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There are a couple of organizations that promote the "sister", or "twin" cities concept ("sister" in North America and "twin" in Europe), those being Sister Cities International and the Council of European Municipalities and Regions... To the best of my knowledge Salvador has yet to gain a twin in Europe...but it has been declared a sister city of Los Angeles, California, making it one of some twenty cities having that somewhat watered-down distinction. So setting officialdom aside, and municipal councils and chambers of commerce and speech-making goodwill delegates on taxpayer junkets, I'd like to propose that in the larger sphere Salvador is already joined at the hip with a couple of cities to a degree that these are more like soul sister cities...these two cities being New Orleans, Louisiana and Havana, Cuba. And in that human culture isn't isolated like a germ in a petri dish, the culture that permeates these cities may in many respects be considered to encompass in the first case much of the American Deep South, and in the second that of Puerto Rico, from there making the crosswater jump to parts of New York City. * * *
* * * Juke Joints were/are ramshackle places, usually out on the edge of a town -- or a field -- in America's Deep South, where poor (black) people would socialize and dance to the blues or to blues-based music (a lot like the ramshackle places in Bahia where people socialize and dance to Afro-Bahian samba-chula and samba-de-roda)...
In both Bahia and in the American South these places are blinking out like the last flashes of fireflies at the end of a long hot summer, but in both cases there are still a few survivors and in the case of juke joints there is a chronicler out there on the back roads and in the small towns, frequenting these places and telling their stories online...a man by the name of Junior Doughty. Junior speaks for himself...
Junior has his own juke joint...and here's the front door. How many kids sitting in front of the TV watching I Love Lucy re-runs knew that when Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) would pick up his drum and pound out a tattoo, calling "Babalooooo", he was beating out a rhythm particular to the oricha Babalú Ayé? Well Bobby Sanabria, sitting up there in the South Bronx did! He even knew that the type of drum itself (not a conga, like everybody seems to think; see below) was exactly what in Cuba was used for such calls to another world. Bobby went on to pick up the drums himself and play with a gilded who's-who of the greatest of the greats (Mario Bauza, Dizzy Gillespie, Mongo Santamaria, Chico O'Farrill, and Tito Puente, among others), and now is one of the world's most respected percussionists -- and teachers -- in his own right.
My neighbor Bobby "the Source" Sanabria (neighbor during my NYC days anyway) is one more grooving embodiment of living history! Check him out! The Buena Vista Social Club was a touching film with great music...but the premise that struck such a sympathetic chord in so many places around the world -- that of venerable but forgotten musicians getting a well-deserved second chance -- can also be found up to the north and west of Cuba, in and around a great city that has recently seen so much suffering and neglect, New Orleans. The Ponderosa Stomp Foundation was founded by the Mystic Knights of the Mau-Mau (was Screamin' Jay Hawkins the inspiration for their rococo, hanging-moss name?), a group located right there in the Crescent City and devoted to bringing back the forgotten greats of American roots rock 'n' roll. They have a KICKIN' internet radio station, and if you're gonna have a party that's more -- or pretty much way -- to the wild side, all you gotta do is hook Stomp Radio up to your speakers, take your shoes off, grab a drink, and find somebody to dance with!
More beautiful juke, 1944, courtesy of Marion Post Wolcott...
And Itapoan, Bahia, 2008...
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