Ecua Jei

Ismael Rivera

El Sonero Mayor

By Aurora Flores

He walked the path of pain and suffering, the 5 foot 10, caramelo-colored, Puerto Rican prophet of Boricua soul. Fondly called "Maelo" by his friends and "El Sonero Mayor" (the "Master Singer") by his contemporaries, Ismael Rivera was a born natural.

He began to sing since he reached the age of reason and reason made his voice fly, dodging in and around the clave with a facility revealing a gift from God. But reality also told him that he was born in one of the poorest sectors of San Juan -- one of five surviving siblings, seven others did not make it. Very early on, his father told him stories steeped in roots and slavery, of love for an island that remained enslaved in her own right. Maelo used this love as a shield during a time where he had to fight for respect and work for survival from his youth into manhood. Yet from deep in the belly of poverty sprang a joy and celebration of life that was not only infectious, but priceless.

One day, six-year-old Maelo announced to his mom, Margarita (Doña Margo), that he would learn a skill that would support his family -- then little Maelo ran off to play rhythms -- banging on paint cans while shaking baby bottles filled with beans. But he made good on his promise. He shined shoes after school and ran errands before becoming a skilled bricklayer and master carpenter.

Finger poppin’ claves through the snap of his fingers while his hands labored over bricks and mortar, Maelo's noontime coros resounded through the cangrejero 'hood of Santurce where he and boyhood buddy Rafael Cortijo would hustle gigs for the tribal "areitos" that released the soul at sunset. He met his partner, Rafa, (Cortijo) when he was eleven- years-old in elementary school. The family frowned on the friendship, quipped Doña Margo because Rafa was so Black he looked blue and always walked around with those "damned drums draped around him." But fate had been sealed, Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera were about to make music and history.

After Maelo rocked the Island with "El Charlatan," his first hit with La Panamericana, he bought his mother a house on Calle Calma, building the facade with his own hands. Roberto Clemente and Peruchin Cepeda had just made the big leagues, representing Puerto Ricans with pride. The feeling among the Island's Blacks was one of elation. It was as if a liberating explosion hit the island in 1954.

Cortijo y Su Combo con Ismael Rivera became the first all-black band to be featured regularly on television and radio, "El Show de Medio Dia," and "La Taberna India." Their front line and brass section danced and commercial instrumentation. Cortijo incorporated Afro-Cuban montuno lines on the piano with jazz licks on the brass over the indigenous bomba rhythms of the Island played on Cuban tumbadoras rather than the Island’s native “barriles” (drum barrels). Maelo's rapid fire soneos staccatoed over melodies building layers of rhythms while playing catch with the clave, improvising street phrases and sometimes singing in unison with the percussion, tres or cuatro that soloed. He danced, jumped, played clave and had the audience in the palm of his hands. "Someone opened the cage and let all the Blacks loose," Doña Margo once said. Indeed, Cortijo and Maelo's performances had a liberating fury that crescendoed into an exhaustive ecstasy. Their music was an electrifying release.

Singer/composer Bobby Capo wrote hits for them as did Pedro Flores, Don Rafael Cepeda and Doña Margo. Don Cepeda, the guardian of Boricua bomba and plena rhythms had been singing tunes to the duo for years, polishing their native born knowledge of the genres.

During an interview in the summer of 1976, Cortijo once said he took the rhythms of Boricua blood, dressed her up in her Sunday best and paraded her around the world for everyone to see. He loved her and you could feel it. In fact, when he was about to record his first album, Cortijo made a point of recording his beloved bombas and plenas first, at a time in Puerto Rico when the Afro-Cuban conjunto sound was the big seller.

One of Don Cepeda's sons, Roberto Cepeda recalls how proud his father was of them. "They brought the music of the poor out of isolation. It went from marginalized ghettos onto radio, television, records and movies," Roberto muses on those early meetings. The old man would sing bombas to them, Cortijo would then transform the hundreds of rhythms that fall under the label of bomba, such as a bomba yuba, cuembe, cocobale, holandes or lero into a more fast paced bomba sica making it more commercially appealing to a dance crowd. Don Cepeda and Maelo would sing the coro together while Cortijo quickened the rhythms. Maelo would start on the verses improvising parts of the African Congolese phrases into the scatted “mambos” of the tunes. During these meetings, Don Cepeda’s many children would gather around Maelo who always had his pockets filled with candy and trinkets for them.

