Sept. 16, 1620: The Mayflower (yes, that Mayflower) sets sail from Plymouth, England, to make the tempestuous journey across the Atlantic to North America.
Sept. 16, 1672: Anne Bradstreet, North America’s first published female poet/writer (and a successful one at that), dies at the age of 60. Her descendents include Herbert Hoover and John Kerry.
Sept. 16, 1908: General Motors, one of the largest vehicle manufacturers in the world, is founded in Flint, Michigan.
Sept. 16, 1966: The Metropolitan Opera House officially opens in New York City with a showing of Samuel Barber’s operatic adaptation of “Antony and Cleopatra.”
Sept. 16, 1997: The eponymous albums Buena Vista Social Club and Introducing… Ruben Gonzalez are released.
I want you to take part in an exercise in imagination. You’re a passenger aboard the Mayflower. You don’t have the gift of prognostication, so you have no idea you’re going to end up hundreds of miles away from your intended docking point. You have no idea you might be one of the unfortunates who died that first winter in Plymouth harbor.
On Sept. 16, departing England, you have no idea what the next 66 days are going to bring—as it turns out, storms and hardships and a baby who is christened Oceanus Hopkins and, later, on the shores of North America, a baby named Peregrine White.
So the real question: Are you bored, my Mayflower child? Probably. Maybe some music would help. Perhaps the voyage would have been ameliorated had the likes of Ruben Gonzalez or Ibrahim Ferrer been in their midst. Maybe they could have brought along the entire Social Club to play evenings and weekend afternoons.
For anyone out of the loop, here’s another historical interpolation: The Buena Vista Social Club was a famous venue for Cuban son music up until the late fifties, when the Cuban Revolution and the rise in more pop oriented Cuban music shuttered the traditionalists out. A period passes. Ry Cooder, pre-eminent (according to Rolling Stone) guitarist and world traveler comes to Cuba and records Buena Vista Social Club with much of the old gang from the old son times. Success!
Introducing… Ruben Gonzalez is the debut album by the eponymous pianist that, while it lacks most of the historic attraction of BVSC, is the better album of the two.
I imagine most critics/fans like title track “Buena Vista Social Club” for its monolithic sound. Some songs cut clean through the album’s turbid flow (“Chan Chan,” “Candela,” any song with a prominent Gonzalez piano line), but otherwise BVSC is content just to, well, flow. In my experience though, it’s hard to pick out gems or ore from such a languid current.
Introducing…, on the other hand, cuts some of the big-band groove in favor of highlighting Gonzalez’s vivacious piano playing. The longest song, “Alemendra,” is the best. For nine and a half minutes, it’s just Gonzalez ripping it up on the piano, with some minimal backing as texture/grounding while Ruben soars up and down the keys. Introducing…, like BVSC, flows, but at a much faster pace most of the time, which is what endears it to me more. I would happily imagine Ruben Gonzalez rippling keys with the undulating ocean underneath his seat.
Writing this, I found it surprising how these two things, among others, could have happened on the same day, relatively. It’s reassuring, in a way, how so much happens that human history keeps transecting and intersecting like the minutest stitches of an infinite quilt.
Though, I have a hard time imagining, had the threading years been pulled and the serendipity of Sept. 16th allowed the Mayflower to resound with the sounds of Cuban son music, which those hardscrabble sailors would have preferred. BVSC is the better contemplative album; Introducing… shakes off the barnacles of boredom better. Oh well.
Other albums released this day: The Way I See It by Raphael Saadiq (2008), The Equinox by Organized Konfusion (1997), Worldwide Underground by Erykah Badu (2003).
What music do you think they would have played on The Mayflower? Let Sean know at sreichard@wisc.edu.
