Cuban

Remembering Cachao
[Mar. 26, 2008] For Cachao, innovation was the anecdote to old age. He never stopped performing and recording, or telling stories, particularly about the musical history that he had a considerable hand in creating. Hearing of Cachao's death, I remembered the meal we shared a few years ago in Miami.

''Music has really suffered, it's strayed from what music really is,'' Cachao complained when we sat down for lunch in his favorite restaurant in Miami's Little Havana. ''Today, anyone is a musician, anyone is a singer, anyone is a composer. But that's not the way it is. Before, you had to study -- you went to the conservatory, you did things properly. Today, anyone writes a song and he thinks that it's good but it's not. Now they don't even sing, they pray: they're mumbling, not singing. I'd like to go around like that -- a tattoo of a snake on my arm, an earring, the shirt down to there, the pants pulled down,'' he said, scowling for maximum ghetto effect and pulling at the collar of his beige linen guayabera. ``Then they'd see what they look like. I read that the next thing is they're going to start wearing tunics, like Jesus Christ.''

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