Read Online Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue by Mark Kurlansky - Free Book Online
Authors: Mark Kurlansky
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thick tropical vegetation had hidden the poverty in their parents' island. New York in the summertime is tropical, too, and any patch of soil left alone will turn uselessly bushy and green. It must have been a jungle each summer before Europeans started building here.
But in Manhattan, buildings had their own natural law the way plants do in other places. Vacant lots where tenements had been removed by real estate speculators stood like gaps from missing teedi, waiting for the right time to build. The right time would be soon. In the meantime, the holes had been overgrown by gardens, parks, casitas. In Manhattan's natural law, space does not go unused. The squatters who had moved into Harry's buildings followed this natural law, too. Real estate abhors a vacuum even more than does nature.
Most of the time, Chow Mein Vega, the Meshugaloo himself could be found seated inside the casita at a round table made from a huge spool that had once held cable.
Chow Mein Vega had invented the word "meshugaloo," perhaps the only word of a language called "Spiddish" that was a cross of Nuyo-rican Spanish and Lower East Side Yiddish and thus a purely New York idiom. For the contribution of the word "meshugaloo," Chow Mein Vega was the only gentile to have had his name in the sidewalk of Saul Grossman's Deli on Second Avenue, where the greats of Yiddish theater were meticulously inscribed in concrete. The Forward interviewed him on the occasion of his name being installed and asked him what "meshugaloo" meant.
"It's a cross between meshugenah and boogaloo. If you think about it, it is a meshugenah boogaloo."
"But what does that mean?"
"Meshugenah, you know, means meshugenah."
"Yes."
"You know, crazy And boogaloo ... boogaloo means everything. It is a fusion. A rhythm-and-blues beat with a Latin twist. It is very elusive, you know. A cha-cha-cha has that three-beat, and a salsa—let's face it, you have to have form for salsa and mambo. But with boogaloo you can do anything. Wave your arms. You can wiggle your hips. You are in tempo. Boogaloo means everything and yet it means nothing. Es gor-nisht pero todo. You know what I'm saying. That's its appeal. It's very heavy-duty. Boogaloo—ahhh! Forget it!"
This answer was then translated into Yiddish for the Yiddish-language edition. Chow Mein Vega spoke Spanish and English the same way, offering rhythms, not clarity. Nor was his name really Chow Mein Vega. It was Carlos Rodriguez. According to his promoter, Howard Gold, another Spiddish speaker, "The name Carlos Rodriguez would be excellent for baseball, but for boogaloo eso no dice bupkiss." It says nothing.
New York Latinos did not remember the Chicago act Tom and Jer-rio, which recorded the first boogaloo in 1965. Its most enduring innovation was the line "Sock it to me," which became a mantra, repeated for all occasions in the late sixties. In Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia, boogaloo was black music. But in New York, Puerto Ricans fused it with salsa and made "the Latin boogaloo." Latin boogaloo was invented not by Carlos Rodriguez, but by friends of his with whom he had grown up playing baseball in East Harlem, such as Joe Cuba, whose real name, Gilberto Calderón, had also been changed because it was deemed to have said nothing. They had all made money playing together at Jewish clubs in the Catskills in the 1950s. Back in New York in the sixties, playing to Latin and black crowds, with new names invented by Jewish promoters, they had accidentally developed a Latin boogaloo without knowing what the word meant. No one could even remember how it came about.
Many of these Nuyorican boogalooistas carried with them the memories of Jewish clubs in the mountains, though their Jewish fans did not remember them because they now had new names. At first, Carlos did not want to be called Chow Mein. But after his biggest hit, "The Yiddish Boogaloo," people all over the world knew him as Chow Mein Vega and the name to him became synonymous
But in Manhattan, buildings had their own natural law the way plants do in other places. Vacant lots where tenements had been removed by real estate speculators stood like gaps from missing teedi, waiting for the right time to build. The right time would be soon. In the meantime, the holes had been overgrown by gardens, parks, casitas. In Manhattan's natural law, space does not go unused. The squatters who had moved into Harry's buildings followed this natural law, too. Real estate abhors a vacuum even more than does nature.
Most of the time, Chow Mein Vega, the Meshugaloo himself could be found seated inside the casita at a round table made from a huge spool that had once held cable.
Chow Mein Vega had invented the word "meshugaloo," perhaps the only word of a language called "Spiddish" that was a cross of Nuyo-rican Spanish and Lower East Side Yiddish and thus a purely New York idiom. For the contribution of the word "meshugaloo," Chow Mein Vega was the only gentile to have had his name in the sidewalk of Saul Grossman's Deli on Second Avenue, where the greats of Yiddish theater were meticulously inscribed in concrete. The Forward interviewed him on the occasion of his name being installed and asked him what "meshugaloo" meant.
"It's a cross between meshugenah and boogaloo. If you think about it, it is a meshugenah boogaloo."
"But what does that mean?"
"Meshugenah, you know, means meshugenah."
"Yes."
"You know, crazy And boogaloo ... boogaloo means everything. It is a fusion. A rhythm-and-blues beat with a Latin twist. It is very elusive, you know. A cha-cha-cha has that three-beat, and a salsa—let's face it, you have to have form for salsa and mambo. But with boogaloo you can do anything. Wave your arms. You can wiggle your hips. You are in tempo. Boogaloo means everything and yet it means nothing. Es gor-nisht pero todo. You know what I'm saying. That's its appeal. It's very heavy-duty. Boogaloo—ahhh! Forget it!"
This answer was then translated into Yiddish for the Yiddish-language edition. Chow Mein Vega spoke Spanish and English the same way, offering rhythms, not clarity. Nor was his name really Chow Mein Vega. It was Carlos Rodriguez. According to his promoter, Howard Gold, another Spiddish speaker, "The name Carlos Rodriguez would be excellent for baseball, but for boogaloo eso no dice bupkiss." It says nothing.
New York Latinos did not remember the Chicago act Tom and Jer-rio, which recorded the first boogaloo in 1965. Its most enduring innovation was the line "Sock it to me," which became a mantra, repeated for all occasions in the late sixties. In Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia, boogaloo was black music. But in New York, Puerto Ricans fused it with salsa and made "the Latin boogaloo." Latin boogaloo was invented not by Carlos Rodriguez, but by friends of his with whom he had grown up playing baseball in East Harlem, such as Joe Cuba, whose real name, Gilberto Calderón, had also been changed because it was deemed to have said nothing. They had all made money playing together at Jewish clubs in the Catskills in the 1950s. Back in New York in the sixties, playing to Latin and black crowds, with new names invented by Jewish promoters, they had accidentally developed a Latin boogaloo without knowing what the word meant. No one could even remember how it came about.
Many of these Nuyorican boogalooistas carried with them the memories of Jewish clubs in the mountains, though their Jewish fans did not remember them because they now had new names. At first, Carlos did not want to be called Chow Mein. But after his biggest hit, "The Yiddish Boogaloo," people all over the world knew him as Chow Mein Vega and the name to him became synonymous
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