Bobby Cruz, the reasons for the beastly sound concert in Bogotá

Little Robert did not pay attention to his mother. The lady warned him that if he crossed the street they would beat him to death. He went into a store to buy sweets and a gang of Italians punched and kicked him out. He came home exhausted and his mother, while cleaning his wounds, reproached him for not having listened to her.

“But why are they going to hit me, if I don’t know anyone. “That must be a lie so that he doesn’t leave the house,” said the boy who was born in 1938 in the midst of extreme poverty in Hormigueros, a town in western Puerto Rico where not even noise reached.

Robert arrived in New York in the 1950s. A city that grew disorderly and atomized into bands that showed their teeth and fists. Two years after that beating, at the age of 14, he ended up in the Puerto Rican gang, a group of tough-fighting migrants who organized to defend the neighborhood and prevent the entry of other migrants. Italians, Irish, blacks, Central Americans, everyone had their side and those with the stiffest knuckles were going to survive.

Sadly famous are the anecdotes of that New York of gang members, xenophobia and hunger. Charles Dickens narrated it in his book “Notes from America”: “Houses in ruins, open to the street, through whose wide cracks in the walls, other ruins threaten the view, as if the world of vice and misery had nothing else. What to show. Atrocious homes that owe their reputation to theft and murder. Everything that is filthy, decadent and corrupt is found here.”

That was the context. Robert grew up hot-blooded. Having his veins constantly boiling brought him trouble, but in that internal fire he found strength, excuses, demons, sounds, motivations and temptations. Today few remember Robert. Anger became music and Robert Cruz Ramos became Bobby Cruz, the man of salsa brava.

The memory of that Five Points gang member will remain. Today Bobby Cruz walks slowly, as if measuring the streets, retracing his steps, thinking about every movement so as not to stumble, since he has already stumbled many times.

He arrived at the editorial office of The viewer and ordered a coffee with three spoons of sugar added. He took it out of politeness, but he says it hurts him, since he has diabetes problems. He takes it slowly, sip by sip. While he answers questions, his left hand, with which he holds the plate on which he places the bowl, trembles involuntarily.

“Hormigueros is a little town that no one knows why it is called that: there are not even ants. I have not seen ants in my town. From there two famous people have come to the world, one of them is a hero, the other is me.”

In February of this year, Bobby Cruz turned 86 years old. He has already ordered the construction of the pantheon in which he hopes to be buried when death appears. His remains will rest in Hormigueros, next to the woman who advised him not to cross the street.

“I was always a thinker. I never did anything that I didn’t want to do. I was not guided by others. Most young people do not have their own identity and let themselves be guided by others. So I really have nothing to regret, except for the bad decisions I made out of ignorance, like crossing to the other side of the street when my mother told me not to.”

After making faces at gangs, he trained to be a jeweler at a vocational school. He had his own business at 54 West 57th Street in New York. The business was prosperous and Cruz, while making jewelry, added dollars to the account; However, he was not happy.

One afternoon in 1963, while engraving an engagement ring, he tore a vein in the index finger of his left hand with a work tool. The floor was left with a mirror of blood. That day a jeweler died and a singer was born, although he continued making jewelry, this time with sound.

“What am I doing here cutting my wrists if what I like is music?” he asked himself. He gave the business to the Cuban he worked with and two years later, in 1965, together with Richie Ray, they launched Ricardo Ray Arrivesthe first LP by the legendary salsa duo.

Bobby Cruz was accused of extracting Richie Ray from classical music. “Richie’s dad took it upon himself to tell everyone that. That is not true. He wanted Richie to be a classical pianist and he forced him, that’s why he left home when he was 16, because he didn’t want his father to force him into something he didn’t feel.

It was Richie’s mom who told me, ‘Bobby, help me look for my son. I don’t know where he’s going.’ In a week I took him home and Richie, in order not to study what his father wanted, went to the Air Force, when he left there we formed what the world knows today as Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz ” .

What follows is the paradigm of salsa. In Bestial Sound they mixed jazz, blues, classical music and symphonic sounds, among others. They took the rhythmic patterns, took them apart and put them together to shape an epic theme.

This Friday Bobby Cruz performs at Simón Bolívar Park. I ask him about his connection with Colombia: “This country launched my career to the world. We were already number one in New York, but we went out and got on at once. A family from Barranquilla, owners of radio stations, brothers with the last name Char, came to New York to hire Tito Puente, but Tito was busy and recommended us. I spoke with a young man named Miguel Char. He said that he had a station in Barranquilla and that if we made a song for that city, we would hit it.” It was not a siren song. With “Voy pa’ Colombia” they jumped to radio stations on the continent.

I ask him if it is true that at the Vive la Salsa festival in Bogotá, he leaves the stage: “I’m nostalgic, but my goodbyes are until I return.”