Singing a sweet song
Güncelleme Tarihi:
by Caroline Stern
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Şubat 14, 2009 00:00
ISTANBUL - Musing over his rural upbringing and the unpredictable turns in life, a departing musician shares his views on perseverance, prayer and politics.
Speaking Spanish at lightning speed, his long dreadlocks flying, and doubling over laughing at his own jokes, William Cardoso makes good on his promise of being a little bit of Cuba in Istanbul. An unexpected and unwitting exile, the 32-year-old drummer came to Turkey six years ago for a concert. He stayed because a freak fire burned his room to the ground, leaving the traveling musician without documents, instruments and Ğ rather suddenly Ğ friends. Tossed into political limbo between both countries, Cardoso’s characteristic good humor and practice of rising against the odds has slowly but surely helped him make a name for himself in Istanbul’s international music scene.
Looking around on arrival, William found good musicians, but an atrophied musical landscape, lacking in "feeling", and creativity, and too focused on making money. "If you want to progress musically," he explained, "you can’t think of the money. If a doctor stops an operation to think of his pay check, the patient dies." Over the years he has hand-selected and individually trained the nine other musicians in his acclaimed "El Pluma Band" which travels around Turkey and plays in his iconic style.
Like loving two women at once
Raised in the country as the son of a circus acrobat-cum-electrician and a seamstress, Cardoso attributes his musical prowess to his mother’s love of dance. Her water broke before his birth as she danced during Carnival to the sound of Irakere, the legendary Cuban salsa band with whom, years later, Cardoso would find himself playing. Between those two encounters, he was a precocious musician who drummed on cans before he could speak, and played ’bateria’ before his feet could reach the pedals. Adolescence found him kicked out of art school, sleeping in parks as he played for free, and walking hours a day on country roads to practice, fixated on making music.
When he finally began landing gigs in Havana’s infamous cabarets, he took the structure of popular music and applied it to jazz, as a trick to keep people from leaving after the main act. Like loving two women at once, he says, his fusion of sounds was merely an excuse not to have to separate from his two passions. Modest, he still squeals with disbelief that he has risen to play alongside the men he used to idolize via his old portable radio.
An unassuming diplomat, Cardoso doesn’t want to be Cuba’s ambassador, but to "bring the message of my people, that life is not only stress and craziness." The world has a lot to learn from Latin Americans, he explained. "There is a unity missing here. We can teach them unity, beginning with how to party. Men and women should not be separated, since not even goats live separately." After three bombs wrenched him from his bed in Beyoğlu on consecutive Sunday mornings in 2003, he decided to spend more time and energy trying to understand what made Turkish people tick. But "too much information will send you to the hospital, or worse," he warned. "I’m not interested in the old architecture or in anything negative. I have neither time nor space in my head to see the negative side of things." He called Istanbul as a wonderful place to open paths, and said Turks as extremely welcoming people who "open their hearts and ask for nothing in return." Although Cardoso said Latin and Turkish rhythms would not blend well together, he does not rule out the possibility of recording an all-Turkish CD in the future, and plans to act as unofficial disseminator of Turkish culture upon his return to "the island."
Carefree, Cardoso refrains adamantly from politics, seeing no need to write protest songs since "Cuba’s political situation has never affected me." Music should be about joy, and there is "no need to predicate what each person should do with their own life." Instead, he writes about the things which happen to ordinary men and women between waking and sleeping. And, while music is his religion as well as his medicine, a Native Indian is his saint, and the feather he has worn in his hair since childhood Ğ and used to name his band Ğ is a reminder to leave everything in fate’s hands before going to bed each night "or morning".
Cardoso is on his way out of Istanbul. He expects his papers to come through next month, so that he can run home to his ’tierra’, see his 8-year-old daughter for the first time since she was a toddler, and play alongside his brothers again. Before then, he plans to finish the album he is recording and continue to play on Tuesdays at the "Cuba Bar" in Beyoglu. Smiling, he said there is no use trying to control the paths life takes you on. "I have lived what life has called on me to live", a wisdom he attributes to the rural upbringing that taught him to live "healthy, but not puritanically."
