Juan Formell
The History of Man told by his Music
By: Ileana Rodríguez.

Sensational, splendid, formidable, are adjectives used once more to qualify Van Van, this orchestra that has offer the infinite joy of dancing to more than one mortal, since December 1969 until our days. They are Lucumí Negroes who drives us crazy (te ponen la cabeza mala), ‘’el tren’’ where everybody wants to travel….in other words, a real phenomena within the history of Cuban music, above all, because, far beyond their undoubted quality, they have discovered the mystery of transcendence.
The reality of their 36 anniversary is not the great news, what becomes astonishing is to have such age still being in the top, eagerly acclaimed and followed by an enhanced audience, the old ones and those who came later.

The key for success lies, of course in its creator. The celebration at the end of 2006, of an international meeting of casino dancers, is the main reason for this dialogue where the viewpoints about the decadence of casino dancing and the enthusiasm it awakes today were the opening reasons for a conversation which dig inside the eminent career of this musician together with his orchestra: the secret to win adepts among the dancers, the stones they found to ruled the international market and the new projects they are planning to jumpstart soon. But before, through an unavoidable retrospective, remembrances of a very young Formell, unknown for the public and full of dreams came up suddenly, this artist has as seed a diverse and assorted formation, fascinated about Matamoros y ñico Saquito`s grace and being a fan of Beatles, he concedes today a vital importance to the existence of victrolas flooding the city during his teen years.

Victrolas was an element where the public chose what they wanted to hear, that is, there was no imposing act and a if a poor person decided to spend money in a victrola, it was because he liked it very much; this fact forced the radio stations to promote the most liked … music. This allowed me a varied formation in my preference, I equally enjoyed Elvis Presley, or Chapottín or The Aragón Orchestra, I also preferred Brazilian music, Vinicius, Moraes, etc. I consumed any kind of music. This formation is not academic, was taken from the street, it gave me a background to work later’’.

On the other hand, he started his career as professional bassist at the Caribe Cabaret from Habana Libre Hotel and had the possibility of working together with great masters for the likes of Peruchín, Carlos Faxas and Rafael Somavilla. ‘’ I had a fruitful school, I worked with a musician who taught me many things, Juanito Márquez, the author of Pa`cá. I really drank a lot from all those years at Habana Libre Hotal as bassist but I had a thousand dreams. Benny Moré was dead then in 1963, Aragón in decadence… Pello el Afrokán made his bow, Pa` cá tasting an undoubted success, Pilón rhythm flourishing. Mozambique took a top place in a sudden, but its diffusion was excessive by radio, people complained, it also happened with Pilón, Pa cá and in this moment a pause appeared…’’

This pause within the world of popular danceable music could be larger, because in his early years, the young bassist was not glimpsing clearly his potentialities as dancing renovator heading an orchestra. “I felt comfortable being the bassist of Habana Libre because I’m quite, not that sort of man fighting in the street to gain money. I’m not like this, I’m here and it is enough to live’’.
But fate –using as masquerade certain problems at work- dragged the transigent musician to a Charanga-styled orchestra. ‘’The chance of being part of Revé`s orchestra of tasting with the public, I changed all that music, respecting the Cuban Son basis, I started to blend and blend. It was really captivating, astonishing, it defeated all what was happening and allowed me to acquire experience in less than two years. When I appear with Van Van I was sure on what I wanted and all I was planning to do. This project jumpstarted with such strength that it’s hard to tell. I’m telling you all this because it was casual the fact I entered Elio Revé`s Orchestra but was not incidental what I had inside’’.

That music we inherited from son and grandson of Africans/that we blended with the Spanish one, the French and the Portuguese music/we rightly mixed it with the English one/that’s we state it’s only one.

