May 28, 2004 - Azuquita imports Cuba to the Shedd

'A little bit of sugar' will go a long way during the Shedd Casuals concert
By Paul Denison
The Register-Guard

Jessie Marquez's father grew up in Cuba, but she spent her early childhood
in Puerto Rico before moving to Eugene.

"We talked about Cuba and ate Cuban food, but Cuba was not that present in my consciousness," she says.

But her first visit to Cuba - in 1996 with her father, stepmother, brothers
and husband - changed all that.

"There was something I recognized about the people," she recalls. "Something resonated. Their gestures, the way they make their points, the way they speak, was familiar."

At about the same time, Marquez began singing locally with the salsa band
Caliente. Later, she sang and played guitar with Lo Nuestro, a more
folkloric group whose repertoire includes Venezuelan, Mexican and Andean
music.

"I was becoming more musically literate, but I had always been a singer.
When I was 2 years old I would stand on the bed and sing and force my family to clap for me," she says, laughing.

Since that first visit with her family, Marquez has been back to Cuba
several times to hear and do research on Cuban music, which is now her
primary focus.

She's a member of Son Mela'o, a 10- and sometimes 11-piece Cuban dance band that you might have heard at the Eugene Celebration or Fiesta Latina.
Thursday night, she and several other members of Son Mela'o will be featured in a Shedd Casuals series concert in the 150-seat chapel at the John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts, 285 E. Broadway.

Son Mela'o's sugary offshoot
Called Azuquita (`little bit of sugar'), this smaller offshoot of Son Mela'o
includes Marquez on vocals, guitar and guiro (gourd); Cesar Gutierrez on
cuatro; Jaime Johnson on percussion; Neri Rodriguez on vocals and guiro;
Sean Peterson on bass; and for this concert, Joe Freuen on trombone.

Gutierrez is from Mazatlan, Mexico, and Rodriguez is from Mexico City.
Johnson is from Lima, Peru. Peterson, the only non-Spanish speaker in the
group, is from Seattle.

They all live in Eugene.

Marquez says Gutierrez may be the only cuatro player working in the
Northwest and is certainly one of only a few in the United States. Cuatro
means four in Spanish. The instrument originally had four pairs of strings,
but today sometimes has five sets. It serves the same purpose in Puerto
Rican music that the tres (three sets) does in Cuba.

Johnson is "very knowledgeable, very well versed" in Caribbean rhythms,
Marquez says. He has a collection of percussion instruments from all over
Latin America that he uses in educational presentations.

Marquez herself teaches guitar, a children's course in rhythm and musicality and a salsa class for teens for the Oregon Festival of American Music. She also does in-school residencies through the Lane Arts Council.

Rodriguez is from a family of musicians who specialize in Colombian cumbia, a style of dance music that has become very popular in Mexico.

"His father and brothers are musicians, and he's been in groups since he was a kid," Marquez says.

Peterson has a jazz background, Marquez says, and is one of the rare bass
players who really understands Cuban rhythm. In Europe and North America, the bassist usually plays on beat one, Marquez says, but in Cuban music they almost always play on the offbeat.

"We tried a lot of bass players before we found Sean. His jazz background
helps, but we have tried other jazz players who didn't get it."

Azuquita's Thursday night concert will be only the third in the Shedd Chapel and the second in the Shedd Casuals series, which Jim Ralph, the Oregon Festival of American Music executive director, says is designed for "top quality regional artists and, at times, top quality but unheard-of national ar- tists."

Africa meets Spain in Cuba
Marquez says Cuban music's primary sources and influences include African percussion and Spanish melody, including Arabic traditions and decima: a form of Spanish poetry consisting of 10 lines of eight syllables each.

Marquez says Azuquita's program will feature son, which is the most popular form of traditional Cuban music and the precursor of salsa.

"The basic rhythm is the same," she says. "Salsa instrumentation is
different, and the themes are more urban. Son has more traditional
instruments, mostly strings, and more traditional themes."

Son is campesino music, which developed in Cuba's rural eastern provinces in the mid- to late-1880s. She says it evolved instrumentally as it made its way toward Havana, until a septet including horns became the classic son group.

Marquez noted that it's "uncommon" for a basic son group such as Azuquita to include horns, but she thinks a single trombone will be "cool."

Azuquita's program also will include some bolero - "the most romantic form
in Latin music,' Marquez says - some guaguanco (a form of rumba), and maybe some Colombian cumbia.

"We generally play for a dancing crowd," Marquez says, but during the Shedd Chapel concert the musicians will talk to the audience "about the
instruments we're playing, about the themes, about the music and how it
developed, and so forth."