Black Latinos' identity: black, Latino, or both?

On reading various articles and first-hand accounts, watching some relevant videos on YouTube, and otherwise investigating the topic, I’ve learned that black Latinos have as much and in fact probably greater problems in being accepted as do African Americans.  

According to people of African descent who come from Panama, Peru, Columbia and other countries of central and South America, in their native land they are not considered Latino, and are not felt to truly be a part of their homeland’s culture.  In the United States, they are asked to choose between being black and being Latino.

Jesús López dancing in the hatajo de negritos.  Photo:  Lidia López

In our documentary, A Zest for Life:  Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz, I note that Afro-Peruvians have their own culture just as Peruvians from indigenous communities have theirs.  But although Peruvians from indigenous communities certainly have been discriminated against and marginalized in ways similar to the treatment accorded Afro-Peruvians, indigenous peoples are considered “Peruvian.”  Afro-Peruvians have sometimes had a problem convincing others that they, too, and “Peruvian.”

I want to distinguish here between the past and the present.  The current government in Peru is notable for its interest in providing equality to all Peruvians, and not only accepting but also celebrating the various different ethnic groups and their unique history, culture and contributions.  But this new government has only been in office for a very few years, and so there is still much left to be done before all Peruvians will receive equality of treatment and have equal opportunities.

And in many Latin American countries, the government is not so enlightened.  Furthermore, the ordinary man – or woman – in the street is often even less enlightened.  For many Latinos, skin color is considered pretty important, and the lighter the skin, the more acceptable the person.  This view is even held by many Latinos of African descent.

This kind of marginalization and lack of acceptance is something that many African Americans can relate to.  This is only one of the important parallels between black Latinos (including Afro-Peruvians) and African Americans.

OUR NEXT POST will be about the National Museum of Afro-Peruvian Culture in Lima, Peru.

Black Latinos

This is a very interesting video I found on YouTube.  It starts off looking at how Latinos see themselves, but rather quickly switches to the topic of black Latinos.  Mainly through interviews, it covers not only how black Latinos see themselves but how other Latinos see them.  Very thought provoking.  I should tell you in advance:  this lasts about half an hour, so plan ahead to allow yourself enough time.



As you see, the video doesn't mention Afro-Peruvians and generalizing is sometimes a dangerous thing.  But when you look at the standard of living of most Afro-Peruvians, you realize that their situation is pretty well reflected in what you see in this video.

OUR NEXT POST will be about ANOTHER FESTIVAL!

MORE things I´ve learned about making documentaries--ORGANIZATION

Aside from RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH, I've learned that to do right by a documentary, you need...

ORGANIZATION.

Organization has always been one of my weak points.  I am very scattered.  On the one hand, this has the advantage of allowing me to be more creative.  If you're scattered, you see possibilities everywhere.  You see connections everywhere.  You have ideas all the time.

But on the flip side, this indicates a disorganized mind.

Well, I'm not entirely against a disorganized mind in the sense that I WANT to have those ideas, see those possibilities, see those connections.  HOWEVER...

If you want your public to be able to follow you, you must create a path and stick to it.  Small asides are ok so long as they connect naturally to the main path, but you need to keep those asides down to a minimum and not stray too far, or for too long.


The HISTORY of Afro-Peruvians and black Latinos COULD have been my path, but in the end, it's not what I chose.

And you need to decide what will be that main path, that narrative thread.  With a documentary about, say, Afro-Peruvian music and dance, it could be the technique needed to perform.  It could be the training needed to perform well.  It could be the situation and community that has created these performance arts (which is more or less the path that I chose).

There are other possibilities, of course, but one way or another, you do need to choose, and you should choose early on so that you don't waste a lot of time pursuing interesting ideas that in the end you won't be able to use.

photo:  Carlos O. Lopez & Cimarrones del Peru

 Just to make life for a person like me even a little more complicated, you not only need to choose your main path, but you have to choose your destination.  If you decided to focus on the training and technique, you might conclude that these are something everyone can learn in one week flat, or that you need years and years of practice with excellent teachers, or whatever.  But you do need to decide on a conclusion.

Believe it or not, for me the most difficult thing, next to choosing and sticking to one specific path, has been to decide on that conclusion.  I am extremely prone to presenting something simply because I like it and I think it's cool, without organizing my thoughts sufficiently to decide WHY it's cool, or WHAT'S cool about it, or why anyone else should be interested.  I have trouble deciding on what my point is.


I decided to focus more on the music and dance, but the documentary does more than just present them.

And a documentary without a point can be very boring for your audience.

SO...with A Zest for Life, it took me several YEARS (I kid you not) to figure out what my point was.  My point, of course--  that we shouldn't let these performance arts disappear-- has several sub-points, the most important of which are that these performance arts are in danger, and in the long run, to keep them alive, we need to understand the background out of which they came, and the history out of which they arose.

It has been my task in the documentary to select and organize my material to communicate this.  I hope that I have done so.  I present it to you with my fingers crossed.

