway.