A Tempest of Success

It’s been five years since the first U.S.tour by Los Van Van, the vanguard of dance bands in Cuba for three decades. To fans who followed its once-banned music like a cult, the group’s arrival on these shores during the winter of 1996-97 felt monumental, like the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The legendary group swept through Yanqui territory in a six-city blitz, including New York and Los Angeles, offering performances so electrifying that fans still buzz about them today. Hard-core devotees hopped planes to catch the nearest shows by the fun, funky and influential Afro-Cuban orchestra, founded in 1969 by composer and arranger Juan Formell.

The thrill of that triumphant tour was heightened by the political and social breakthrough it represented. For decades, Van Van and other popular Cuban bands had been barred from performing in the U.S. by this country’s economic embargo of the socialist island.

Thanks to the Clinton administration, a new policy toward cultural exchanges further loosened the old Cold War barriers that had already started to erode. Van Van’s heady, early success raised hopes that doors would finally open for other progressive Cuban bands, known for much more challenging and sophisticated music than the formulaic salsa coming from New York and Miami.

Van Van, whose previous albums were sold in the U.S. as imports or released by small independent labels, made another breakthrough by signing its first long-term recording contract with a company outside of Cuba, where the record industry is government controlled. Its new label, New York-based Havana Caliente, had a distribution deal with powerhouse Atlantic Records.

After playing to a delirious reception at the 1997 Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, flutist and founding member Gerardo Miro said, “We hugged and kissed each other because we knew we had finally arrived. Our feeling was, ‘We’re finally in the market! Now let’s see what happens.’”

What happened next nobody could have predicted.

Van Van’s foray into the U.S. market became mired in setbacks. The band’s music was all but boycotted by Latin radio programmers for political reasons. In addition, the progressive band was blindsided by the sudden craze in this country for old-style Cuban ensembles such as the Buena Vista Social Club, an outfit as different from Van Van as Dixieland is from Miles Davis.

Worse, for nearly two years Van Van has been locked in a dispute with Havana Caliente and its owner, a Cuban American businesswoman named Maria Zenoz. The conflict is almost as complex as U.S-Cuba relations, but the result is that Los Van Van has not been back in the studio in three years, much longer than fans are used to. To top it off, several members have left the band in the last year.

Although he has survived defections before, Formell is now the last of Van Van’s original key lineup, and his band faces a future more ambiguous than ever. Instead of expanding their horizons, Van Van and other contemporary Cuban bands have retrenched on the island, especially following the Sept. 11 attacks, which led to tour cancellations in the U.S.

The story of Juan Formell and Los Van Van reflects the passion and purpose that for almost a century have fueled popular Cuban music, a genre whose worldwide influence outstrips its commercial strength. Yet, the band’s struggles for wider U.S. acceptance also highlight the obstacles facing the island’s promising new music, which has taken much stronger hold in countries such as Spain, England and Italy with normal trade ties with Cuba.

Van Van may have missed its golden opportunity for a breakthrough in this prized market, a setback that might have demoralized other bandleaders approaching their golden years. But while Formell may falter, his persistence keeps alive the prospect that more people in this country may yet come to appreciate modern Afro-Cuban music, which bewitches fans once it finds them.

In an interview by phone from his home in Havana, Formell, 59, says his health is good and he sees a reinvigorated future for Van Van--including two new albums on the way, one live and one studio recording with 12 new songs.

“The band is better than ever, according to the public here in Cuba,” he says in his melodic, rapid-fire Cuban Spanish. “We have new musicians who are very young but better prepared, and who work under my direction with enormous enthusiasm.... Van Van has a new sound, a much more professional sound than it had before.”

Although skeptics are now counting Van Van out, die-hard vanvaneros--as followers of the band are known--realize that it’s never a good gamble to underestimate Formell.

“The Rolling Stones sort of rested on their laurels, but Formell, every few years, he’d get back on the cutting edge and write the latest thing that was driving everybody crazy,” says Kevin Moore, a Northern California musician, writer and obsessive vanvanero. “The whole debate is: Does Formell still have it? Is Van Van going to be able to do it one more time, or is it going to go downhill?

“It’s like, how long can this guy stay on top?”

According to a joke circulating in Cuba, Castro dies and returns to Earth 100 years from now. The Cuban leader is shocked to learn that nobody remembers his name. He asks a student, a teacher, a librarian, and they don’t know who he was. So he opens the encyclopedia and looks himself up.

Castro, Fidel: President of Cuba during the time Los Van Van was popular.

