Abstract
Herrera’s chapter provides a close reading of the “sonic archive” of the musical Olú Clemente: The Philosopher of Baseball by renowned Nuyorican poets Miguel Algarín and Tato Laviera. She argues that reading the “sonic archive”—that is, the sound recording of the one-time performance in Central Park—as opposed to merely the playbook offers us new ways of understanding how Afro-Latinidad is represented and performed in the play.
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Notes
- 1.
Miguel Algarín and J.A. Laviera, Olú Clemente: The Philosopher of Baseball. New York Public Library, Performing Arts—Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives, Joseph Papp New York Shakespeare Recording Collection, LT-10 10282, recorded August 30, 1973, sound tape reels.
- 2.
It is important to note that there are several earlier iterations of Olú Clemente. In the Joseph Papp New York Shakespeare Festival Collection (Box 2–16, folder 20) there is a program of Piñones: A Puerto Rican Musical Book by Tato Laviera, which was produced before Olú Clemente. This seems to suggest that Laviera originally conceived the idea and then partnered with Miguel Algarín to shape the musical.
- 3.
Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Juan Flores, The Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning (New York: Routledge, 2009).
- 4.
Revista Chicano-Riqueña, founded by Luis Dávila and Nicolás Kanellos in 1973, was one of the few journals in the country offering a forum for Latinos to publish their literary works and art. This literary journal evolved from the Revista Chicana-Riqueña to The Americas Review in the mid-1980s and gained acclaim by The New York Times and the Small Press Review, along with countless others. This successful literary magazine launched Arte Público Press in 1979. Tia Tenopia, 2011. “Latinopia Literature Arte Público Press,” May 1. (http://latinopia.com/latino-literature/latinopia-literature-arte-publico-press/), accessed on May 4, 2013.
- 5.
In the introduction of Nuevo Pasos: Chicano and Puerto Rican Drama (1979), Nicolás Kanellos and Jorge A. Huerta, refer to the group as the Nuyorican Writers’ and Actors’ Workshop (viii). On the other hand, Algarín in a New York Newsday interview conducted on December 5, 1990, and later in the “Afterword” of Action: Nuyorican Poets Cafe Theater Festival (1997), calls it El Puerto Rican Playwrights’/Actors’ Workshop (132).
- 6.
Miguel Algarín and Lois Griffith, Action (New York: Touchstone, 1997), xii.
- 7.
Tato Laviera and Stephanie Alvarez, “Tato in His Own Words: A Collaborative Testimonio,” in The AmeRican Poet: Essays on the Work of Tato Laviera, eds. Stephanie Alvarez and William Luis (New York: Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 2014), 311.
- 8.
Flores, From Bomba to Hip-Hop, 52.
- 9.
Luis A. Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Petra Rivera-Rideau, “‘Cocolos Modernos’: Salsa, Reggaetón, and Puerto Rico’s Cultural Politics of Blackness,” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 8, no. 1 (2013): 5.
- 10.
In the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean, seven of the many orishas were combined into a commonly seen image called “The Seven African Powers.”
- 11.
In the script Algarín and Laviera define Olú as teacher and savior. Nicolás Kanellos and Jorge A. Huerta, Nuevos Pasos: Chicano and Puerto Rican Drama (Gary, Indiana: Revista Chicano-Riqueña, 1989), 152.
- 12.
Kanellos & Huerta, Nuevos Pasos, 151.
- 13.
Ibid., 151.
- 14.
Tato Laviera, “The Salsa of Bethesda Fountain,” in La Carreta Made a U-Turn (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1992), 67–68.
- 15.
Berta Jottar, “Central Park Rumba: Nuyorican Identity and the Return to African Roots,” CENTRO Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 23, no. 1 (2011): 13; Marisol Berríos-Miranda, “Salsa Music as Expressive Liberation,” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16, no.4 (2004): 161.
- 16.
Jottar, “Central Park Rumba,” 6.
- 17.
Tato Laviera and Stephanie Alvarez, “Tato in his own words: A collaborative testimonio,” in AmeRícan Poet: Essays on the Work of Tato Laviera, eds. Stephanie Alvarez and William Luis (New York: Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 2014), 311.
- 18.
Rivera-Rideau, “Cocolos Modernos,” 6.
- 19.
New York Shakespeare Festival Papers, Box 1–319 f. 10
- 20.
New York Shakespeare Festival Papers, Box 1–319 f. 9
- 21.
Miguel Algarín reflects on the impact that Brandon had on many poets in Puerto Rican Voice: Interview with Writers by Carmen Dolores Hernández (1997, 42). Similar to the ways Pedro Pietri, Sandra Maria Esteves, Bob Holman, and other Nuyorican poets describe Brandon, Algarín brings a sharper focus on the poignant yet ephemeral aspects of orality and performance. In addition to acknowledging him in interviews, he reveres Brandon’s declamatory style in his poem “Christmas Eve: Nuyorican Cafe,” Mongo Affairs (1978).
I sit weaving electrical impulses
With Willy One, Ruben and the talking
Coconut, el Señor Jorge Brandon, who
bears the flag of poetry on his tongue
and purest love on his heart giving it
away on the impulse of the moment,
generously to anybody ready to control
the ego and become a listener to a master
painter with words… (6).
- 22.
Laviera and Alvarez, “Tato in his own words,” 297.
- 23.
Raymond Beltrán, “There was Never No Tomorrow, Nuyorican Pedro Pietri in His Own Words,” La Prensa San Diego, February 6, 2004, accessed on October 3, 2014, http://laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/february06-04/pedro.htm.
