if there's any justification for a belief in american exceptionalism that unique message that supposedly explains what america's all about and what makes us different and proud to be americans it's rooted in the american abolitionist movement the labor movement the of vietnam anti war movement the suffragette movement the welfare rights movement the civil rights movement the attica rebellion the young lords and black panther parties the new poor people's campaign and countless attempts by ordinary americans who collectively rose up in anger and hope to the five dominant authorities by speaking truth to power the form these expressions might take some times came out most beautifully in poetry art and music america after all is an ongoing living experiment an experience of complex paradoxes and contradictions is tended to be an optimistic culture at times naive and crude at other times soaring and liberating in one nine hundred fifty seven one of those iconic moments of liberating  exploded on to the broadway stage with the production of west side story with music by leonard bernstein and lyrics by stephen sondheim it was aspired by shakespeare's play romeo and juliet and set in the upper west side neighborhood in new york city in the mid fifty's it was an ethnic blue collar neighborhood much of it was cleared and urban renewal project for lincoln center which changed the neighborhoods character dramatically the musical explains the rivalry between the jets and the sharks to teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds the members of the sharks from puerto rico are taunted by the jets a white gang the young protagonist tony a former member of the jest and best friend of the gang's leader riff falls in love with maria the sister of bernardo the leader of the sharks this dark theme sophisticated music extended dancing scenes and focused on social problems marked a turning point in american musical theater the production was nominated for six tony awards including best musical in one thousand fifty seven  sixty one musical film adaptation was nominated for a levon academy awards and won ten a record for abuse ical including best picture my guess on the radical magination today through their struggles and liberating affirmations of life represent the best of what american exceptionalism is should be and what it can be they are two of the most dynamic creative and prophetic visionary voices in the latino american community today and understand full well the complexities and nuances of the west side story  prolific american poet of african puerto rican heritage who was a member of the last poets a group of black power era artists mentored by a mean baracoa created politically charged with live music and spoken work poetry news anchor and a founding member of the new york branch of the young lords party he grew up in east harlem and lives just a few blocks from our eminence studios here on east four st philippe bria is a latin american jazz drummer of puerto rican descent who's a percussionist composer arranger conductor producer educator documentary filmmaker activists and bandleader for the multi verse big band born and raised in new york's melrose housing projects in the south bronx bobby was the drummer for the acknowledged creator of afro cuban jazz mario and is a seven time grammy award nominee for his work his latest recording will least in july of two thousand and eighteen is a monumental latin jazz reworking of the entire school or of west side story he's entitled west side story reimagined on the jazz heads label in celebration of the show's recent sixtieth anniversary two thousand seventeen and as composer maestro leonard bernstein centennial in two thousand and eighteen parcel proceeds from the sale of this a storage double cd set goes to the jazz foundation of america's puerto rican relief fund to aid bobby's unsubtle homeland after the devastation from hurricanes irma and maria added to by the gross negligence of the trumpet ministration now before we meet felipe and bobby here's a short clip of bobby and jamie bernstein discussing their  work it's true that over the course of my life i've heard many different takes on west side story music and different interpretations and versions when i heard bobby's version my head pretty much exploded because it was really the most ambitious reimagining of the music that i had ever heard and the sheer force of it because there was so many members of the orchestra and so much propulsion and so much forward motion i just was overwhelmed i thought it was the coolest open minded and open hearted about reinterpreting his music i think he would love the way bobby sort of ratcheted the whole thing up to express his own emotions about the world we all live in today and if my father were living today i can only imagine that he'd be sort of apoplectic and would be only too thrilled to hear his music expressing you know today's version of the themes that we hear in west side story and particularly the musicians on the island who have been devastated in terms of there's no work for them and many of them lost their homes and lost their instruments requoting equipment etc etc we had already done a benefit it sure is we would be so on earth if we knew that you were dedicated your record and the proceeds to helping the island pull itself back together that i'm sure if you were around he would be doing exactly the same and there really does flipping i know you have your show on w b a i saturday afternoon and you spent a lot of time exploring and playing a lot of latino music as well so i want bobby to explain yeah but first let me just say it's saturday from four to six four to  six point five