POP MUSIC : Cuban Music Gets Liberated at El Floridita
Bathed in the yellow, tangerine and fuchsia glow cast by the stage lights, couples gaze into each other’s eyes and smile as they sway to the infectious beat of Cuban salsa.
The men swivel their hips and bend like reeds toward their supple dance partners--perfectly coiffed women in satin, sequins and jewels. A young Latina in blue jeans, long black hair streaming down her back, dances in pleased solitude, peeking through the potted palms at her reflection in the mirrored walls.
Even the air smells like romance, Cubana style, rich with perfume and the aroma of pierna de puerco asada , arroz con pollo , fried plantains and other Cuban dishes.
The nine-piece orchestra stops for a breather, and the dancers return to their tables. A stunning, silver-haired mambo queen leaves the dance floor and greets a friend in an accent that’s pure Brooklyn.
El Floridita, a small oasis of old Havana tucked away in a Hollywood mini-mall at the corner of Vine Street and Fountain Avenue, is a magic space where everyone becomes young and Cuban.
“I’m Cuban from the waist down and Panamanian from the waist up,” declares Motita Miller. A pretty woman sporting a bouffant hairdo, the former interior designer and her husband, Don, now enjoy the sporting life of comfortably fixed retirees.
From sundown on, Armando Castro’s Monday night party at his restaurant-club is for grown-ups and those youngsters who shun grunge in favor of the more mature pleasures of pre-Fidel Castro Cuban fun and glamour.
Closet salsa dancers and music fans from all over the city congregate at El Floridita for their weekly fix. Latino and Anglo, they are all seasoned dancers, and they are additionally inspired by the renowned musicians who gather at the club on their off nights from regular gigs to get down with the real deal: Havana-New York-Miami salsa.
And have these people got stories!
“I was in Cuba right before Castro,” says the mambo queen from Brooklyn--Dotti Karlstein, a film producer who admits to being 40-plus and is currently employed as a personal shopper. “I was staying at the Nacional Hotel in Havana the night Castro took over. I remember a man went into the street to see what the ‘bang-bang’ noises were.
“At the time, they had a lot of old American cars in Cuba that used to backfire, but the noise turned out to be machine guns, and he was killed. My mother called from Brooklyn: ‘Come home!’ They packed us into buses, and in three hours we were back in Miami.
“We’ve been in Los Angeles for 30 years,” Karlstein says, “and through the years we’ve gone from one place to another. El Floridita is the wonderful happening place right now, and the food is good.”
She was once a dance instructor at Arthur Murray, the venerable institution that one suspects is responsible for turning out many of these wonderful faux Cuban dancers on the floor tonight. Sitting next to Karlstein is Tony Schnurer, a ponytailed psychiatrist at L.A. County-USC Medical Center who learned salsa dancing on weekend trips to Havana when he was an undergraduate at the University of Miami.
At the other end of the club, several tables have been pushed together to accommodate 22 members of the Cornerstone Theater Company, a multicultural, community-based troupe that is throwing a going-away party for New York playwright Medelia Cruz.
“I’ve been here three months,” Cruz says. “I came to write a play, ‘Rushing Waters,’ and it closed last night. We wanted a Caribbean night out, where we’d have a lot of fun and dance.”
Later in the evening, Antonio Santana, a Brazilian who played bass in Cruz’s musical, joins the nine-piece orchestra for the wee-hours jam.
But before that free-for-all, the musicians play another set of lovingly detailed, air-tight renditions of such favorites as “Guantanamera” and “El Son Cubano.” Couples switch partners but return to their mates for cheek-to-cheek action on the dreamy ballads.
Joseph Gomez, a high school counselor for the L.A. Unified School District, isn’t dancing. He’s stationed by the bar for the evening, his eyes fixed on the stage, clutching a tape recorder. “I drive a lot and I need good music,” he explains.
The musicians launch into a melody that soon reveals itself as a tropical version of “Happy Birthday.” The floor clears for the birthday girl, who takes a brief, abandoned whirl with a girlfriend and then salutes the band.
“This is my cojunta ,” bandleader Johnny Polanco says during the next break, using the Spanish word that these days would translate best as posse . “I love this style of music. Most of us are from New York, so this keeps us in touch with back home. And I’ve been fortunate enough to get some of the best musicians in town. . . .
“We’re here every Monday and Saturday night, but some of the best dancers come on Monday nights because we play the mambo and we cater to all the musicians here. Greats like Arturo Sandoval, Paquito D’Rivera, Irakere (a famous Cuban band), Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Poncho Sanchez, Willie Chireno and Guayacan, one of the biggest bands in Colombia, have come by to play. Guayacan’s lead singer was hired after the leader heard him on a Monday.”
Ernest Hemingway’s ghost may not be hovering about this namesake of the writer’s favorite Cuban watering hole, but he would be pleased to know that the original El Floridita ethos still lives. And in one respect, L.A.’s Castro has done the original club one better, creating a venue that showcases not just Cuban music but a variety of traditional and nuevo Latino styles.
On a recent Tuesday evening, for example, the club presented Soul Vibrations, an African-Caribbean reggae group from Nicaragua. The group is joined by renowned Jamaican drummer Santa Davis, sitting in for the simple pleasure of playing with a reggae group that hasn’t abandoned the music’s original sociopolitical agenda.
It’s a rainy night and few in Los Angeles are acquainted with Soul Vibrations’ spicy reggae- con- salsa, but those in attendance are wildly enthusiastic, including a table filled with music business folk, a group that works on behalf of human rights for Central Americans and several Nicaraguan-Americans who are thrilled by the rare opportunity to hear this music in Los Angeles.
People seem a bit timid about getting up to dance, so Enrique Vallejo--by day the proprietor of a Hollywood collectibles shop, by night an El Floridita waiter and the club’s resident live wire--leads a blind couple onto the empty dance floor, where they wrap their arms around each other and bounce up and down happily.
Flirtatiously flicking the ends of his red sash, Vallejo descends on a table of four chair-dancers and plucks up one of the ladies for a spin on the floor. “He’s sooo Cuban,” someone says, laughing. Maybe so, but Vallejo is from Mexico.
When the band switches to a calypso-related mento , a tiny woman leaps from her seat to launch a hip-gyrating, shoulder-shimmying dance. A man from the opposite corner of the room jumps up to join her. They are joined by a Salvadoran rasta man with long, straight hair matted at the ends into dreadlocks. Vallejo takes to the floor again with his chair-dancer, and two women--strangers who happen to be seated at adjoining tables with their dates--get up to boogie together.
“We have created a family--that’s the key concept,” Castro says. “It has to be that way, because that’s the only way it’s going to work. I couldn’t run this place seven days a week by myself.”
Castro, it turns out, is not Cuban either; he grew up in an orphanage in Nicaragua. But soon after he arrived in the United States at age 15, he was informally adopted by a Cuban couple who traveled frequently with their new son to Havana.
After serving in the U.S. Army and losing a leg in Vietnam, Castro went to Cal State L.A. There, he says, “I became a Hemingway fanatic--I was fascinated by his books and bohemian lifestyle.” Castro worked his way up to a managerial position with Wells Fargo Bank, all the while dreaming of owning his own nightclub.
Five years ago, he created L.A.’s El Floridita.
On Fridays, the club features Latin jazz. Saturdays feature Monday night’s orchestra, but, says Castro, “we turn it down so it’s a little more romantic, and then we turn it up gradually for the late people who stay to dance.”
The club is often rented on Saturday afternoons for quinceaneras , a traditional 15th birthday celebration for Latina girls. “The ladies wear pink and the boys dress in tuxedos,” Castro says. “It’s very pretty, and in some cultures, the girl wears flat shoes until her mother formally presents her with a pair of high heels.”
In the past, El Floridita has featured such events as a poetry reading by the Afro-Cuban Cabaret Theater, Thursday tango nights, Sunday flamenco nights and music from the Andes, as well as evenings of music from other Latin countries. Now that Castro has finally won a hard battle for his city permit that allows dancing, he plans to reinstate some of these theme evenings.
Does he ever get bored being at his club every day or night?
“No, no,” Castro quickly answers. “The most important thing in life is being happy and doing something you like. I emphasize that to people. You like what you do? Do it with passion. I love to deal with people. I love to provide something to make them happy--the perfect party.” * El Floridita
1253 N. Vine St., Hollywood
No age limit
Sunday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m., except Monday night jam; Friday-Saturday: 11:30 a.m.-1 a.m.
Cover Charge: Monday and Friday, $8; Saturday, $10; (213) 871-0936