Maelo loved children. He believed that all children should feel love and joy, no matter where they came from. He recalled a party in his honor at the start of his career at a top drawer hotel in Puerto Rico. Maelo went out and rented a van gathering all the kids from the block on Calle Calma. When the promoter of the party saw those scruffy children in the lobby he began to chase them out. Maelo stepped in and said, "These are my guests and this is my party. I want them treated just like any other visitor at this hotel." They all sat at Maelo's table.

He was the same with beggars. It didn't matter what they wanted the money for. I watched him take desperate people to eat a meal, peel off dollar bills to strung out junkies with outstretched hands, and buy groceries for the sick and elderly. I once asked him why he would throw his money away on someone who was just going to get high with it. "If you're going to be charitable don’t look at where it's going -- just give it away and don't look back. That's what it's about." That's what Maelo was about.

I met Maelo while I was a music correspondent for Billboard Magazine. He was my neighbor but more importantly, he was my friend. He came into my life at a time of loss and heartache. A refuge in a time of need, Maelo's fatherly treatment towards me had a healing affect on my broken heart. I was privileged enough to meet his mother, friends, children and many of the ladies that Maelo wooed and loved. He was a ladies man for sure, often comparing women to candy -- all good with different flavors -- but I met him in a retrospective time in his life where he was able to have friendships with women that were platonic while being emotionally intimate.

That's when he told me about his annual pilgrimage to Panama where he told me he touched and felt the pain of the Black Christ of Portobelo -- El Nazareno.

El Nazareno moved him… inspired him… helped him stay away from heroin for 16 years. He recalled the first time that he danced with the devil. In the arrabales. In the ghetto. It was a common right of passage. A dare. A badge that made you into a man. In New York it got worse. At the Palladium it was a test of musical prowess. "A macho trap," he agonized. "How bad could you be under the influence and still perform. That was the measure of manhood, of musicianship." He knew it was a lie. He felt it deep in his soul and his heart ached with despair.

By 1955, Maelo and Cortijo were the talk of Latin music. They tore up the Palladium. Ripped up the Carnavales and fired up Colombia and Venezuela. In fact, it was while they were rehearsing at Roseland for a gig at New York’s Palladium that Benny Moré heard Cortijo y Su Combo. They were to share the stage that night and Benny was to rehearse with a band that was not his own. Once he heard Cortijo, he asked the Palladium’s proprietor to pay the boys because he wanted to be backed up by the Puerto Rican combo. But after he heard Maelo singing, he passed the torch of vocal greatness to the young Boricua proclaiming him, El Sonero Mayor – The Master Singer – on the stage of the legendary ballroom.

Meanwhile, Cortijo y Su Combo had broken through the color line -- the black barrier in Puerto Rico, where only lighter skinned musicians could play. Cortijo increased the pay scale for Black musicians, in particular drummers, paying them equal to what the rest of the “schooled” musicians were paid. He also secured the all Black band lodging in the same fancy hotels they played. Something unheard of at that time.

Then, after nine years of hit after musical hit, Maelo took one of his worst hits at the San Juan airport in 1962. Someone informed officials that the band was carrying drugs. Maelo, Cortijo and some of the other band members were carrying. But Maelo stepped forward and took the rap for everyone. He was arrested, handcuffed and paraded for all to see through "La Fortaleza." He was charged with trafficking; trying to smuggle drugs into the Island.

Maelo served some time in San Juan’s notorious “Oso Blanco” jail. Things were never the same. But since it was a federal offense he was taken to and tried in the States. His lawyer was an American whom he didn’t even understand. Maelo was sentenced and sent to a penitentiary in Lexington, Kentucky.

While in prison, Maelo got other prisoners into music forming a band. He composed, sang and played, reflecting on his life on the island while observing the life of a Black man in the South at the start of the civil rights movement cutting through America. Most of all, he missed his friend, Cortijo.