i'll be playing some of bobby's music and i'll be playing some of the classics as well terrific it's called latin roots latin roots should be enjoyable it will be and while it's a privilege to be here thank you so much for having both of us and especially being alongside one of my heroes for the people who are big has had a big influence on my life because i used to this into the first incarnation of his show latin roots on the old jazz twenty four hour gestation new york used to have w r v on sundays assiduously and i was a kid growing up in the south bronx in the morals projects kind of rejecting my culture at the time but little by little getting back into things the enough through the popularity of santana at that time and then finally this thing to felipe on sundays he would interview some of the greatest musicians that we did that we have in our multi verse like people are getting married to the point the historians like  that's when i first started realizing the majestic history that we have as a people in terms of the african diaspora in the caribbean particularly what tony going and the dominican republic but in terms of this new  movie soundtracks so i did different excerpts of different popular movies that had touched me and i said we got to conclude with the mambo jim scene a west side story  so we did i had one of my then students danny rivera was a great baritone saxophone as composer arranger i said danny does your homework assignment do the gym scene but do something different with it let's talk about it  fabulous standing ovation the whole thing at the end so then i put that in the back of my head and i said wow i'm going to really one day we're going to i'm going to recreate the whole entire score of west side story but in a new different way so three years ago i started in earnest knowing that the sixtieth anniversary was coming up in two thousand and seventeen and my sixtieth birthday a parent that italy and we did a fabulous concert last february two thousand and seventeen recreating the whole score with new arrangements etc you would listen to bernstein's work as a younger man i had been exposed to it first on the tenth anniversary of the movie in one nine hundred seventy one  one so i'm like thirteen fourteen so would you think i was i was five flabbergasted i really completely my jaw dropped because from every aspect of visuals the choreography the music my sister and me but what they went through was really unnerving and it just spoke to me in a way that nothing before that has spoken to me i know there's a lot of people in the puerto rican intellectual community criticize the movie we can get into that later but really it was really subtle and nuanced which are the great art is always defined by the subtlety and nuance the way the four creators jerome rob how they are yeah how they how they can travel yeah how they came together these four geniuses right and address the fact of how do we deal with hate discrimination bigotry in this respect and jealousy and we're still dealing with those things today especially not so timely with the immigration issues we're facing among so many and ridgeley white the the play was set for regionally for irish american and before so they they shove the concept and believe it or not also lawrence and then a bernstein had met had a meeting in los angeles because he was conducting at the hollywood bowl of time lawrence was writing the book for a movie at the time and then a bernstein had been reading the papers in los angeles so maybe we could do this with she canno gangs or something like that and on the lines told him let me see if you can i guess i don't know anything and that's when they came back to it and there were inspired to to to recreate it in a different way and you of course are also impacted by this event the history the struggles  i first heard about west side story in one nine hundred fifty seven when it opened we were given free tickets to go and during that period i was so involved in the streets that i didn't want to go to the theater to this day i rue the day i said i'm not going to the original so ways how old were you and i was in the fourth grade and you know they had given us take it you were organizing on the street i was the streets and i didn't understand the a static of a guy like bernstein i was living puerto rican i wouldn't have to see it on the screen however the the movie for me the play which then turned into a movie ever heard and if you hear johnny mathis is version of it you will never ever forget it again johnny mathis took it to another level when you hear make of our hands one hand make of our hearts one heart i mean these are things  correct paradigm of saying church a curious wasn't puerto rican and so many of the people were in puerto rican that's not the point the point that for me the point is that someone saw what we will go into in the fifty's now while my brother talks about the immigration it was coming we had just become a commonwealth in one nine hundred fifty two and they were pouring into new york city whenever i see puerto rican chicago or philadelphia or florida and they try to assume the mantle of being something other than puerto rican i say you started in everybody like all of us did they all came right here from here they moved to other areas of america i think it's worth pointing out to the economic progress isn't that this this forced migration occurred well there have been four major exodus from puerto rico all of them the result of financial mishaps financial corruption the first was eight hundred ninety eight when the united states took over puerto rico and many puerto ricans came here because they felt that if we're