Like all good jokes, this one contains a kernel of truth. Today, Formell is one of the most influential figures on the island, culturally if not politically. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he was the first bandleader to demand payment in dollars rather than Cuban currency. More than any dry edict, his move signaled Cuba’s gradual, albeit reluctant move away from old-style, centralized communism.

The message: As Van Van goes, so goes Cuba.

The secret to the band’s longevity in Cuba’s intensely competitive music scene lies in its ability to reflect the conditions and changes in Cuban society. Few other songwriters have Formell’s populist knack. In every passing period, his witty songs have captured the mood and sentiments of the people on the street. His catchy coros--those repeated call-and-response lines so essential in Afro-Cuban music--enter into the island’s vernacular just like ad slogans do in the United States.

In the mid-’80s, Van Van had a hit song about a failed romance called “Se Acabo el Querer,” which roughly means “love is gone.” It was a rare composition by singer Pedro Calvo. The harmonized, laconic coro added the idea that “nobody loves nobody” in this refrain: “Nadie quiere a nadie; se acabo el querer.”

Soon, Cubans picked up the coro to express all sorts of frustrations. If a bus didn’t stop to pick up passengers or if somebody failed to show for an appointment, the disappointed parties would say, “Bueno, se acabo el querer.” You see, there’s no more love.

The phrase became so popular, in fact, that it drew the ire of a party-line ideologue who wrote a column in an official government organ denouncing the Van Van tune. The strict critic declared it an outrage for anybody to say that love has vanished from a socialist society, because socialism is based on love.

Van Van’s simple song had turned into political heresy by its very popularity.

At other times, the band’s hits have kept in tune with Cuba’s revolutionary policies. The mysterious and slightly menacing “Que Palo Es Ese,” also from the 1980s, overtly expresses solidarity with that decade’s leftist struggles in El Salvador and Nicaragua, calling on powerful imagery from an Afro-Cuban religion called Palo, which also means “stick” or “club” in Spanish.

The group’s occasional politically tinged tune combined with Formell’s prominence in Cuba have fueled a musical backlash from anti-Castro forces who charge that the band is aligned with the revolution. This explains why the opposition to Van Van’s appearance in Miami two years ago was so intense, although other Cuban bands had already performed there with little outcry from exile groups.

Van Van, in short, is special to both its fans and its foes.

The group’s odd name added to its revolutionary aura. Literally, it means “They go, they go,” leading some American writers to make the silly translation: the Go-Gos. The name actually comes from a phrase that, as Formell has explained, was popular in Cuba during the late 1960s, when he was first forming his band.

The political connotation attached because the Castro government used the phrase as a slogan in its campaign to hit a goal of 10 million tons in the sugar crop of 1969-70: “Los 10 millions van ... y de que van, van.” The repetition is for emphasis, to underscore a sure thing: The harvest will go, and go it will.

Formell now insists he didn’t choose the name for political reasons. He just picked up the popular phrase of the day, as he has for years in many songs.

Cuba never made its sugar crop goal, but Los Van Van debuted in Havana on Dec. 4, 1969. Since then, the band has reaped rich musical harvest year after year.

Juan Formell Cortina was born Aug. 2, 1942, the son of a musician who doubled as a tailor to make ends meet and discouraged his son at first from becoming a musician. He received little formal musical training as a child, in contrast to the next generation of musicians who would come up through the socialist education system.

In 1959, the year Castro came to power, the young Formell got a job playing bass in the National Revolutionary Police Band. It was there he met Orestes Lopez, a member of the famous family of bass men that includes Cachao, who now lives in Miami. Formell learned much from Orestes about the instrument he would master as the rhythmic backbone of Los Van Van.

In the mid-1960s, Formell quickly became known as a skillful composer, with some of his early songs recorded by romantic vocalist Elena Burke. Always a restless innovator, Formell was already working on a new rhythm he called songo, a mix of son and soul, with a dash of rock and reggae, which would become the trademark beat of Los Van Van.

At first, nobody knew what to make of Van Van. Its sound was entirely new, incorporating elements of traditional Latin ballads, American jazz and British pop.

Today, the band’s early music sounds dated and even corny, with its cheesy reverbs and twangy guitars. But the group was an instant hit, and soon Van Van was performing in Tokyo, Paris and Moscow.

Formell’s fearless experimentation and relentless search for new sounds proved to be the band’s greatest appeal. With Van Van, music lovers never knew what might come next, rhythmically, melodically or thematically.

“Their sound has never been stagnant, that’s why they were able to stay on top,” says Arturo Gomez, music director of public radio station WDNA-FM in Miami, which used to get threats for playing Van Van and other music from Cuba.

One constant was the strong songwriting by Formell and pianist Cesar Pedroso. They wrote hooks and told real-life stories with a spirit of playful parody, filling songs with characters and situations people can readily relate to.

