HavanaNewYork.com News Flash!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Beatles Music Comes Home,
But Not To Where You Might Expect
By Ed Castañeda
In music, as in the plastic arts, the artist is inclined to admire, borrow, take and make his own from what has come before; hence, art begets art. What is fundamental throughout great art is something referred to by some as “the thing,” which has no name and makes the work “Great Art.”
Picasso admired Velázquez, Goya, Zurbarán and El Greco, who in turn admired Venetian artists from the Italian renaissance like, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. When the Beatles began their musical careers, they looked over the pond towards America, specifically to Rock & Roll, Blues and Rhythm & Blues; to artists like Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry. Who or what had the most influence on these artists? Well, if you listen to Rock and Roll classics like Richard Berry’s “Louie, Louie” or Johnny Otis’s “Willie and the Hand Jive” you will find clues. In fact, the distinctive Cha-cha-chá rhythm of “Louie, Louie” and the 3-2 Son clave hand clapping beat in “Willie and the Hand Jive” are hard to miss.
Cuban music is not merely important, but a fundamental music of the western hemisphere. This profound influence, that has affected so many aspects of popular music in America, is usually unrecognized or taken for granted. With “My Beatles Heart” Willy Chirino has taken us full circle with his own magical mystery tour, perhaps unknowingly, through time, continents and follows the path Cuban music has taken. He begins from Old Havana, with echoes of Ernesto Lecuona’s “La Comparsa” to the new port city of early Louisiana, pausing briefly to dance a little Danzón, so popular in this city before there was such a thing as jazz. Then he continues up the Mississippi to Memphis, over land to Chicago and New York with the syncopated ragtime piano riffs of the turn of the twentieth century and later to the foot-stomping swing of the 40s and 50s big bands; crossing the Atlantic ocean and arriving at Liver Pool, England where he amplifies and lifts to the surface the underlying rhythms that are so much a part of the plethora that is Beatles’ music, all the time with his clave in hand, Willy Chirino never deviates from “the musical thing” and sabor (flavor) of his native country while exposing the music of the Beatles to a light that is both old and new - A Timeless Masterpiece!
Willy Chirino's "My Beatles Heart” is available at:
Amazon.com
iTunes
& your favorite music store.
To read more about Willy Chirino go to: www.willychirino.com
To view My Beatles Heart EPK go to:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXoheITPcwQ
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