For We
Like It Like That, a new documentary premiering at SXSW that vividly tells the
story of the rise and fall of boogaloo, director Mathew Ramirez Warren uses
vintage footage, album covers and concert posters to create a film that brings
the New York barrio in the early '60s alive.
The film
centers on interviews with Johnny Colon, Joe Bataan and other artists now
considered music legends, but who were pushed out of the spotlight after their
short and euphoric success by the coming of salsa.
Like other
current boogaloo fans, Warren, who is 32, discovered the music while digging
through flea-market crates.
"Here
were these songs that were half in English, they had the funky backbeat, kind a
of a soul R&B thing," says Warren, a native New Yorker and first-time
director whose background is in journalism. He supported the production of the
film with a successful Kickstarter campaign, as well as several grants.
"Growing up, to me, Latin music was kind of something foreign, from
somewhere else. Boogaloo particularly reflected for me this idea of New York
influencing the music."
The
documentary details boogaloo's rise from the streets to the clubs and the
charts, described by artists and fans in the film as a grassroots phenomenon
that gave voice to the children of Puerto Rican immigrants in East Harlem.
"In a
way boogaloo saved Latin music in New York," Warren says. "You had
these kids who were becoming more and more Americanized, who were assimilating,
because they were born and raised in New York. And at that time, in the early
'60s, most of them thought of [Latin music] as their parents' music and kind of
corny. So it took this fusion of soul music into the Latin sound to get them to
perk up their ears."
The
grooving freestyle songs performed by largely self-taught musicians with wild
hair and tight pants challenged the reign of the more buttoned-up mambo orchestras
in New York, who were identified with an elegant social elite that seemed out
of place as the youth revolution began.
"You
have to understand the cultural times which played a role," Warren notes.
"You had the Black Power movement and the Latino Power movement going
on." The boogaloo was the perfect vibe as sex and drugs became part of the
scene; it was great music for dancing stoned.
"They
were young kids charging a lot less but who seemed to be getting top billing
over people like Tito Puente," says Warren. "Prior to that there was
a process of how you would make your way as a musician, particularly in the
Latin music industry. You would become a player in a big band first, and maybe
in your 30s you could start your own band. [The boogaloo musicians] were
entirely breaking the mold."
The movie
title We Like It Like That riffs on Pete Rodriguez's "I Like it Like
That," the most enduring boogaloo track together with Joe Cuba's
"Bang, Bang." But as the film shows, many did not like it.
"I
think there was a natural resentment once they started to have success from
certain people in the industry," Warren explains. "They were like,
'You're bastardizing our sound, you're making it black.'" As the film
explains, by the '70s, boogaloo had been effectively obliterated by salsa, the
new sound that was heavily promoted by Fania Records, which took control of New
York's Latin music scene.
"There's
no denying how important salsa is and what a huge mark that's left across the
world," Warren says. "But boogaloo helped create a space for that.
Boogaloo was almost so succesful that it caused its own demise. It got these
kids listening to Latin music, and it got them to a place where they say, 'I
want to listen to music in Spanish now, I want to be truer to my roots.'"
Warren's
search for the boogaloo stars found that some, no longer able to make a living,
had left music altogether. Johnny Colon started a music school where salsa star
Marc Anthony, like other kids from the projects, studied as a child.
"It
was hard for [the artists] to appreciate what they'd done [with
boogaloo]," Warren says. "Because there was this sense in the '70s
of, 'Don't do your music in English. If you're a real Latino you're going to do
salsa music now.'"
Trips back
to the old neighborhood with Joe Bataan and Colon bring emotion as well as
historical value to the film. A postscript documenting a recent boogaloo
revival is less compelling, but odds are that after watching this movie you'll
be putting on some of those old boogaloo songs yourself. And dancing.
We Like It
Like That debuts Wednesday, March 18, at the Stateside Theater in Austin. You
can view a trailer at: -
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