Van Van sang about the middle-aged men tempted by younger women to abandon their sense of social responsibility (“La Titimania”). About the disorienting drift toward free-market capitalism in the ‘90s (“Un Socio”). About the ungrateful guests who drink and eat at weddings, then knock their host (“La Resolucion).”

For Formell, though, his music’s main ingredient is the rhythm, grounded solidly in Afro-Cuban traditions.

The reason Van Van has kept up with the times, he says, is that he’s always kept one eye on the dancers. When he noticed they needed a different groove, he’d give it to them. That’s how the band evolved--from the feet up.

Until the recent cultural opening, U.S. fans had followed Van Van like a secret cult, swapping records with other vanvaneros as if the albums were precious contraband. Some flew to Cancun, Mexico, to catch the band at Disco Azucar, a classy nightclub made famous by the band’s song of the same name. The more adventurous made illicit pilgrimages to Havana to see Van Van at its best, which is live.

Although the general public was oblivious to the band in the early days, the hippest salsa musicians in the U.S. were picking up on its sound, partly during tours in Latin America. Several Van Van tunes were recorded by top salsa bands of the ‘70s and ‘80s in New York, including Tipica 73 (“La Candela”), Ray Barretto (“Guarare”) and Ruben Blades (“Muevete”). In Puerto Rico, meanwhile, the ultra-progressive Batacumbele was playing songo on its debut 1981 album, and even taking Van Van’s emerging style an extra step.

But while U.S. salsa faded and never fully recovered, the Cuban music scene just kept growing. By the early 1990s, Cuban music had exploded on the island, with a host of new bands searching hungrily for new sounds and distinct identities. The music was changing so fast, people came up with a new name for it. They called it timba, the pinnacle of polyrhythmic Afro-Cuban percussion combined with elements of rap and jazz.

Although the roots of the new style can be traced to early Van Van, the movement was officially born in 1988 with the emergence of NG La Banda, an enormously influential band started by flutist and arranger Jose Luis Cortes, a former founding member of Formell’s group.

By this time, Van Van was almost 20 years old. Some feared Formell would be left behind by the movement he helped create.

In 1992, Van Van recorded a lackluster album, the one containing “Azucar.” Although it had a pair of hits, the work sounded listless and tedious against the aggressive competition from the young Turks. It would be the last album featuring Van Van’s legendary percussionist, Jose Luis “Changuito” Quintana, the one most responsible for developing the group’s intricate new drumming using timbales combined with American drums.

Formell was turning 50, and observers predicted Van Van’s demise. But he soon restructured the band, recruiting his son Samuel as a surprisingly powerful replacement for Quintana, then adding two dynamic singers, Mario Rivera and Roberto Hernandez, each with thrilling improvisational skills.

Around the time of its U.S. debut, the band recorded “Te Pone La Cabeza Mala,” its fourth album of the decade, each better than the one before. The title cut showed such a mastery of the new aggressive rhythms that it’s now considered a timba template.

Van Van was back with a vengeance.

Havana Caliente was launched in March 1999 with a splashy party at New York’s Bowery Ballroom showcasing another top act from Cuba, Adalberto Alvarez. It was open bar all night, with dancing waitresses dressed in miniskirts. For the first time since Columbia Records released albums by Irakere two decades earlier, a major U.S. company was putting production quality and marketing know-how behind music made in Cuba. Van Van’s polished and powerful first album for the label--appropriately titled “Llego Van Van: Van Van Is Here”--was released in August of that year. It won a Grammy for best salsa album, an industry laurel that seemed to bestow legitimacy on musicians reviled by anti-Communist exiles as frontmen for Fidel Castro.

Zenoz, the Cuban American businesswoman who had worked in New York as a record promoter and nightclub owner, founded the label with a partner, Adam Lindemann, heir to a cable and cell phone fortune amassed by George Lindemann Sr.

The investors made room for their fledgling label in Lindemann’s sumptuous corporate offices, which had spectacular views of Central Park from the 50th floor of the former General Motors building. The impression of wealth and power was dazzling, especially for Cuban musicians accustomed to austerity back home.

“They were the most glamorous offices you’ve ever seen,” says Veronica Gonzalez, a Los Angeles publicist who worked for the label. “We were in there with all these Wall Street guys. It was the craziest thing.”

It was quickly going to get a lot crazier.

In less than six months, Zenoz and her partner were engaged in open warfare over the business. The tension between them would erupt even during meetings with outsiders, industry sources say.

Lindemann was aggressive about getting a return on his investment. Zenoz was stubborn about spending what was needed to break the acts, although Gonzalez says expenses quickly got out of control.