That new sound of that orchestra soon demanded a name pronounced by everybody nowadays without any complication, however, I asked for a reason to calll it Songo. ‘’ In that epoch there were many generic names, twist had recently appeared, rock `n roll, go go too I said, well it needs a name. I though in the Cuban Son because I never abandoned the Son as base Son and Go from Go Go and how the group had already a name Los Van Van and the word Go refers to the same action, so it’s not a bad idea to name it Songo and it is how the idea started. I will be sincere with you because I’m frank with my things, I don’t believe in the existence of anew rhythm waiting to be created, I do believe in mixture, it can be possible to mixture things to obtain amazing results, something different, unknown. It has a new design among the piano, bass, percussion, different from what is happening at that very moment; even, possibly new and unveiled within the danceable music’’.

We, who were born in the Caribbean, have things/which are more tasteful because are ours/
we just want to invite you to taste them/ with that rhythm brought by Van Van,

The development of that marvelous rhythm designed by Formell and baptized as Songo had the notable contribution of José Luis Quintana that fabulous percussionist we all know as Changuito… ‘’ I wrote the entire structure of the rhythm I wanted, for example, the labor of drums together with the tumbadoras, piano and bass. What happens with Changuito? Changuito is an exceptional musician, a very creative musician, lacking a great academic formation he indeed possesses a natural virtuosity, Changuito was fascinated by that design and started to develop it in such an intense way that, far from decisive transformation, he started to use it by pleasure. Changuito created million of variants related to that idea I wrote. It was extremely important, Changuito played very well the instrument because he previously played tumbadoras with Felipe Dulzaides and he was playing drums for the first time, in a strange way. As I told you before I joined very professional musicians, very talented. I played with Barreto, before that with Blas Egues, Fausto, with the best drummers of that epoch in Cuba; then I met Changuito, a different drummer and I exclaimed What’s this?. Instead of preach him or tell him don’t do it like this, do it in this way, I left him to do and I adapted myself to him or he adapted the orchestra and the orchestra adapted to how Changuito played the drums. Changuito was a key in the fact that Van Van has a signature tone, different to any other, in many things, in many elements he used in diverse songs; that is, they were his ideas in percussion, never seen before. I can assure that, they’ve never been done before and it became an unusual, strange thing.
In this way, people started to assess my labor in bass, the piano with Pupy, Changuito and all this, it surpassed boundaries, people started to say; what this?, it is unusual and we started to be respected.

To be always on top was a very difficult task, because we had to come closer to what is called as Timba although we never abandoned the element Songo.
In many aspects you are making a musical arrangement and in a sudden there’s a passage you do in Songo style, you use the design of Songo but only in some parts. Besides, here is quite difficult to promote a single style, internationally above all, I had hard times with the famous salsa until I get tired and I said: wait a minute; I won’t loose an important contract outside because they want a salsa group, and maybe it could be an important festival, no way. We have been in New York, at salsa festivals and everything is salsa, so I said well, this is also salsa. The international promotion is vital, this people rule the record world and that is why, in a way I surrendered … I had no choice, salsa? We are playing salsa, but we declared it was Timba which is a harder salsa with a different dynamics. A group of Cuban musicians did this affirmation and La Timba has acquired recognition at overseas scenes. But it’s hard, salsa finally is the queen.
Certainly, the orchestra rising was phenomenal, it turned more than one head, we haven’t sold million of disks because of the embargo to our country and all that, but our orchestra is boasting great prestige.

Yesterday someone came to tell me/what you are saying about me/ and that’s why I came to express…/What a lack of respect is that.

It’s not a secret for anybody; an enormous silence reigned along almost 30 years around the musical events of the island. While our artists were evolving, in some other scenes of the planet, the image of the golden years from 50 decade prevailed, grabbing hard a sort of yearning for the music of Sonora Matancera, Benny Moré, la Aragón, or by such notable bolero players as Orlando Contreras or Vicentico Valdés. However, in Cuba new musicians, inspired in this excellent predecessors and the new tendencies were renovating our popular sound. We must remember that besides Van Van, around those days, Chucho Valdés founded Irakere and a little after Adalberto Alvarez was shaking the Son and warming the dancing salons with his Calle Enramada and the transcendental A Bayamo en Coche. However, the new creators found limits:

