Joe Cuba, RIP (1931*2009)

Joe Cuba will be viewed at the R&G Ortiz Funeral Home located at 204 E. 116th Street, NYC 10029 between 3rd & 2nd Avenues. 212.722.3512 on Wednesday & Thursday, February 18th & 19th from 2 to 10 p.m.

A funeral mass service will be held Friday morning at 11 a.m. at St. Paul’s Church located @ 213 E. 117th Street, between Park & Lexington.

The “Father of Boogaloo,” Joe Cuba, passed away on Sunday, February 15, 2009 at 4 p.m. at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. He was the most popular exponent of the boogaloo, a fused Latino and R&B rhythm that exploded onto the American top 40s charts during the turbulent 1960s & ‘70s. Hits such as “Bang Bang,” “Push Push,” “El Pito,” “Ariñañara,” and “Sock It To Me Baby,” rocked the hit parades establishing Joe Cuba and his Sextet as the definitive sound of Latin New York during the ‘60s & ‘70s. The Joe Cuba Sextet’s unusual instrumentation featured vibraphones replacing the traditional brass sound. His music was at the forefront of the Nuyroican movement of New York where the children of Puerto Rican emigrants, America’s last citizens, took music, culture, arts and politics into their own hands.
Joe Cuba’s Sextet became popular in the New York Latino community precisely because it fused a bilingual mix of Afro-Caribbean genres blended with the popular urban rhythm & blues of its time creating a musical marriage between the Fania and Motown sound. His was the first musical introduction to Latin rhythms for many American aficionados. The lyrics to Cuba’s repertoire mixed Spanish and English, becoming an important part of the emerging Nuyorican identity.
…Singer/songwriter Ruben Blades noted: “His music lives on. That is the most any of us can hope for, after we’re dead. God bless him and we thank him for all the joy he gave us.” Ruben’s campanion of that time, Paula C remembers Joe Cuba picking up Ruben to go to gigs in Jersey. “He was the niceste guy,” remembers Paula. “I used to call him Gentleman Joe.”