“I’m sure there was somebody there calculating the daily losses and telling [Lindemann], ‘You see, you should have put your money in soy beans,’” says Elena Pena, a San Francisco-based promoter who worked with the label on U.S. tours for Los Van Van and other Cuban artists.

Adam Lindemann did not respond to requests for an interview.

Zenoz, who was pregnant at the time, says the stress caused her to have a miscarriage.

“In the middle of the fighting, I lost my child,” says Zenoz, who later gave birth to a daughter fathered by Charlie Dos Santos, Havana Caliente’s record producer, who was also father of the baby she lost. “Apart from running the company, I had to put up with more than anyone could ever tell you.”

The meltdown came in February 2000, right after Van Van won the Grammy. The last of the label’s small staff was laid off, and Zenoz says she was shut out of Lindemann’s offices.

“He came in and told everybody to get out,” says Zenoz, who dropped from sight for an extended period. “He locked up everything so we could not operate.... They confiscated all the mail. Listen, to this day, I don’t even have my computer. I never got it back.”

The label, launched with such panache and anticipation, had not even made it to its first anniversary. Zenoz says she can’t fully explain why things fell apart so fast, especially because the label grossed $1.2 million in less than six months. “I have nightmares over this,” she says. “We had a viable company, good product, we were doing well. We had just got up to bat. We had the entire game ahead of us ... and then, phew!”

Zenoz says she has negotiated a split with Lindemann, allowing her to keep Caliente Entertainment’s publishing and recording assets. She says she now is sole owner of Havana Caliente and its masters, including “Llego Van Van.” And she insists she plans to hold Formell and other artists to their existing contracts, which she says are still valid.

Although Zenoz no longer has a distribution deal with Atlantic, she is planning new releases for 2002, including a new album by Buena Vista alumnus Barbarito Torres. She says she and Dos Santos plan to travel to Havana this month to finalize the recording.

The question is whether Zenoz can still operate on the island, where some observers say she has burned her bridges. Cuban officials still hold a tight rein on the record business, and are capable of suspending a band’s right to perform or withholding its exit visas.

“She wouldn’t have a chance in Cuba, because Formell has so much power there,” says Jimmy Maslon, owner of Ahi-Nama Music, the Los Angeles-based Cuban music label.

Formell’s Spanish speeds up even more when asked about his troubles with Zenoz and Havana Caliente. The bandleader says the label didn’t properly promote the album in the United Sates, and didn’t even make it available in Europe and Latin America. Strangely, “Llego Van Van” was never officially released in Cuba either, except as a bootleg, which is like a Beatles album not being released in Britain.

“They have caused us great harm, and I don’t have the words to explain the job that was done on the Van Van orchestra,” says Formell, who suffers from diabetes. “It was something so dirty, so ugly, so horrible.”

Formell even speculates that anti-Castro exile forces in the United States may have paid off Zenoz to sabotage the album in order to neutralize Van Van and thereby deal a blow to the Cuban music industry. “I don’t have any evidence in hand,” he says, “but there must be some sort of underhanded maneuver to destroy the band’s prestige, because I can’t think of any other explanation for what happened. It’s a very strange thing, very odd.”

In the most surprising twist of a convoluted tale, Formell says his contract with Havana Caliente is unenforceable because the label violated the U.S. embargo against Cuba. How? By producing his band’s album in Havana. He says the embargo only allows U.S. companies to distribute works already in existence, an interpretation that may be too narrow, according to private and government lawyers familiar with the law.

According to the Treasury Department, U.S. companies can seek a license to legally produce music in Cuba. In general, lawyers say, it’s also legal for companies here to distribute records by Cuban artists signed to firms in third countries. In Havana Caliente’s case, Van Van and the other acts were signed to Harbour Bridge, a company in Curacao.

Still, Formell’s allegation amounts to a wicked boomerang from a bandleader whose own career has been stymied by the embargo for 20 years.

Zenoz, speaking from her home in Miami, says the label broke no laws and did everything by the book, with contracts reviewed by a battalion of U.S. attorneys. She says the label’s internal problems did not hurt the band. She notes that Formell got a generous six-figure advance, more than Cuban musicians ever dreamed of, and the album was strongly promoted, with a full-page ad in Billboard, the industry trade journal, and prominent display at major music retailers.

What’s more, she plans to release a new live package of her own, featuring Van Van’s notorious 1999 Miami concert, which was marked by violent anti-Castro protests. It’s perhaps the last recorded performance by the group’s old lineup, and Zenoz says she plans to release it as a double CD and video by this summer.