There`s a moment we were doing things and people around the world didn’t know what was happening herewith Van Van. I can tell a story: Once in panama, around the 1974, we were working for a convention of journalists and we were asked to give a press conference. Then they asked, well what kind of music do you play?, I answered: what we are playing is called Songo. What’s this?, they asked, it is completely unknown here, wasn’t it Salsa? –I don’t know specifically what are you talking about, can you give me an example?, I said and they responded, look this is salsa, and then they showed me a record by Roberto Roena under the title Apollo Sound. There were four cuts penned by me: Soy yo el que te busca, Chiquitica di di… etc. I said: look this cuts are mine and they recorded in 1969, we are now in 1974, they were recorded 5 years ago and they were very popular in Cuba. We are the avant garde, if this is salsa, we are doing it before all of them…
I can’t imagine the transcendence of my words, `cause you know press there is also manipulated, but this is an evidence that they totally apart from Cuban musical reality.

Sometimes musicians took songs from Cuba under the slogan All rights reserved without the appearance of the author name. Nobody knew its origin. Roberto Roena –I met him little after- took advantage of this entire situation, he told me, ‘’buddy, when I heard all that I thought: This is a new sound, it’s going to be a boom.’’

Experts and followers of those years from 70s, must remember Roberto Roena`s Apollo Sound as one of the most successful groups of this decade inside and outside Puerto Rico, but it was not the unique group interested in Formell`s music. During the 80`s, Rubén Blades` version to Anda ven y Muévete was widely listened. Rubén Blades did the same, he started to do Van Van`s music because he noticed it was new and pursued it. He told me: I heard and thought it is unknown, he confessed it and there are more anecdotes’’.

December fourth/year sixty nine, Van Van appeared/still in ninety nine year/they still are here pega`o, excuse me Van Van arrived.

Undoubtedly, the great international echo provoked by the creation of Buena Vista Social Club and its Grammy gained around the middle 90`s, plus some other reasons, deeply favored a certain breach towards the world of the musical creation in the island. So, in 1999 Formell and his incredible team was fairly acknowledged with a Grammy. However, since the creation of this accolade’s Latin edition they have not had the same luck. They have been nominated four times without any prize. It’s not rare if we take into consideration the purposes and interests running behind the curtains of this event. Even though, after the delivering of the 2005 edition, Formell received personal congratulations for the nomination of Chapeando CD, signed by Kike Santander, producer of the Carlos Vives` CD, which finally won the prize. No comments.

’’I know these things are happening, since many years ago, is logic, they retain the CD, they don’t launch it to the market. We’ve been fighting during more than 30 years with this history and even in this situation Van Van has been in the major festivals of the world, we have gained re cognition and respect and it is for me more valuable than sales exceeding the million.
I am telling you this with sincerity. Everybody loves fame and money, but not false fame. The orchestra has gained such respect without any effort and it is fairly revered all over the world’’.

Then, his memory flies to those days in which the orchestra participated in the Play Boy Festival, in an event where, as rule, the artist performing can not repeat his performance after three years. However, Juan Formell and his band attended this event three times in a row.
’’The president of the festival used to say that nobody had been so acclaimed in that amphitheater –Hollywood Bowl- with capacity for 18 000 persons, this is a very rare festival, for people of lots of money, having dinner and watching the show, with us they simply stood up, imagine, it was unique’’.

You are about to get something that is in the air/ is a fever to dance with Van Van/ you will also get it/although you assure to prefer rock or traditional music.

It was not rare the fact that the entire auditorium from Hollywood Bowl were entirely standing up, acclaiming this group, Van Van`s music has been always ideal for dancing. Some consider that the secret lies in Formell`s respect for the dancer’s cadence, he accepts but explains that there is something else.

