Joe Arroyo: Dreams From My Mother

A not-so-brilliant attempt committed to tape by Joe Arroyo is the cover of the early-reggaeton-turned-joeson called “Mini Mini”. Although the initial idea was fair and ok, the brass and chorus arrangement is particularly atrocious. To prove my point, we have been lately listening in Barranquilla to a live version broadcasted by a local radio station, with almost all the brass arrangement stripped down, leaving the joeson rhythm alone to be appreciated.

“The arrangement of Manyoma is mine” said Alvaro José Arroyo in a throughout interview published in an out-of-print Colombian “Rolling Stone” edition. If you hear “Catalina del Mar”, you know it’s completely true: you can hear the same rhythm pattern in both songs. And the origin of that rhythm pattern can be traced to the Wganda Kenya cover of “El Evangelio”, an old calypso originally performed by Les Shilieu Shileiu. By the way, Wganda Kenya was a Fruko sideproject dedicated to the music of the Caribbean: socca, beguine, reggae and so on. Credits in all singles and albums were carefully omitted to avoid market saturation with the “Fruko” brand.

Anyway, if you hear the cover, the percussion goes this way:

Cowbell:

Tack-a-tack tack-a-tack-tack-tack-tacka, Tack-a-tack tack-a-tack-tack-tack-tacka

Conga Drum:

Tum-uh-tum tum, Tum-uh-tum tum

It’s difficult (and somewhat ludicrous) to transcribe a sound this way, but hey, I’m trying to dissect a winning formula! Anyway, this same percussion play can be heard in “Musa Original” and is definitively the base of the Joesón. “Son Apretao”, the first time the formula pieces finally fit together, has this rhythm mold:

Cowbell:

Tack-tack um-tack-tack-tack, Tack-tack um-tack-tack-tack

Conga Drum:

Tum-uh-tum tum, Tum-uh-tum tum

A musician friend of mine told me the rythmn didn’t change at all; I said the feeling did anyway, because the cowbell sounded almost like the clave of Cuban son played backwards.
You thought Joe Arroyo was a genius? Now you can bet on it! “Tumbatecho”, another predecessor of “La Noche”, “Tal para Cual”, “Echao Pa’ Lante”, “Fue tu Mirada” and many other hits billed as Joesons, might at the beginning sound like a silly string of silly rhymes but it contains the main clue of how composes El Joe: laying in bed, before he falls asleep. He has already told in many interviews he has tape recorders all over his home because his ideas appear all in a sudden, and especially between consciousness and the first REM cycle. He acknowledged that “Catalina del Mar” came to him precisely this way.

This “lucid dream” composing system is not exclusive of him, witness Paul McCartney with the melody of “Yesterday” and Keith Richards with the legendary riff of “Satisfaction”. In the case of Joe, it is something of a personal philosophy. “La Vida Va (Life flows)” is for me his best composition ever, the one on top of a monster career with huge self-penned hits. The first line of the song says: “Hear the truth: the only material thing in the universe is life. And life flows!” Somehow Joe Arroyo sings a four-minute treatise about Berkeley’s Idealism. Pure genius, I told you!

If you hear outside Colombia the megahit “Rebelión” and you don’t know anything else about El Joe (in the YouTube era, sure) you might think of him of a “political” composer in the vein of Willie Colón’s and Rubén Blades’ Siembra era, but Joe’s composing range is much wider than that. It goes from the playful and festive (“La Rumbera”), romance ("Mary"), the mournful denouncement of human nature (“Mundo Cruel”), social commentary (“La Guerra de los Callados”), the celebration of his hometown, both original and adoptive (“En Barranquilla Me Quedo”, “Los Barcos en la Bahía”), right up to God worship (“A Mi Dios Todo Le Debo”). In his case, all he has to do is dream…

Nevermind, the most poignant part of his life telenovela is that he was barely a big kid and started to sing professionally in brothels, trying to shoo poverty and hunger away while her mother Angela knew his effort was necessary for their survival. The other day, news people interviewing him became puzzled when they asked him what he would have become if he were not a singer. Without blinking he said “a litigating attorney”. If the journalists were doing their homework, they would have realized that he achieves his dream of becoming a singing megastar. The attorney gig was Adela’s dream for his son.


Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiya!

Related articles

• Joe Arroyo: Dreams From My Mother (sipmac.blogspot.com)
• Fruko y sus Tesos - Four Ages of Salsa (sipmac.blogspot.com)