And the beat goes on ....
Cuban music a passion for professor and filmmaker

Producer Ed Tillett (l.) and Professor Mike Davison review footage while in Santiago de Cuba.

BY LINDA EVANS
Editor, RichmondNow

If your knowledge of Cuban music begins and ends with Desi Arnaz and Gloria Estefan, professor Mike Davison wants to introduce you to a rich musical heritage that he believes changed the course of American music.

Whether it’s son, salsa, rumba, mambo or other Cuban styles, Davison has become one of the leading experts in American higher education. He has visited the Caribbean country—90 miles south of Key West—13 times in the past eight years, taking Richmond students with him until 2004 when the U.S. government declared undergraduates could take only semester-long trips to Cuba.

For the past two years, Davison and independent producer Ed Tillett, who accompanied him on four trips and has guest-lectured in Davison’s classes, have collaborated to produce a documentary about Cuban music. Their work will culminate with a premiere Nov. 30 in Camp Concert Hall.

“Cuba: Rhythm in Motion,” is an hour-long “celebration of sharing music across the water,” says Davison.

“We might not have ragtime or jazz or even rock ‘n’ roll,” Davison says, “if not for the help of Cuban music,” which blends rhythms and sounds from Africa, Western Europe and North America. Conversely, Cubans have been influenced by American music, especially jazz, and continue to draw from it today, he says.

“Cachao” was interviewed at his home in Miami last spring.

“The viewer will see the music as an international language,” says Tillett. “The rhythms of Cuba changed the course of American music.” He cites the music of early rock ‘n’ rollers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry as having been influenced by Cuban rhythms. 

Davison and Tillett gained extraordinary access to both internationally known Cuban musicians and everyday dancers and singers, often finding them on street corners or small cafes in Havana. In Miami last spring, they interviewed 89-year-old, Grammy Award-winning Israel “Cachao” Lopez, who invented the “descarga,” a jazz-like, improvisational style, and the mambo and continues to perform around the world. Although he has been in the United States since the early 1960s, Cachao wasn’t easy to get to, Davison says. It was only by way of a friend of a friend that the interview happened. Davison explains that his friend, Andy Gomez of the University of Miami, contacted Raul Merciano, the original pianist for Gloria Estefan, who knows Cachao. Merciano paved the way, and also conducted the interview for Davison in Spanish.  

The duo also interviewed Helio Orovio, a Cuban ethnomusicologist and leading authority on the evolution of Cuban and world music. The author of more than 20 books, Orovio explains in the documentary the difference between Cuban music and that of the United States. 

“Black slaves brought to the USA were not allowed to play their drums. That’s why gospel, the folk songs, blues and music from the South is vocal and melodic.” By contrast, in Cuba, “imagine the development that drums and percussion went through. It was far superior than in the U.S. That is the reason why pretty much the only percussion instrument there is the drums set, compared to the arsenal of percussion instruments we have in Cuba.”

Mike Davison (third from right) performs in the horn section with Pozo and his group on a rooftop in Havana.

Jorge Gomez, pianist and musical leader of the group Tiempo Libre, discusses timba music. A genre that emerged about 1985, it is a combination of jazz and traditional Cuban music. All members of the group, which performed on campus in 2006, are Cubans who grew up together and now reside in Miami.

The video also includes faces that will be more familiar to a University audience. Appearing along with Davison are Myra Daleng, director of dance, and alumnus Mark Lomanno, ’02, who accompanied Davison to Cuba.

The documentary includes interviews, performances, and archival and location footage, says Tillett. It is presented in both Spanish and English with corresponding subtitles.

Davison, who plays trumpet, says Cuban music is “a celebration of humanity. Our essence is portrayed through dancing and music.” He appears in the documentary accompanying a group led by congo player and band leader Joaquin Pozo, who regularly performs throughout Cuba.

In addition to their trips to Cuba, Davison, Tillett and several Richmond students visited the University of Miami and Florida International University, where they gathered archival material. Now, the three universities are hoping to develop a Web-based repository of contemporary video, images, audio and research related to the shared heritage of American and Cuban popular music.

The documentary is not the first collaboration between Davison and Tillett. In 2004, they produced a five-part radio  series that examined the evolution of Cuban music and its influence on jazz. It ran on WCVE during “Morning Edition.”

Davison also has developed numerous classes and independent studies related to Cuban music, including “Salsa Meets Jazz,” “Jazz Poetry” and “Cuba: A Documentary,” which culminated in a multidisciplinary, live event at the Modlin Center in 2005. “Twenty-five students researched, produced and staged the event,” he says.

Davison has been invited to show the documentary at film festivals in Mexico City, Finland and Cuba and hopes to create a multimedia DVD to be used in cross-disciplinary courses.

Premiere
Cuba: Rhythm in Motion

A documentary about Cuban music produced by Professor Mike Davison and Filmmaker Ed Tillett

Nov. 30, 7:30 p.m.
Modlin Center, Camp Concert Hall
Free and open to the public
Tickets required; call the
Box Office at 289-8980