Laughing as he spoons brown sugar into his mouth, he says, "I was raised between the sugar cane, and all my life has been sweet."
Cardoso plays at the Cuba Bar Wednesdays and
Sundays at 10:30 p.m. / Enzık Sokak, 11, Tünel
Looking around on arrival, William found good musicians, but an atrophied musical landscape, lacking in "feeling", and creativity, and too focused on making money. "If you want to progress musically," he explained, "you can’t think of the money. If a doctor stops an operation to think of his pay check, the patient dies." Over the years he has hand-selected and individually trained the nine other musicians in his acclaimed "El Pluma Band" which travels around Turkey and plays in his iconic style.
Like loving two women at once
Raised in the country as the son of a circus acrobat-cum-electrician and a seamstress, Cardoso attributes his musical prowess to his mother’s love of dance. Her water broke before his birth as she danced during Carnival to the sound of Irakere, the legendary Cuban salsa band with whom, years later, Cardoso would find himself playing. Between those two encounters, he was a precocious musician who drummed on cans before he could speak, and played ’bateria’ before his feet could reach the pedals. Adolescence found him kicked out of art school, sleeping in parks as he played for free, and walking hours a day on country roads to practice, fixated on making music.
When he finally began landing gigs in Havana’s infamous cabarets, he took the structure of popular music and applied it to jazz, as a trick to keep people from leaving after the main act. Like loving two women at once, he says, his fusion of sounds was merely an excuse not to have to separate from his two passions. Modest, he still squeals with disbelief that he has risen to play alongside the men he used to idolize via his old portable radio.
An unassuming diplomat, Cardoso doesn’t want to be Cuba’s ambassador, but to "bring the message of my people, that life is not only stress and craziness." The world has a lot to learn from Latin Americans, he explained. "There is a unity missing here. We can teach them unity, beginning with how to party. Men and women should not be separated, since not even goats live separately." After three bombs wrenched him from his bed in Beyoğlu on consecutive Sunday mornings in 2003, he decided to spend more time and energy trying to understand what made Turkish people tick. But "too much information will send you to the hospital, or worse," he warned. "I’m not interested in the old architecture or in anything negative. I have neither time nor space in my head to see the negative side of things." He called Istanbul as a wonderful place to open paths, and said Turks as extremely welcoming people who "open their hearts and ask for nothing in return." Although Cardoso said Latin and Turkish rhythms would not blend well together, he does not rule out the possibility of recording an all-Turkish CD in the future, and plans to act as unofficial disseminator of Turkish culture upon his return to "the island."
Carefree, Cardoso refrains adamantly from politics, seeing no need to write protest songs since "Cuba’s political situation has never affected me." Music should be about joy, and there is "no need to predicate what each person should do with their own life." Instead, he writes about the things which happen to ordinary men and women between waking and sleeping. And, while music is his religion as well as his medicine, a Native Indian is his saint, and the feather he has worn in his hair since childhood Ğ and used to name his band Ğ is a reminder to leave everything in fate’s hands before going to bed each night "or morning".
Cardoso is on his way out of Istanbul. He expects his papers to come through next month, so that he can run home to his ’tierra’, see his 8-year-old daughter for the first time since she was a toddler, and play alongside his brothers again. Before then, he plans to finish the album he is recording and continue to play on Tuesdays at the "Cuba Bar" in Beyoglu. Smiling, he said there is no use trying to control the paths life takes you on. "I have lived what life has called on me to live", a wisdom he attributes to the rural upbringing that taught him to live "healthy, but not puritanically."
Laughing as he spoons brown sugar into his mouth, he says, "I was raised between the sugar cane, and all my life has been sweet."
Cardoso plays at the Cuba Bar Wednesdays and
Sundays at 10:30 p.m. / Enzık Sokak, 11, Tünel