- 24.
Fiona Mill, “Seeing Ethnicity: The Impact of Race and Class on the Critical Reception of Miguel Piñero’s Short Eyes,” in Captive Audience: Prison and Captivity in Contemporary Theater, ed. by Thomas Fahy and Kimball King, 41–66 (New York: Routledge, 2003), 47.
- 25.
Félix Cortes, Angel Falcón, and Juan Flores, “The Cultural Expression of Puerto Ricans in New York: A Theoretical Perspective and Critical Review,” Latin American Perspectives 3, no. 1 (1976): 126.
- 26.
Miguel Algarín, “Introduction: Nuyorican Language,” in Nuyorican Poetry: An Anthology of
Words and Feelings, ed. by Miguel Algarín and Miguel Piñero (New York: William Morrow, 1975), 9.
- 27.
Information found in Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival Papers, T-Mss 1993-028, Box 1-319 f.9, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
- 28.
Baquinés are not written. They have always been improvised by the townspeople of our island. In 1965, the Institute of Culture of Puerto Rico organized experts and sponsored them in the production of a theatrical show. The show toured all over the island and was even brought to New York.
- 29.
Francisco López Cruz, La música folklórica de Puerto Rico (Sharon, Connecticut: Troutman
Press, 1967), 164–165.
- 30.
Kanellos and Huerta, Nuevos Pasos, 152.
- 31.
Ibid., 152.
- 32.
Ibid., 152.
- 33.
Ibid., 158.
- 34.
Ibid., 152.
- 35.
The spelling used in the script of Eleguá comes from Santeria in Cuba.
- 36.
Kanellos and Huerta, Nuevos Pasos, 153.
- 37.
Ibid., 154.
- 38.
Jorge Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on The Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 283; Augustín Laó-Montes, “Niuyol: Urban Regime, Social Movements, Ideologies of Latinidad,” in Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York, eds. Arlene Dávila and Augustín Laó-Montes (New York: Columbia University, 2001), 176.
- 39.
Latina theater scholar Tiffany Ana López uses the term a “double helix of violence: poverty and prison” to argue that poverty and prison propel the cycle of violence. In her book manuscript in progress, The Alchemy of Blood: Violence, Trauma, and Critical Witnessing in U.S. Latino/a Cultural Production (Duke University Press), citation with courtesy of the author.
- 40.
Kanellos and Huerta, Nuevos Pasos, 159.
- 41.
Ibid., 161.
- 42.
Ibid., 161.
- 43.
Ibid., 165.
- 44.
Ibid., 163–166.
- 45.
Algarín and Laviera, Olú Clemente: The Philosopher of Baseball. New York Public Library, Performing Arts-Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives, Joseph Papp New York Shakespeare Recording Collection, LT-10 10282, recorded August 30, 1973, sound tape reels.
- 46.
Derek Walcott, “The Sea is History,” in Collected Poems: 1948–1984 (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1984), 364–367.
- 47.
Kanellos and Huerta, Nuevos Pasos, 169.
- 48.
Ramón Grosfoguel and Chloe Georás, “The Racialization of Latino Caribbean Immigrants in the New York Metropolitan Area,” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 8, no.1 & 2 (1996): 195.
- 49.
David Maraniss, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007).
- 50.
Petra Rivera-Rideau, “From Carolina to Loíza: Race, Place and Puerto Rican Racial Democracy,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power (2013): 2, accessed October 20, 2014. doi:10.1080/1070289X.2013.842476; Flores, The Diaspora Strikes Back, 46; Raquel Z Rivera, New York Ricans From the Hip Hop Zone (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 21; Grosfoguel and Georás, “The Racialization of Latino Caribbean Migrants in the New York Metropolitan Area,” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 8, no. 2, 190–201.
- 51.
Rivera, New York Ricans, 26.
- 52.
It is worth noting that this antiblack racism was also prevalent within Latino communities.
Bibliography
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M. Algarín, J.A. Laviera, Olú Clemente: The Philosopher of Baseball. New York Public Library, Performing Arts-Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives, Joseph Papp New York Shakespeare Recording Collection, LT-10 10282. Recorded 30 Aug 1973, sound tape reels
M. Algarín, Introduction: Nuyorican language, in Nuyorican Poetry: An Anthology of Words and Feelings, ed. by M. Algarín, M. Piñero (William Morrow, New York, 1975)
M. Algarín, Mongo Affairs (The East Village Press, New York, 1978)
S. Alvarez, W. Luis, The AmeRícan Poet: Essays on the Work of Tato Laviera (Center for Puerto Rican Studies, New York, 2014)
R. Beltrán, There Was Never No Tomorrow, Nuyorican Pedro Pietri in His Own Words. La Prensa San Diego, 6 Feb 2004. http://laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/february06-04/pedro.htm. Accessed 3 Oct 2014
M. Berríos-Miranda, Salsa as an expressive liberation. CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16(4), 159–173 (2004)
F. Cortes, A. Falcón, J. Flores, The cultural expression of Puerto Ricans in New York: A theoretical perspective and critical review. Latin American Perspectives. 3(1), 117–152 (1976)
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Herrera, P. (2016). Listening to Afro-Latinidad: The Sonic Archive of Olú Clemente . In: Rivera-Rideau, P., Jones, J., Paschel, T. (eds) Afro-Latin@s in Movement. Afro-Latin@ Diasporas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59874-5_8
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