Over his dead body, says Formell. He vows to sue to stop the album, arguing also that his contract with Havana Caliente is void because Zenoz failed to exercise the second option for a new release by last year’s deadline.

“All I want is to get out of that company and do my new record in peace,” says the embattled bandleader, “because I have worked all my career with too much tranquillity for this woman to come at this stage in my life and ruin it all.”

Fusion, says Formell, is the future.

That’s an anticlimactic prediction from a man who practically invented the concept in Cuba three decades ago. Yet, he keeps looking for that perfect blend.

Van Van’s new studio album, to be titled “Van Van en Sol Natural,” is due out in Cuba next month and will feature a new mix of American country music, jazz and R&B.; Four of the new songs will also appear on the live album from a summer concert in Havana, “Van Van en La Piragua,” which he says will be released this month in Cuba.

Formell--who lives comfortably in the Cuban capital with his new wife, Diana, 34, his Dalmatian, named Songo, and his collection of frog figurines--says his new music sounds much more international than before.

“For sure we’re going to win more fans, because this is a renewed Van Van,” says Formell, whose school-aged daughter, Paloma, is a talented pianist.

Whether Van Van can regain its momentum in the U.S. is far from a sure thing, however.

Formell admits that the band briefly lost its footing when it lost pianist and arranger “Pupy” Pedroso, who had been a quiet cornerstone of the group, the Keith Richards to Formell’s Mick Jagger. Gone too is Calvo, the charismatic lead singer who, more than any single member, had come to symbolize what it meant to be Van Van, with his husky voice, swaggering sexuality and white, wide-brimmed hat. Meanwhile, Cubans have not been totally enthusiastic about two new singers Formell brought on board last year, including Van Van’s first female vocalist, Yeni Valdes.

But Formell now says the recent defectors did the band a favor by making room again for new blood.

In the U.S., Van Van and its brand of the new Cuban music still have their fanatical core of followers, but it faces the same obstacles to airplay and wider acceptance. Many salsa fans offer myriad reasons for not liking it: The songs are too long, the lyrics use too much Cuban slang, the coros are too complicated. And worst of all, they say they can’t dance to it because the beat is so different from the formula salsa played in New York and L.A. clubs.

“There’s so much happening, musically speaking, the regular person doesn’t understand it,” says George Rivera, a retired New York City policeman and freelance music writer. “It’s just not their groove. There’s too much change [within each song]. Too much to remember.”

But even in Cuba, where popular tastes are as evolved as the music, Van Van’s fate is not assured.

“It all depends on what Juan Formell does from here on out,” says Pedro de la Hoz, culture critic for Granma, the official Cuban daily. “He’ll have to find a new record label and shake up his repertoire. Today, the orchestra is still seen as a living myth, but the same thing could happen to them as to Orquesta Aragon [the classic Cuban band from the 1950s that is still together]. That is, Van Van could start to be seen as a musical artifact, like some archeological legacy.

“Hopefully, it won’t be like that.”

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Los Van Van on CD

Here are some recommended Los Van Van albums. Many are available from major retailers, but you have to shop around. You can also try online stores featuring Latin music such as Descarga.com.

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“Llego Van Van: Van Van Is Here,” Havana Caliente, 1999.

The group’s best-sounding recording with the best-looking package. The title cut is an instant classic, and Juan Formell’s electrifying, spoken vocal on “Appapas del Calabar,” a primer on secret Afro-Cuban religious rituals, sounds positively possessed.

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“Te Pone La Cabeza Mala,” Metro Blue, 1997

Worth it for the title cut alone, a timba masterpiece. The entire album is lyrically sophisticated and musically stylish.

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“Ay, Dios, Amparame,” Caribe Productions, 1995

The title is an appeal to God for help, taken from the cut “Soy Todo,” a spiritual poem about Cuban identity turned here into a gripping cry for the country’s future. Makes exiled Cubans weep at concerts. As for the rest of the album, hey, everybody dance and have a good time.

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“Lo Ultimo En Vivo,”

Obadisc, 1994TDRecorded live at Havana’s famous outdoor dance venue, Salon Rosado, this captures some of the energy of the band’s performances, though under bad technical conditions. The songs are uniformly strong.

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“30 Years of Cuba’s Greatest Dance Band,” Ashe, 1999

This two-CD set is by far the best of many compilations, from earliest songs to the latest. Comes with an attractive, 106-page booklet, but beware of the occasional misspelling and wrong date.

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“Songo,” Mango Island, 1988

Recorded in Paris and contains sparkling versions of hits from the 1980s, less gritty but technically much improved from the originals. Has the best rendition of “Sandunguera,” the band’s catchy dance classic from the era.