Back on the Island, the Cortijo Combo floundered. Puerto Rico was outraged at the nerve of these negros, condemning their bon vivant lifestyle at the height of their success. Pianist, Rafael Ithier quickly organized "El Gran Combo" and bolted, taking musicians and gigs with him. Later, former members of the band such as Roberto Roena went their separate ways starting their own combos.

Maelo served about 44 months in prison. He returned to the island in 1966 to record a comeback album with Cortijo, "Bienvenidos" utilizing the Tito Puente orchestra as back up with the great maestro himself on coro. But neither Maelo nor the recording were welcomed. Sales were flat. Promoters did not want to hire them. Puerto Rico would not forgive him. Maelo returned to New York, broken-hearted and self-destructive. He recorded, "Lo Ultimo de la Avenida" with master percussionist Kako. By 1968 he formed, Ismael Rivera y Los Cachimbos.

The trail of hits began once more. But this time, Maelo hit with a vengeance. In New York, he wrapped himself around the anonymity of the poor, the lumpen, the forgotten. He formed a family nucleus with Gladys Serrano, his companion of 25 years whom he called Gladiola. They had a child, Carlito, but Maelo also raised her eldest son Rodney whose birth father was another great Puerto Rican vocalist, Daniel Santos. His eldest son, Ismaelito, Jr., from his first wife Virginia (they were never divorced) would come to stay with them in New York during summer vacations. In fact, many were the children that called him "Papa Maelo." His apartment, invariably, was always filled with children. I saw him counseling a troubled teen once who was self-destructing and Maelo was emphatic about his returning home, continuing school and getting a job. For dramatic affect he pulled out an old shoe shine box from the closet and showed him how he used to shine shoes when he was his age emphasizing humility as nothing to be ashamed of. He had decorated the foyer of his apartment with wood paneling and maple "banquitos" where they were sitting and talking. He was proud of his carpentry skills making his own clave sticks out of wood he'd find in the streets.

Then he found El Nazareno. His career and voice reached its peak. He performed at a Tico-Alegre All-Star concert in Carnegie Hall headlining along with La Lupe; Yayo El Indio; Vitin Aviles and the Alegre All-Stars. He sang "Mi Negrita Me Espera," a tune in tribute to his mother that expressed her anxiety when he started playing all-night gigs. He recorded Rafael Hernandez’ classic "Cumbanchero," where he underscores his musical mastery with the phrase, "A mi me llaman el Sonero Mayor, porque vacilo con la clave y tengo sabor," in a rat-ta-tat percussive word-playing soneo drenching audiences like hard rain falling on a hot tin roof, making this standard forever his. His band was tight with a hard-hitting sound that now expressed a Puerto Rican/New York reality. This was a more laid back sound with recordings such as "Traigo de Todo," "Soy Feliz," "Dime Por Que”, and songs about prison, "Las Tumbas" and "El Negrito de Alabama," sprinkled with Spanglish street phrases that punched through the solid wall of instrumentation like a heavyweight at a prize fight, venia por la maceta. He was clean. He was strong. He was El Sonero Mayor.

I traveled with him and Gladiola to Panama in1978 for the yearly pilgrimage to Portobelo on October 21^st where he carried El Nazareno. At the airport, we were met by Panamanian officials who treated Maelo as an arriving dignitary: an ambassador gracing their country with his presence. We were escorted to the hotel in the capital city of Colon and treated to sumptuous dinner parties at the homes of top officials. Maelo was truly loved here.

Despite the fanfare, he was itching to get on with the spiritual tradition. He went into detail as to how the ritual would go down showing off the beautiful lilac with gold trim robe he wore for the event. "We have to walk 17 kilometers to get to Porto Belo. There, the people gather at the Church of San Felipe. They pray, they make promises, they sleep and they cry there. There are no cement roads and everyone travels into the small coastal town by foot. I wear the robe while walking and think about how the Christ, “el negrito,” will help me. I think of his words of love for everyone and about forgiveness for all the evil in the world. Once there, I join the other men in carrying the huge platform that supports the life-size image of El Nazareno."

