BOOGALOO en ORBIT:

Jesse Lee Pogoler aka Johnny Guaguancó, Leader, Vocals, Guitar, Guitarrón (Aztlan)

Peter Dowse, Bass (England)

José Sanchez, Drums (Cuba)

Hector Ramos, Congas (Cuba)

Miguelito Valdes, Vocals, Trumpet, Flugel (Cuba)

Armando Álvarez, Vocals, Tenor Sax (Cuba)

Laura Nicolina Deviato, Vocals, Percussion (Canada)

Boogaloo en Orbit was formed in 2010 in Victoria BC by Jesse Lee Pogoler, a self-taught musician originally from the Echo Park barrio of Los Angeles, California. The concept is based on a point of view from the above mentioned neighborhood which was rich in music and musical ideas in the 60's and 70's,  formative years for Mr Pogoler. AM radio, independent record stores, street doo-wop, jump rope rhymes, the bracero program, La Raza, the world before anybody ever heard of any English group, when rock and roll music was owned by the likes of Chuck Berry, Elmore James, Ike Turner, when Barry Gordy was still pimping, Sonny Terry, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seegar, Trini Lopez, Tito Puente, Lenny Bruce could be seen in clubs in LA regularly. Allen Toussaint, Fats Domino,  Lee Dorsey, Alan Sherman were on the radio all the time...it was easy to believe that great music just sprang up out of the ground. Today's  world of music is hardly recognizable.

Originally this project was to cover some of that good old stuff. The first set lists included Going to a Go Go, Sally Go Round the Roses, Don't Hang Up, Don't Let Go, Good Lovin', all done "Latin" using congas played Marcha, timbale patterns a la Paila, Tumbao bass, plus some standard cumbias like Juana la Cubana, merengues like El Africano...

As Mr Pogoler became more confident in his own compositions the repertoire  included more from this source until now in 2020 most of the material is original.

Interview Continued

SI: I don’t speak Spanish at all; what is Cara o Cruz about?

Johnny Guaguancó: It's what you say when you flip a coin, like we say 'heads or tails'.  I first started thinking about it when we had some trouble with immigration, returning to Canada from a job in Central Asia. We’d had a two week gig at the palace compound of a minor pasha in Uzbekistan, and one of the concubine vans used to transport our gear must have been previously used to transport some kind of explosives, because when we arrived at Gatwick we set off some kind of alert. I’m sure you’ve been there, eh? We were several days in a holding cell; interrogated, held like terrorists and treated like criminals, especially Vladimir and Osvaldo, who are black Cubans. Osvaldo’s landed papers were mislaid and it appeared he would be sent to Varadero… his fate, and indeed all our fates hung in the balance. It occurred to me that something like a coin flip was going to determine our fates; you might go to jail, to Cuba, Canada, Aztlan…

The term, or rather one of the many terms used when flipping a coin in Spanish-speaking cultures is Cara o Cruz. It literally means ‘face or cross’ and indeed, if you examine coins from Spain or Latin America  (not Cuba) you will see some kind of religious symbol on one side, and on the other, the profile of some historical person.

To be continued

Interview Continued

The lyric says, in English: Hand me a quarter, I toss it in the air, open your hand and see what’s there.

In each subsequent verse, I throw something else in the air. In the recordings I throw a sandwich in the second verse, then in the last verse I have all the people of the world floating in the air. In the coro/pregon I sing pairs of words that sound similar, and will hopefully create some sort of profound effect from their juxtapositions. When we do this number live I change the things I throw in the air every time. Spumoni, tutti frutti, menudo…

To be continued…

Interview continued…

The language I use is heavily weighted to the Northern Mexican (I lived near Tijuana for a while) and Andalusian dialects ( I lived in Seville for a while). I do not know if they still say "cinco duros" to mean 25 pesetas in Seville, as they did in '92 when I left Spain; they now use the Euro there, but it would not surprise me at all if they did.
SI: Why do you write in Spanish sometimes and in English other times?
To be continued...