’’Historically, according to Matamoros, Piñeiro… this music is ideal to make anecdotes, a little bit of chronicles, in a way or another. I started to analyze this traditional music and concluded: it can tell stories. The dancer does not have to make a great analysis, because he is enjoying the music, he is not forced to analyze complex texts, but it can tells a story, I studied that, where he is reflected. Characters are dancers themselves. Sandunguera is the Cuban woman, the way she walks, the way she dances; all these things are present in my songs, La Titimanía, La Barbacoa… they were stories where people can find themselves as characters, but also they find cadence, people needs cadence to dance this sort of music. Cuban son is very cadenced. Sometimes can be slower or faster, but it can treated carefully.
This I’m going to tell you is almost a professional secret, we are in some occasions playing in a scene, a song people love, and suddenly, for a reason or another, we played it a little faster and its time runs a little bit, then, you feel the dancer starts to look at you and is uncomfortable because he can not make the steps. I don’t have the grace of dancing and I would love to dance, but I can feel it and I know that when you are doing such things, they simply refuse the music. It’s necessary to play with a cadence, an air, when dancer can feel easy, free to dance. There are some people who enjoy to dance and walk at the same time… it’s something even sensual, the dancing in couple is very pretty, if you respect this fact you guarantee the success in advanced, that was what happened with us, people loved that’’.

There’s a paradox here, this man, managing to captivate the most expert dancers along decades, can not move a foot to dance.

’’I’m going to explain this, people dancing, having that gift to dance is acquiring such grace since birth, it is a corporal grace, there are persons dancing pretty. I don’t know how to explain this, I have it inside I know how to play it … because I enjoy looking at a good dancing couple. I would like to dance like this, but I don’t have the gift. But I do have this feeling inside I swear. I can taste the dancers` necessity to dance, I don’t pretend to imitate them, simply touch them with to make them move with what I have inside of me.
I know when they change steps, when they start to dance different, when they move their shoulders, as they do now. I saw everything and thought: I have to play for this, to make people move with grace. Music comes from inside, but I can’t manage the corporal expression’’.

There are also some others that to dance/ they don’t prefer the Son/if they stop and start to listen/ they will see everything is Son/no, no, no, no don’t worry baby, come in and dance Son/as I do.

For a moment, casino declined among Cuban dancers, they set apart from couple dancing.
I believe it had pretty much to do with the Timba`s arrival, I comment, and his viewpoint jumps immediately.

’’Timba is not the only music to dance casino, I would say is a harder salsa, a very strong music where people used to mount choreographies, but not based on casino. Casino is a very Cuban rhythm, it’s our rhythm and people, later on, due to their preference for Timba were integrating Casino to this sort of music. But it firstly, it broke up with casino that is true.

I think it was the audience itself who was procuring the dancing in couple, not only in Cuba but also internationally. I also think that in discotheques, around those days, people were dancing hard; they were looking a little more for couple dancing and it was good. Van Van has such a wide repertoire that many songs are ideal to dance casino’’.

If you leave, I could not sing anymore songs I wrote to you

Deprived of abilities for dancing, life, however, gave Formell two equally enviable gifts: composing and singing.
”’ I never graduated from a conservatoire because my father was musician, mi father was pianist, flutist, orchestral director, he used to wrote also… well he won symphonic prizes, he was a very skillful person in an academic sense and practical also, that is, I studied with a professor at home, he used to go to my house and gave me solpheo, I never studied in a conservatoire, but in that epoch I had to go out and learned all by myself, I even played in a simple conjunct or in the symphonic orchestra, with every kind of group and I for this reason I became a very skillful instrumentalist, I also loved to sing, in other words, I used to sing because we had a little trio and I played a guitar and sing but nothing important happened to me as singer.
But when I wrote De mis recuerdos for Elena Burke and it was a definite success in the radio, I stopped and said: wait a minute; I have a gift for this, because since that very moment ideas came to me very easy. Then, Yuya Martínez, El Martes, La Candela…saw the Light, I realized that was I was born to, composition. When I sing is because I know people are not going to sing a song like me. But I sing with a very little voice… I love to sing during familiar parties, I always take a guitar a start to sing. I’m going to make a record, many persons have asked me to do that. Silvio Rodríguez has a studio, very small, he does everything there… with piano, guitar, he told me ‘’let’s do a record, perhaps, I will do a duet with you, we can do something with Carlitos Varela, let’s make a ‘’descarga’’. We will do it soon, with songs by me, there are unpublished things only present at ‘’descargas’’ in familiar parties, they can be useful for that.’’