I watched with Gladiola as the men carried the huge statue around the town, three steps forward and two steps back to the beat of the drums that accompanied them. The figure stood above the ocean of people that formed the procession, seeming to walk above the heads of the crowd. We stood there transfixed in the rain holding candles that did not go out. A crucifixion was re-enacted. Tears streamed down devout faces as the pain of Christ washed over us like a wave. After it was over, we found Maelo near the steps of the Church where barbers were shaving and cutting the men’s hair. He showed us the bruises on his shoulder from the platform and I asked him why he was cutting his hair and beard. “I grow it all year as part of my promise to El Nazareno and then I leave him my strength so that he can continue to help me."

He carried the wooden cross bearing the black face of Christ everywhere he went. When he was recording Las Caras Lindas for Fania Records in 1978 I saw him make the sign of the cross, take El Nazareno from around his neck, put it on the music stand, put the “cans” on his head, pick up his clave and “pa’encima.” His coro singers for that recording were Ruben Blades, Hector LaVoe and Yayo El Indio, the best in the business, and they were in total awe of him. I thought, if Christ walked the earth today, Maelo would be one of his disciples. It is not what goes into a man that defines his character, but what comes out. What came out of Maelo was real. His recordings were punctuated with references to saints and sinners, San Miguel Arcange, and El Nazareno punctuated by a call to the deities of African spirits, Ecua Jei, for empowerment. He did not enjoy pretense or suffer fools and although he was strong he was sincere about his weaknesses and compassionate about humanity. He was never sarcastic or arrogant with his public demanding and getting respect in return. Although he had many women, they all knew about each other and not a one would even think of making a public scene. At gigs, he was usually accompanied by an entourage of friends from the ‘hood whom he quickly informed club owners, managers and promoters should be treated with the same regard afforded other patrons or he'd just leave. And although his circle of compadres were mostly people that shared the same pain of poverty he knew so well, he was able to hobnob with powerful, celebrated and influential people as well as a nerdy little kid like me. While conducting an interview with a television reporter he was asked whether he was anxious about winning a Grammy now that Palmieri had won one, to which he replied, “Grammy, Hammy, what’s important is the music.” He was genuine, expressing the joy and pain of life on a very real level.

Maelo’s voice had dropped several keys by the time he recorded, "De Toda Maneras Rosas," in 1976. The phrasing was still driving, the flirtation with the clave was impeccable, but the range was fading. Margarita's boy didn't know it then but the polyps were beginning to take hold of his vocal chords. His 1978 tribute concert at Madison Square Garden was a musical disappointment. He began to indulge in vices with a drive that on some deeper level numbed the reality of his failing voice.

By 1982, Cortijo died of cancer. The visionary who brought Black musicians into the limelight of stardom had passed. Cortijo, who not only marked a new trail and fusion of music in Salsa incorporating the native bombas and plenas of Puerto Rico into the Afro-Cuban mix fusing these elements with rock, jazz, and nueva trova in a mixture celebrated from Cuba to Spain that remains unrecognized today, would no longer be seen at the race tracks or clubs of New York and Puerto Rico. The Island was shocked; Maelo was devastated. He went to Puerto Rico to mourn his brother and say goodbye. Tears flowed as he spoke to his compadre in what seemed to be a secret language of Spanish, English and African. He knelt, made the sign of the cross and prayed before the masses at the San José cemetery in Villas Palmeras. He returned to New York destroyed, his spirit broken. He abandoned the words of El Nazareno and began to dance with Satan once more. His voice was never the same.

Two tumultuous New York years passed with Maelo literally lost in the streets of East Harlem, barefoot, crazed and confused… The once mighty warrior of Puerto Rican soul was seen picking from garbage, looking for quarters in phone booths and searching for solace in a lonely basement. He ran into a preacher friend who took him to his farm in Connecticut where Maelo found the words of El Nazareno once more. His tocayo and friend, vocalist Ismael Miranda sent for him to clean up at his ranch and return to the home of his mother, Margarita.

Maelo found comfort in the bosom of the mother who was his muse. He began throat treatments in 1985 in a heartbreaking and hopeless quest to find his voice. But in his heart of hearts, he knew it was futile because he would often say… Cortijo had the key and when he died, he took it with him.

