A South Bronx Tale

Wow! At last, we have this incredible film on DVD. From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale was awarded the ALMA Award for ‘Best Television Documentary’ and it’s easy to see why. It packs into one hour the incredible history of a community that, despite the odds, fuelled a musical revolution. Anyone with a passion for the music that’s emerged from the cultural melting pot that is New York will devour Henry Chalfant’s film. It’s a privilege and a genuine treat to have access to this footage and these interviews. From Mambo to Hip Hop delivers a terrific insight into the post war jazz and mambo era and traces the evolution of music from salsa to disco to hip hop. This is a story rooted in the South Bronx and it’s a tale told with both pride and passion.

“We weren’t looking for a way out of the barrio, or out of the Bronx, none of that. For us, it was spiritual.”
Emma and Peanuts, Mambo Dancers

From Mambo To Hip Hop trailer

It’s also a documentary that illuminates the music that shaped my own life despite it being created on the other side of the Atlantic. During that era I was contributing to the NME, the magazine was selling a quarter of a million copies each week and its musical and cultural vision was remarkably eclectic and I’d look to New York to deliver an electrifying array of interconnected cultural undercurrents, from Willie Col�ón to Grandmaster Flash.

Film maker Henry Chalfant, like photographer Martha Cooper, deserves a medal for the commitment to documenting the cross cultural youth movements of New York City and From Mambo to Hip Hop deserves a place in school curriculums worldwide. From Mambo to Hip Hop is released through City Lore, a collective of NYC activists who believe that democracy requires cultural participation and not just cultural consumption. One of its founders, Elena Martinez co-produced the film, and contributed great depth to the Nuyorican material. If you want a more detailed insight into the scene seek out the superb A South Bronx Latin Music Tale article she co-wrote with Roberta L. Singer for Centro magazine (www.placematters.net). That article explains: “In the decade and a half after World War II, more than half a million Puerto Ricans moved to the States – most to New York, the majority to the Bronx.” And this is where From Mambo to Hip Hop begins. It drops us into the South Bronx on the eve of musical revolution.

“One of the things that I remember vividly when I was growing up in the South Bronx is the sound of drums, resonating through the canyons of the projects. The music was so much in full force, the culture was so in your face – there was no way you could escape it, even if you wanted to.”
Bobby Sanabria

It was in the Bronx, in social clubs, afterhours joints and venues like the Caravana, Tritons Club, the Tropicana and Hunts Point Palace, that Salsa was created. Music echoed from apartments, rooftops, parks and street corners. The Bronx was home to the ‘Mambo Kings’ – Tito Puente, Machito and Tito Rodriguez, as well as up and coming, radical master musicians like Charlie and Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, Manny Oquendo, Johnny Pacheco, Willie Colón and Hector Lavoe. They were the hip, young pioneers who took the Afro Cuban rhythms of son, mambo and cha cha cha and forged an inner city Latin sound that would become known as Salsa.

This film brings the music to life and also documents the demise of the South Bronx, the fires started by ruthless landlords that reduced the area to rubble. The images are shocking - it resembled a war zone. The realities of life were hard and, for the youth, gang banging was the order of the day. If you thought that a film like Warriors was pure fiction, think again. From Mambo to Hip Hop contains incredible archive footage of the street gangs, including the historic meeting that was called to organise a truce between them.

Out of the devastation, out of the ashes, rose a new phenomenon, a movement that was to take the world by storm – Hip Hop. Former gang leader Afrika Bambaata emerged on the scene as a unifying force and through a combination of interviews with influential new generation players like DJ Charlie Chase and Grandmaster Caz and classic footage, Henry Chalfant’s film illuminates the shift from street fights to b-boy battles. It’s from these raw street level beginnings, where young African-America united with Afro-Hispanic America, that a revolution took shape and provided us with a unique moment in history.

“I believe that typically people that grow up in an oppressive type of society are always looking for medicine, and for us, cultural expression is the medicine”
Fable, B-Boy

Whether you’re twelve years old or sixty, you need to see this film. File this DVD alongside Every Child Is Born A Poet: The Life & Works of Piri Thomas, Charlie Ahearn’s Wild Style and Chalfant’s classic collaboration with Tony Silver - Style Wars. From Mambo To Hip Hop is not just about the South Bronx, it relates directly to today’s youth culture – from the wordsmiths of Grime to the rap crews of Havana or Dakar. Celebrate the culture.

www.citylore.org

Paul Bradshaw / Straight No Chaser

From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale (DVD, USA, 2009)
Directed by Henry Chalfant
Produced by Elena Martinez & Steve Zeitlin
Running time 56 minutes plus extras (67 minutes of bonus interviews including Mike Amadeo, Joe Conzo, Orlando Marín and Ray Barretto)

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