When my family returned to Venezuela from Europe, I came to live in a barrio, and like every good Latin barrio, the music that was playing at that time was salsa. It was a time when the favorite of that genre in this country was a sextet that had little time formed and from which one of the biggest salsa stars in the world emerged, Oscar D'León. The group was the Dimensión Latina, and despite having only six members, it sounded like an orchestra, due to the fact that it had two trombones, a bass, piano and two percussionists.
From the United States, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent, who had stood out as one of the youngest directors and who had achieved a special sonority with his trombone, Willie Colón, sounded strong on the radio stations.
There were many groups, soloists and musicians who stood out, but those two marked me and thanks to them I wanted to learn to play trombone. But the Venezuela of that time did not make things easy. That is now that we have the orchestra system El Sistema (founded precisely in that year of 1975), which allows the most humble people to have access to an orchestra and to learn any orchestral instrument and the instrument itself.
Even though I talked to family, friends and tried hard to get a trombone, it was out of my reach and I had to give up the idea.
However, seven years later I was already becoming a professional musician, albeit with other instruments and in other musical genres. And I did it with great satisfaction, because music is definitely what I like most in this world and performing in public is the most enjoyable experience you can have.
Many, but really many years later, in 2013, I had several websites that advertised Amazon.com. On one occasion there was a problem with a payment they made to me and offered me to buy products, instead of sending a check. Since the debt was a little over 100 dollars, I started to check what I could buy with that. That's when I discovered that for that amount there were several trombones. My memories were soon revived and I consulted with my wife. She agreed, because that way I could indulge myself and in any case we could also sell it.
So I bought the trombone and a few days later, thanks to a nephew who was in Miami, it arrived in Caracas.
This is my trombone, still in Miami, before sending it to Venezuela
I had had a bugle since I was a child, which I could easily blow. So I figured there would be no problem in playing this other relative of brass instruments as well. I spoke with the trombonist of Los Cañoneros, Salvador Saéz, who in addition to being an excellent musician, is also a first-rate teacher, since he also worked as a teacher for El Sistema. He was the one who started to guide me and encourage me.
In spite of my initial discipline, I discovered that the task was much more complex than I imagined and I could not make the instrument sound with a minimum of quality. By that time I was no longer a child, so I saw that the situation was becoming more complicated.
In addition to the frustration I felt at not making progress, part of my family began a campaign to "keep me on track" of my major projects and not "waste my time on the trombone. So between one thing and the other I started to become more and more irregular with the study, taking it, leaving it, taking it up again and so, as expected, the positive results were further and further away.
On one occasion I was working with a popular culture project and we were organizing music workshops in popular sectors. With this project I had to accompany a great Venezuelan musician, expert in salsa, with a great career in France, Eduardo Vals, to give one of those workshops in a southeastern Caracas neighborhood, for a local salsa group.
After several days he asks me: "Does that trombone you have sound? As the instrument was in perfect condition, I answered yes. To which he asked me to bring it for the next meeting. And so I did.
When we arrived at the place of the activity, he asked me to take the instrument out and gave me a score. At that moment I understand that the question was whether I could play the trombone. Well, I bravely took the instrument and did what I could (which was not much). Of course, the boys in the group were happy because they were playing with a trombone... But at the end of the day, Eduardo told me very clearly: "you don't play a sh...." That day I had nothing left to do but laugh, because it was true. Even though the pianist refuted him by saying that it wasn't so, that I had a nice sound. But the truth is that there I again corroborated that I could not cope with that instrument.
Two years ago, the same members of that group, called me and asked me to play the trombone with them. I explained the situation to them, but they claimed that they were not a professional group and that I could take advantage of that opportunity as a way to study. So I accepted and we rehearsed for several months, during that time we did three public performances and I think that was the time when I managed to make the instrument sound better.
Finally, due to problems with transportation, I couldn't continue with the group and I left the instrument again.
But, in spite of what happened to me with the trombone, I am not a person who abandons projects because they are difficult... So, at the moment of the birth of Hive, which impelled me to renew myself and to become more creative, and in view of the quarantine imposed by the COVID-19, I decided to retake the regular study and I set myself the goal of starting to publish music played with the trombone.
And this post is to share with you my first video playing it!!!
However, this first recording is not salsa. It is a song that I really like and I wanted to record it originally with a reggae rhythm, but I couldn't record the accompaniment, so I used this version which is very well done. It's a jazz standard by Earle Hagen, Harlem Nocturne.
If I chose the number of times I made a mistake in the recording, I could make a feature film. In fact, I used the full charge of my camera battery in the first round I did to record the song, because I wanted to do it live, without editing. But it always went something like it wasn't and I had to start over. Until there came a time when I gave up and decided to take a break and record in parts, editing.
The recording that I was initially trying to do was standing up, so to record I decided that I was going to sit where I have the computer, which is the same place where I study the trombone, and that I wasn't going to record the video, but later I would do it with my playback track.
But when I played the tune for the first time I realized that the way I was doing it now I could achieve it. Then I understood that what was affecting me was all the changes I had for the recording: I always study sitting down, for the recording I was standing up; I don't use headphones while I study, I don't have to be aware of the microphone, besides I had to be aware of the video... All that made me not be able to concentrate.
When I understood that, I decided that I was going to put the video camera on and start it up, I would sit where I always study and try to do things the same way I do every day... and Voilá!
I know that I still have a long way to go to achieve better tuning, an optimal sound, but I feel that I can now "dare" to publish my performances. With the publication of this video I also feel more committed to continue studying and improving my technique with the instrument, in order to offer you music of the highest quality. This is just my first step!
I got the backing track from Eduan Loftus Steenkamp
P.S. I spent more than 24 hours trying to upload this video to
, but it didn't work, so I had to change my mind...!
