Yesterday I saw Chris Washburne and SYOTOS at El Museo del Barrio. I wrote this during the gig. Some of the poem is based on the performance and things that were played and said during it, and other lines are paraphrased from the brilliant book The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love by Oscar Hijuelos. The last two lines are instructions given to me back when I played latin jazz for a living.
barrio music
this is sacred ground
church on Saturday
we should be dancing
led down the aisle by El Rey
like a victory parade
hips swaying, laughing
we are praying to the holy trinity
the mambo, the rumba
and the cha cha cha
James Brown, Machito and Schoenberg
this isn’t music for sitting down
when you play the clave, play the clave
and clap like your mama’s making tortillas
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