OUR NEXT POST will be a slight detour.  We'll look at a 13-year old Peruvian-American saxophonist playing with his "adopted grandmother," African-American jazz singer Barbara Morrison.

What I've learned about making documentaries--RESEARCH

RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH.

When I started A Zest for Life, I made it like the other documentaries I produced-directed about world music and dance:  we set up three cameras and the rest of the equipment in a television studio, invited a performing group to come and give us 45 minutes worth of performance, and filled the rest with interviews.  Yes, we had some stage decoration, specifically, some banners made in the youth art program I ran for a non-profit a few years back.

The performers were good, the interviews were interesting, the TV station was happy (it was a cable station and this gave them some programming that was a bit different from what they usually have).  I was happy, at least at first.  Plenty of cable stations in the San Francisco Bay Area were very pleased to air the documentary.  Obviously, our host station (who donated their facilities) got to air it first.

Lalo Izquierdo with some Afro-Peruvian percussion instruments.

And let me thank that station here, plus the commission which supported us:  CCTV (Contra Costa Television) and AC5 (Arts and Culture Commission of Contra Costa County).

But then I started learning Spanish, and realized in listening to the songs that there was a lot going on that I had earlier missed.  My next step, then, was to do in-depth interviews of four people, three of whom were in the documentary:  Lalo Izquierdo (the doc´s star), Javier Nuntón (one of the musicians), Gabriela Shiroma (lead female dancer) and Marina laValle (up from Peru).

Javier Nuntón

 I added portions of the interviews of Lalo and Javier to the show, especially Lalo.  He, after all, is the lead dancer, lead percussionist, the folklorist, and is Afro-Peruvian.

I did NOT use either Gabriela Shiroma´s or Marina laValle´s interviews, for reasons of length, but I DID use the information they provided in their interviews.

I now had a better documentary.  But as I learned more about Afro-Peruvian music and dance, and the history and culture of the Afro-Peruvian community, I became more and more interested.  I began doing some serious research, primarily on the internet.  That also allowed me to discover the connection with Latin jazz.

Rosa los Santos (here) and Jorge Luis Jasso are our two main singers.

 An aside:  Emmy-award winning documentarian David L. Brown, from whom I took a class and who since then has given me advice and encouragement, was instrumental in consistently encouraging me to do more research, more research, more research.  And I thank him for that, as well as other, advice.

The results of my research allowed me to add some really good footage of Afro-Peruvian celebrations as well as some very fine photos.  I also completely re-wrote and re-shot my narration, incorporating the new things I´d learned.



(NOTE:  we just added the above trailer to the web site.  It gives an example of what I learned by researching.)

SO--what have I learned about making documentaries?  Well, first and foremost, you really should research your topic.  You will find out fascinating things which will allow you to present something much more interesting to your audience.  Of course, normally the research should come first, and I´m planning to make use of this lesson.  But even if it comes last, it does need to be done, and it is well worth the effort.

OUR NEXT POST will be about some OTHER things I´ve learned about making documentaries.

HOORAY! Accepted into a festival in Berlin, Germany.

Ah, fame!  Ah, a little recognition for all the work I've been doing.

It feels nice.

The Black International Cinema festival of Berlin (Germany) has accepted A Zest for Life as part of its upcoming festival (May 2-6).  Do I plan to attend?  You bet I do.  After all, I'm in Spain and Germany is not all THAT far away.

That's not the only good news I have for A Zest for Life.  The material I've been waiting for all these months finally arrived.  I only needed about 30 seconds of it for the documentary, but these are important 30 seconds.  They give the documentary a balance I wanted, plus more of the Peruvian coastal countryside (where most Afro-Peruvians live).

A checo on the vine.

And even more importantly, one section of the video clip I used shows fine, and well-known, Afro-Peruvian percussionists playing the checo, an Afro-Peruvian percussion instrument made out of a gourd.

Now, you probably don't know all that much about the checo, but that's part of the point.  After watching A Zest for Life, you WILL know what the checo is and how to use it.



SO--thanks to the Museo Afroperuano de Zaña (and Sonia Arteaga), thanks to 1 Frame Producciones (and Gisella Burgo Polo plus Javier Exposito Martin), and thanks to the Black International Cinema festival in Berlin.

OUR NEXT POST will be about...things I've learned about documentaries.

Afro-Peruvian jazz, Latin jazz and what´s in a name

Afro-Peruvian jazz...the child of Afro-Peruvian traditional music and New York jazz.  In a nutshell, it's what happens when a musician who plays Afro-Peruvian traditional music goes to New York and gets caught up in the jazz scene there.  Or the other way around, when a New York jazz artist goes to Peru....

The best-known musician of Afro-Peruvian jazz is Daniel Alegria, who is not Afro-Peruvian (although he is Peruvian).  Daniel Alegria currently spends his time going back and forth between New York and Peru, and plays in both countries with his sextet.  He also has a night-club in New York which features not only his own sextet, but also other practitioners of Afro-Peruvian jazz, and sometimes of Afro-Peruvian traditional music.



