nameabledays Archive One

The “my” in the title is parenthetical and unsure because I might just be the last one to know about Joe Bataan (I bought a CD that featured him, maybe two years ago, that came under the record store category of “Electronica”), and “lost” because it seems no one from my generation that witnessed the advent of salsa, soul and disco (whether we liked it or not) seems to have heard of him. I get only a bit nostalgic and a little ashamed when I remember “Saturday Night Fever” and the cloying falsetto of the Bee Gees (and their local emulators, the Boyfriends), but nostalgia is a reflex, i.e., involuntary.






But my feelings about soul and Latin are another story. The two musical genres tread the same river of culture (pop and otherwise) as ours, Third World and exuberantly so, and at that time I thought no Columbia or Motown or Hollywood could taint them (of course they went the way of all money like everything else). Joe Bataan made his name in those genres and no one among us (or among my music-enthusiast friends), ever heard of him. And so when I got this CD, dug from a welter of World/ House/Dance/Lounge/Techno/Electronica/etc etc (because I am always curious about how such and such music or artist is developing or what other or the young people are listening to), I sampled a track from this CD of a group I was first encountering. LTJ Experience, it was called, and I sort of liked what I heard (again the CD seems to be buried/lost among my shelves). Until I heard this track later (when I was playing it in the car), where, apart from the great amplified percussion that reminded you of an extended battle between the Sharks and the Jets in “West Side Story,” and I was mystified by the gravelly, manly voice that was singing:

I don’t drive beautiful cars
And I don’t own an elegant home
Don’t have thousands to spend
All chits I got is for the weekend
I’m just an ordinary, ordinary guy
Afro-Filipino, average-story guy
That’s what I am
The ordinary man you left behind

…Taxis, take me downtown
My pocket is my home
I spend weekends with my friends
Otherwise I’m alone
Don’t know much about psychology
My degrees are in street-ology…

(from “Ordinary Guy.”
as performed by Joe Bataan & LTJ Experience)

And the refrain kept the repeating the Afro-Filipino line. The track list and liner notes said “Joe Bataan,” and I thought I’d like to know more about this guy. Synchronicity came to the rescue and sometime or maybe late in 2006 or early 2007 (when my LTJ CD featuring Joe Bataan was quite new), my Plaridel Papers egroup features a posting by Ben Pimentel inviting anyone to his great blog, www.filipinopodcasts.blogspot.com, and listen to his podcast about the Filipino diaspora, and Joe Bataan was on and already on his comeback! Some of the photos here are from Ben Pimentel’s blog and it’s really quite late that I am just now able to talk about his blog as a whole and not just Joe Bataan (Hooraaay, Ben Pimentel!). So, on to my further search about the guy whose name brings back the memories of our fathers.

Now I’d like to recommend this site (which you probably know more about than I do), which has become my long-time ready reference for music. It’s called AMG or All Music Guide (also All Movie and All Media Guide). Here’s the link: http://www.allmusic.com/. If you’re still not familiar with All Music (I go mainly for music), it’s where I go to whenever I need to know about the bio and discography of an artist, or to know a little more about a genre of music, especially the more recent ones that, with the leaps and bounds in electronic technology, developed from their various roots and shot out in branches of variegated kinds and colors. And Joe Bataan was there, who I now understood, was already a veteran, and he was new to me. (The length of the entry for an artist more or less signifies his or her importance; you can, for example type in Cecile Licad and you'll be brought to the Classical section where her entry is sizeable, with quite a number of pictures to boot.) But let the experts at All Music talk about Joe Bataan:

Joe Bataan's Entry at AllMusic.Com

by Richard Pierson



“No recording artist has more impeccable street credentials than Joe Bataan, the originator of the New York Latin Soul style that paralleled Latin bugalu and anticipated disco. His musical experience began with street corner doo-wop in the 1950s, and came to include one of the first rap records to hit the charts, 1979's "Rap-O, Clap-O". In between these milestones, he recorded classic albums like St. Latin's Day Massacre, a perennial favorite in the salsa market, Salsoul, which gave the record label its name and helped spark the national explosion of urban dance music, and Afrofilipino, which included one of the very earliest New York disco hits, an instrumental version of Gil Scott Heron's "The Bottle".



“Born Peter Nitollano, of African-American/Filipino parents, Joe Bataan grew up in Spanish Harlem, where he ran with Puerto Rican gangs and absorbed R&B, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Rican musical influences. His music career followed a pair of stints in Coxsackie State Prison. Self taught on the piano, he organized his first band in 1965 and scored his first recording success in 1967 with "Gypsy Woman" on Fania Records. The tune was a hit with the New York Latin market despite the English lyrics sung by Joe, and exemplified the nascent Latin Soul sound. In early anticipation of the disco formula, "Gypsy Woman" created dance energy by alternating what was fundamentally a pop-soul tune with a break featuring double timed hand claps. Joe would take this tendency even further on his influential Salsoul, which fused funk and Latin influences in slick yet soulful orchestrations. Salsoul remains influential as a rare groove cult item, but pointed to the future at the time of its release. The LP embodied the artist's highly deliberate and culturally aware musical concept. Bataan theorized the '70s next big thing as a hybrid: an Afro Cuban rhythm section playing Brazilian influenced patterns over orchestral funk. In many ways, his vision was on the money, though most of the money would go to others, and mainstream stardom would elude him. He did, however, get in on the ground floor of the new trend as an early hit maker. His biggest commercial move was a Salsoul production released under the Epic umbrella, and promoted to the new disco market as Afrofilipino, which included 1975's "The Bottle", a much anthologized classic that drives an R&B horn arrangement with a relentless piano montuno.


“Always in touch with the street, Joe Bataan picked up on rap very early in the game. His minor rap hit, "Rap-O, Clap-O" was a bit more successful in Europe than in the States, and is remembered as rap's debut in the European market. Nevertheless, his legacy remains his gritty and realistic Latin soul lyrics, his self identification as an "Ordinary Guy," and his highly personal and prophetic merger of Latin and soul influences.”(end of quote)



Now don’t take my and the experts’ word on Joe Bataan’s music. Listen for yourself to this lost compatriot of ours nurtured in salsa and Latin soul. And who is more known abroad than in the land of his fathers. (The other track with a Joe Bataan vocal in the LTJ Experience CD I refer to above is “When the Rain Begins to Fall,” a song of the most poignant soul.) One wonders how his music would have been further enriched if he knew Tagalog, if he had explored the Filipino beat (whatever it is), if he could have fraternized with the likes of Asin, Grace Nono, Joey Ayala, Heber Bartolome, Bong Peñera, Pinikpikan, etc. As it is, Joe Bataan and his music, “Afrofilipino,” is something Filipinos still have to discover.

Photo Credits:
from Ben Pimentel’s superb blog,
www.filipinopodcasts.blogspot.com
& from the AMG site,
http://www.allmusic.com/