going to be fine with the with the  model for democracy then we'll even be better if we go there so many of them left and came to new york city that was the first forced migration was that remember when the americans came to we were basically a farm community small farms basically sugar make that sugar began slowly after a major hurricane in puerto rico that sugarcane economy collapsed and then they went into coffee i was nine hundred twenty nine  gigantic hurricane that hit the eye and it was very bad it really does so you think this was bad memory it was bad this was killed thousands so now they come here then the next major migration there were just too many people not enough food my grandmother talks about this all the time well she's past now she said i remember bloated stymies bloated stomachs and red hair which classic sides of militarization the next move out is they force them or they gave them ample so we went to what i still have a girls there who stayed there that was a nine hundred thirty s slave conditions plantation like situation discrimination racism and pure brutality the next migration they can't contain the population they they the infrastructure is fragile three million puerto ricans right still three mm three and a half million how do you go how many in america about six people in modern history you know interesting and so the music and the poetry that you were involved in the art was so crucial to establishing a sense of purpose and a dent in the you know  what it is it's amazing that an island thirty miles wide by a hundred miles long has contributed so greatly to world culture we tend to get my opic and think it's just here but our soldiers in world war two took it to france took it to england and there if they were in the pacific theater they took it to japan to this day japan is one of the most passionate passionate nations about latin music our guys wherever the soldiers have gone we're reporting is gone we take our music with us and to this day if you go to italy and you say you puerto rican and the first thing i want is i want to dance i want to german f m wanted to point to records in germany than i ever found here it is amazing russia i went to china in one nine hundred seventy two and i brought any palmeri with me they flipped out maurice levy at the time was trying to try to contact me in hong kong because he wanted me he wanted to send records to me morris levy was a former president of roulette records and teco records and wanted me to try to sell the chinese market is always thinking of a deal some time to sell a chinese a lot music and i know they would have loved it they use a certain they use bamboo small that i like cason it's and little vertical sheaves about an inch an inch five inches long one inch wide and they do it just like casamance and they will certainly get that without the without our community the city doesn't exist that's right and that's that's a very good point you know understand that we had three major groups four major groups in the city five we had of course puerto ricans we had jewish and we had black americans now even and there was tension and a lot of people died and there was a lot of gang fights and a lot of gangs were formed as neighborhood protection associations as you well know as i don't know because i joined  the the gang culture that i grew up in was the seventy's yeah which was the black space the savages know my as a seventy models the the golden guineas all these different groups all these different gangs that existed in in the bronx in the south bronx and also in the north bronx and that's really present these these these were basically groups of young men who banded together to protect the neighbor the territorial imperative as a scientist would say  than those were burning the buildings in the south bronx to collect the insurance money this was all an aftermath of any anyone studies the history of new york of the building of the cross bronx expressway and the  of the gang which is very very strong he was able to say i'm going to discipline myself and i believe all musicians are basically phenomenal mathematicians because you have to learn those notes to sixteen's there's thirty seconds  of the wall how does one decide not to be part of what is happening right outside your window so the discipline that he had to exert the faith in the vision that he had to exert never ceases to amaze me frost all the when the beatles came to new york city i was believe in ninety sixty four i saw that and i was affected by that like every young person was at the time and i sang all those songs in the hallway or whatever and she loves you yeah yeah  band sound exactly and i would always see that the drummers were at the vortex of everything and then of course seeing in my household i would say that my father was a reflection of many puerto we heard that in the household but we also listen to mexican mariachi music because the puerto rican community was always big and seeing the films that were being produced in mexico make all had an incredible film industry in the one nine hundred fifty s rivaling our our muse is nature you keep you our muses the mountains the caribbean the sand the food remember didn't have poverty on the time those were very peaceful the mess up horribly sometimes very very attached to family so the mexican music as you see in west side story scene was actually mexican is extremely romantic on the asses they are phenomenal if you wanted to make it in latin music and you were in cuba you want to mexico city press probably did that many more did that so she called i had to do that many many people had to go to mexico at the time because of the film industry