Other musicians of the genre Afro-Peruvian jazz include the guitarist Richie Zellon and the singer-songwriter Corina Bartra.

What, then, IS Afro-Peruvian jazz.  What's the mix?

Well, the text book definition is A "fusion of jazz with Afro-Peruvian rhythms."

Ok, so some of these artists really stick to the rhythms found in the music developed by the Afro-Peruvian community.  Many even make some use of Afro-Peruvian percussion instruments, especially the cajón.  But the sound?  Well, it doesn't really have all that much to do with Afro-Peruvian music.




There is, first of all, a lot of brass in Afro-Peruvian jazz.  There is NO brass in any Afro-Peruvian music that I´ve ever heard. Next, some of it uses big bands...again, not something you´d exactly expect to find in Afro-Peruvian traditional music.

The songs, if there´s singing, doesn´t normally relate to the Afro-Peruvian community or its history and traditions.  Not all that surprising if the artists don´t in fact come out of the Afro-Peruvian tradition.  These people are NOT black Latinos, which as it turns out, really makes a difference.  So why are we calling this music "Afro-Peruvian jazz?"

Then, there´s Latin jazz.  Afro-Peruvian jazz is said to be part of Latin jazz.  Several people have pointed out that there really is no such animal as "Latin jazz."  I agree.



Unfortunately, we´re in the misty realm of communication.  "People" are familiar with the term "Latin jazz" and to a lesser extent, "Afro-Peruvian jazz."  It may be that neither one means much, but people THINK they mean something.  People THINK they understand what it means and that they either like, or don´t like what they think it means.

To get right down to the point, the term "classical music" doesn´t really mean anything, either.

So we´re left in the fog of non-communication, believing we´re saying something when really, all we´re doing is saying "hey, you might like this and since you won´t check it out unless it has a name you´re familiar with, the closest I can come is THIS name."

(Compare the "Afro-Peruvian jazz" musicians above with Afro-Peruvian traditional music from our CD and our documentary, below.)



Nothing new under the sun here.

(NOTE:  if you like this rendition of Zamacueca, you might want to check out our CD on CDBaby LINK.)

OUR NEXT POST will be about the song "el negrito Chinchivi" and its composer, José Alberto (Pepe) Villalobos Cavero.

RELEASE PARTY in La Peña, Fri. Jan. 20 at 8pm

Ok, you San Francisco Bay Area residents, it's time to mark your calendars and to set the evening of Friday, Jan. 20 starting at 8pm (THIS COMING FRIDAY) for our release party.  The release party will be at la Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley (3105 Shattuck Ave.).  Cost is $15 at the door, but $12 if you purchase in advance...students and seniors get a discount.  And here's the LINK with information as to how to purchase in advance.

We've listed this event and posted photos and trailers in a number of places, including HERE.  Of course, you can also go to our web site LINK and/or to the la Peña calendar page LINK to find out more about it.

Bottom line is just that you BE there when we start the program...which will consist of the screening of the documentary, a live performance by de Rompe y Raja, the performance group featured in the documentary, and for those so inclined, a mini-lesson in Afro-Peruvian zapateo footwork.  Fun.

Juan Omar Medrano Cotito (PHOTO:  Oscar Champi Echegaray)

In the documentary, among other things you will learn about some of the percussion instruments that Afro-Peruvians have contributed to the musical world.  You see four of these in the photo above, all of which figure in one way or another in the documentary.  Those four are the Afro-Peruvian cajón, the quijada de burro, the cajita and the checo.  Each one has a very distinctive sound and if you put them all together, it´s pretty cool.

The cajita is not restricted to Afro-Peruvian music, although that's where it comes from.  Here's a percussion trio -- definitely not Afro-Peruvians (and no, the shekere is not Afro-Peruvian either, but the cajón in this video is).  Looks like they are having a good time.




SO--come out to the release party, and join us.

OUR NEXT BLOG will be about the release party, after it occurs.

Some black Latino history as told by Lalo Izquierdo

As I think we've mentioned, Lalo Izquierdo, the star of our documentary, A Zest for Life:  Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz, is not only a master dancer and percussionist, not only a choreographer, but also a folklorist.  We filmed some very interesting interviews with him that didn't fit well into the documentary itself, but they're much too good to just cast aside.

Here is one of them, in which he explains how it is that Lima, Peru (Peru's capitol city) has so many Afro-Peruvian peddlers.



We hope in the future to post some other of his interviews, but in the meantime, we'd love to know how you like this one.

Izquierdo now has his own performance group in Lima, Peru and in addition, has recently been appointed Director of the Institute of Cultural Expression in the National Afro-Peruvian Museum in Peru.  A busy man!

Lalo Izquierdo

 He's also a man who loves to smile.  Nice guy.


OUR NEXT BLOG will be about Gabriel Alegria, my article on Afro-Peruvian jazz, etc.