Doña Margo would say her son sang for her, for the singer that she could never be. And indeed it was some of her tunes that shook the hit parade in Puerto Rico and New York in the early years. But Maelo sang for everyone, especially the poor of his barrio. When he belts out, "Yo soy Maelo de la calle Calma cantando pa’ ti linda musica," he brings the song back to the block where he grew up. He and Cortijo took the music of the slaves of Puerto Rico, slaves that jumped ships from Haiti, Cuba and other Islands that played the bomba music with roots in the Congo once outlawed because it caused uprisings and made it a commercial hit in the New World. He was working on a final recording (finished by his eldest, Ismaelo Jr.,) "Carabali y Congolia" in May of 1987 when the heart attack struck, jolting him into his mother's arms on the patio he built for her with the money from his first hit.

In New York, I left my young son with my mother so I could attend the funeral. I had to see Papa Maelo one more time. When I reached the community center at the housing project of Llorens Torres complex, the area was packed with fans and mourners. Drummers like Giovanni Hidalgo, Cachete Maldonado, Roberto Roena and many others played tribute to El Sonero. Inside, the Center was brimming with people, family, women and children. He always told me not to be afraid when I walked with him and so I walked alone and made my way through the heat and crowd guided by his spirit.

I approached the coffin, kneeled and talked to my teacher and mentor who taught me so much about life. I remembered walking in Panama through El Chorillo with him. I asked him why the women's arms had eruptions as if the skin were bursting through. He told me, "Ay bendito Aurorita. Those women are prostitutes and if they don't make enough money their pimps cut up their arms. They never go to the hospitals." He explained that many of those women had no formal education and this was the only way they knew to support their children and families. He told me I should never judge the plight of another human being even if you walked in their shoes. At that point, a dusty old man with no teeth yelled out, "Salsa." Maelo and I stopped. The skinny old Black man hugged and kissed him. Maelo introduced me as his niece. The old man began to snap his fingers in clave and to sing a coro. Maelo harmonized with the coro lifting his voice in full song finishing the tune with improvised phrases. He told the old man he would use it in his next recording.

I remembered jogging around Central Park's reservoir with him. I was young and lazy and he would push me to finish around the track shaming me into running by saying, "You’re only 26, I'm 49 -- if I can do it so can you" breaking into song. After the run, we’d go to his Panamanian girlfriend’s apartment on West End Avenue. La Janet would make us fresh juices from carrots, oranges and watercress. I remember the smell of the hot farina he loved to eat and the many many discussions he held in his apartment and in the vest pocket park on 104th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Somehow, the rumberos would always know when he was there and they'd come out to jam with him. Maelo never refused. But when the rumba was over, he'd play a bomba…a plena and tell them they had to know their roots first. They had to preserve the music that held the life source of the people of the earth. They had to conserve it, maintain it and never forget it.

I cried as I knelt and prayed over him. He had made millions throughout his career and he gave it all away just like he gave everything to his public and to his music. As the casket was closed, I spotted Sammy Ayala, a longtime friend of Maelo’s and former background singer with Cortijo y Su Combo. I asked him to let me carry the coffin with the other men. Being a total Nuyorican, I knew this was a traditional guy thing and that he might get offended but I didn’t care. I was there for Maelo but I really didn’t know which side of the place I belonged since there were the women from Puerto Rico on one side and the women from outside of Puerto Rico on the other side. He moved over and gave me a little space and said, "Of course, you're family." We carried him outside to where the crowd waited. We never made it to the hearse. The throngs of people and pleneros took him on their shoulders, parading him the same way he carried El Nazareno. Even the governor of Puerto Rico showed up in a guayabera and took his turn carrying him to the cemetery. Thousands gathered there and I could barely see the final rites when I spotted Kako coming through the crowd. I felt the look of pain on his face and opened my arms to him. He cried, “Aye, Aurorita,” sobbing something inaudible in that “cuembe Spanish” they spoke before weeping inconsolably in my arms. Maelo’s longtime timbalero, Rigo also stood next to me along with Roberto Roena and we all watched and wept as he was laid to rest beside his long time friend and brother, Rafa Cortijo.

¡Que descansen en paz, Ecua - Jei!

Aurora Flores is a journalist/educator and cultural activist residing in East Harlem. Email: aurora@aurora-communications.com

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