because of the recording industry but i remember in the fifty's growing up in the projects the johnson projects of new york as the guys were washing their second hand cars listening to from love this music what i'm trying to get at is that we are a momentum people and we still hold on to that tradition and that's why the jump the the rupture in terms of what they he was ambitious and he want to move forward it was it was a done deal it was going to be done the question is what i have been the one to do that but he did it was partly also operating under the so called american dream that this is what one does integrated herman was a fascinating figure and and there were a lot of contradictory elements within as there as there are with any man first of all he was the first one who introduced the whole concept of bilingual education bronx this is a it's a tough guy although he married a jewish all the american jewish here and i hope i know him very well it was a very difficult time to be puerto rican and he was not only puerto rican b was tall yeah he was so said i'm not leaving and he stated you got to give him credit for that that he became conservative later is a result of what one chronology but also he was hurt very badly by the democrats decision to spurn him as the carter then reneged on him but it was his idea he wanted to spread that throughout the united states talking about the rebuilding of charlotte surely yeah and i could sense into some of the work that you both are involved in right voter registration and getting out his classes acting classes etc but you know the differences are amazing bobby music yeah i chose politics yeah you sure did and i just to finish off the answer to your question how did he escape that the so everybody in the neighborhood knew that and they admire that out of me and so the cats left me alone not that there was an available to me if i wanted to i knew those and you were tracking the women right so that always helps and well i music whenever i lecture in middle eastern middle eastern you hear there are some very proud yemenites who put their music on loud and their cars and we have moroccans who are in the city we have i just heard so first i just heard a mexican grunge group how is that possible where did they get into grunge the mexicans now in this town who we thought were cultural lists are now developing a whole new underground culture  of rap of rap of punk music it's incredible what's going on now the problem is they're beginning to talk about the car to and since the cartels have had such a prominent role to play mexican society i always say warriors are attracted to life and movement and if you are a warrior musical political you're going to want to dance you're going to want to do something music is a manifestation i think of the god within and what happens is if the music reflects both rhythmically and lyrically your reality you're with it much ito in the forty's used to talk about stalin hitler roosevelt all of that stuff talk about boy girl relationships the contradiction of saying see and then saying no c c no no all kinds of sexual allusions most cuban music is double entendre anyway  later on it was jackie wilson and it was elvis presley you ain't nothing but a big momma ford and all that stuff now very few with the exception notable exception of bobby ruben blades blood this guy you're fifty four right gerry gonzales in fort apache those kinds of groups did come out and reflect the spectrum of puerto rican political cultural thought yes rap teary effect on the thinking of a lot of little gangsters and but they're only reflecting the culture as they see it and let's remember the plus side story is credible romantic it is  there's it's a tragedy there's violence actually well i mean the if you want to see them if you want to see go back further the roots of west side story and what bernstein and vision music got to go back to he had a unique sense of not only his mastery of the symphonic took it at his disposal but also american popular culture and a deep respect for all types of music he would respect a simple melody like of mary had a little lamb just as he would with the same kind of respect that he had for a piece by  so he and then the other thing about him too was he wasn't just a classical music classically trained musician that talked about american popular music and giving it lip service saying oh yeah jazz is great o with a jazz group in means in harlem or and of course conduct the boston symphony the new york philharmonic and everybody is a reflection of that bobby manifest that kind of renaissance where he's not only political but he's also very much in love with different kinds of rhythms now what i had in love with love and love of land and of love with the music and i happen to love here is his incredible involvement in puerto rican music what he's done with the latin population in this town is he's given them a new sense of purpose a new sense of mission listen to the sound listen when you see him playing in front of an orchestra and you see his passion and you see him flailing arms flailing i'm wondering if he's going to drop dead at any minute because he's so passionate i get scared but he's there and it has given us all the cold rain well yeah it was it was there so there's a true and i love playing his music again i just want to remind people that this show saturday let's make sure every saturday on w p a i ninety nine point five from four to six and bobby's music this saturday will be prominently displayed sound and we have august tenth we're going to be forming a west side story re imagined oh yes with my twenty one piece multi verse big band which is this y