Timba with rumba and rock/ mambo with conga and pop/ salsa with Mozambique/ and clave of Guaguancó/

Who knows well the Van Van’s labor along its 36 years of existence, can notice that Juan Formell has not being indifferent to any genre or musical trend. In fact he acknowledges that Van Van’s secret lies on its permanent renovation. It’s not rare then the attention they concede to the newborn reggaeton.

’’There are people making this very well, let’s be sincere, I have heard it and there are valuable things’’.
I commented to him that in Cuba it not always like this and he says: You’re right, sometimes persons lean on effortless things, but there are pretty interesting cases. I like Daddy Yankee, the mixture he sports with female and male voices, it has swing. He makes you dance because it’s a well-done music. They have ruled markets all worldwide, it’s good for us, because we make music in Spanish and latin music, wherever we go, although we don’t play reggaeton, people show their interest, and we have to recognize that’’.

I ask then if we are going to listen any reggaeton by Van Van, the answer is quick:

”Look, not Reggaeton exactly, but I can, I must do mixtures. I said this a year ago: let`s wait to see what happens and I believe it gained strength enough to become a genre. I really know it is going to transcend. We have to blend it, like we blended Merengue, Cumbia and some others. To approach this rhythm purely is not our style’’.

Van Van is opening / a new road again…/Chapeando

After the success of Chapeando CD, Formell has devoted himself to the production of two DVDs, one of them is having a documentary with the history of the orchestra and will record the major events of a national tour and he is very enthusiastic about this.

’’This is a historical event, because since 15 years ago, Van Van has been absent from the national scenes. I have experienced beautiful things, people crying, they touch you like you were a stranger, they say: It can’t be possible! children… you can’t imagine, very little children dancing with great love and I think: How many generations more? In Santiago 250 thousand persons attended a concert, something really unusual, we are going to include all this in a DVD. Afterwards, we are going to make another material on a Karl Marx’s concert, plus a music CD. We will make two potpourris, featuring hits of the orchestra, let’s do five classics: Marilú, el Buey cansao’, Ampárame, La cabeza mala, and there are two more Sandunguera, let’s start a special thing like we did in La Piragua with the contribution of some musicians but not the entire orchestra. Beside, Pedrito Calvo is going to feature some of the songs that became popular in his voice. There’s an occasional duet with Carlos Varela, let’s do Pablo Milanés` Proposiciones, if I can, Silvio will also be invited, let’s see, I’m immersed in this duty. It will be around June. It is the recording project we have for this year.

You will assure that you and the other are right/ that I was, I don’t know what else, let’s leave it like this, please/ because there is a unique Van Van, (…) Let the history remember it among its memories, look/Express your reasons, /But in verses or in songs, because/I’m just a troubadour/ who has seen the sun after you.

I think the goal of an artist is transcend taking as starting point a song, a musical theme. I don’t know if I’m going to transcend in that sense, sometimes we want, but life is very complex. I think that, for example, Joseíto Fernández never thought he has gained such success with La Guantanamera, there are things happening in this sense, very rare. You can transcend with anything you can’t even imagine. What I know for sure is that Van Van’s existence will be perdurable, because it is an unrepeatable event. Sometimes I’m here with the orchestra but others I’m at home, writing music o reading because I’m feeling easier now, Van Van is still a success and this is the essence. I really feel satisfaction because life gave me the chance to create an orchestra and God gave me the gift to do that…

Van Van was the prettiest thing that happened in my life.’’