Sam Quinones

DATE February 13, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Journalist Sam Quinones talks about his political
coverage of Mexico during the PRI and Vicente Fox administrations
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

George W. Bush will makes his first presidential trip to another country this
Friday when he meets with Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox. Fox is the
first Mexican president since 1929 who is not from the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, which is known by a Spanish acronym PRI. During the
seven decades PRI ran Mexico, the party became infamous for its corruption,
one of the many things that Fox has pledged to change. Fox has also promised
to combat crime and drug smuggling.

My guest, Sam Quinones, is a journalist who has been writing about Mexico for
seven years. He has a new book called "True Tales from Another Mexico." It's
only been a little more than two months since Vicente Fox was inaugurated. I
asked Sam Quinones if he could observe any chances in daily life.

Mr. SAM QUINONES (Journalist, Author, "True Tales from Another Mexico"): I
would say the foremost change is a kind of apprehension mixed with optimism on
the part of the people. No one ever believed that the PRI would lose. They
voted against the PRI but they always said, `Well, someone will change my vote
or there'll be vote fraud and we'll lose.' And, here--but what happened on
July 2nd, which is when the election took place, was this kind of mass voting.
Everyone just kind of voted and ducked, you know? `Gee, I hope he wins. I
don't know what's going to happen, but I'm sick of the system now.' I think
lots of people feel now this kind of great optimism. There is some
apprehension, like what's going to happen? We're a little unsure of the
future, but the truth is that almost anything would be better than what they
had, and I think a lot of people realize that. And so I think the major
change that I've noticed is just this kind of change in the attitude of
people.

They want something different, and they think Fox can give it to them.
They're willing to wait, a little while, at least, to see that he's at least
working towards that, and the more he shows that he is, I think the more
chance they'll give him to do it.

GROSS: President Fox is the first president since 1929, since the creation of
the PRI Party, that isn't from the PRI Party. What did PRI represent? What
kind of politics did it stand for?

Mr. QUINONES: The PRI represented the great officialist tendency in Mexican
society. It's a tendency that has an excessive respect for power, a deference
toward position and money. He defeated that, primarily, I believe. His
defeat of the PRI was a defeat of what had been part of Mexican society since
the creation, essentially, of Mexico, which was this officialist concept of
the president as kind of God, almost, the mayors and governors as kind of
princes. When he won, Mexican society was saying, `We've had enough of the
abuse of these people,' and for the first time it was kind of holding
accountable those people who had always been in power in Mexico.

GROSS: How did PRI manage to hold on to power for so long?

Mr. QUINONES: Well, it's a complicated thing, but they were--they created a
system very similar to--I like to compare it to Taminy Hall. If you think of
the PRI as a nationwide Taminy Hall, you understand Mexico under the PRI.
They created a system in which they understood that, unlike, say, the Nazis or
the Communists in Russia, the ideology was irrelevant; that what they really
needed to do was be--basically, buy people off. It was this entire system
based on the concept that every man has his price. And in a poor country,
it's not really that--that high. And so what they did was, essentially,
create an entire system using their power as government to just buy people
off.

And this they did by--in a million different ways. They could offer a radical
a professorship. They could offer a poor person a piece of land that wasn't
his. They could offer a bureaucrat an opportunity to break the law with
impunity. All of this created a kind of system of interests and collusion
that was extremely strong for many, many years and only lost power once that
same system couldn't create the wealth that allowed the PRI to buy people off
anymore.

GROSS: In your book you write about meeting the director of the National
Association of Private Schools and you were looking for some leads and
some phone numbers for a story that you were doing. Tell us what he asked
for in return.

Mr. QUINONES: Well, I went there kind of very wide-eyed, as an American
journalist would, hoping for comments, you know, and some names and numbers
of private schools so I could do a story on--on how rough it was for the
private schools. He had something else entirely in mind. He asked me for
500 pesos for this information. And I couldn't understand why he would ask
me for that and so I said, `Well'--and he explained, `Well, the problem is,
it's very hard to open up our database and it's gonna cost 500 pesos to open
up our database,' which I couldn't believe at all. There was a computer
right there. I could have probably opened it up myself.

But the idea was that I didn't really know where I was. And I was in the
middle, at that moment--it was very early in my time in Mexico--of the PRI
regime. The PRI regime was made up of three pillars of support; the
campesinos, the small farmers; the unions and then this place where I was,
which was organization of--the confederation of popular organizations--taxi
cab drivers, small businessmen. One of those organizations was the
association of private schools. And this man's job was not to make critical
comments about the economic situation and how it affected the private
schools. It was to, essentially, support whatever the president said and do
so blindly and have his little sinecure in this little, grimy office that he
had, being attended to by a guy who shined his shoes and another--a woman
secretary who would bring him coffee every so often and, apparently, you know,
looking for every opportunity to extort a little bit of money from innocent
little journalists like myself.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist Sam Quinones. His
new book is called "True Tales from Another Mexico."

What does Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, stand for, politically, as
compared to PRI?

Mr. QUINONES: Well, I think what he stands for, politically, is the opening
up of opportunity for the lower echelon of the Mexican economy, which is,
essentially, about two-thirds of the economy that is poor and working class.
I think that, more than anything, is what his promises for Mexico
on--certainly, in the economics sphere, he has got to do a lot to open up
opportunity; make it easier for these people to go into business for
themselves, to do things that they never were able to do under the PRI.

Politically, I would say he stands for the modernization of Mexican
government. Up to now, the Mexican government has been entirely
unaccountable, inefficient, inert and just a colossal waste of taxpayer
money. I think what--his job, now, is to make it accountable, open it up;
give it--you know, make information available to everyone--that comes from
the government. Up to now, it's not been. Make it efficient and flexible and
agile because, up to now, this--Mexico has carried this great weight of its
bloated and inefficient government on its back and it has kept Mexico from
developing, economically. And so the politics and the economics are
intertwined here, and you can't separate them. So he's got to break open
this, for the lower echelons of Mexican society, economic opportunity at the
same time as modernizing and making more efficient the Mexican government.

GROSS: Now Fox has been described as conservative, yet he's also described
as the big reform candidate. When people use the word conservative to
describe his politics, what does that mean?

Mr. QUINONES: Well, I think they're wrong when they describe it--describe
him that way, but when they use that term, they mean, primarily, that he
comes from the National Action Party, the PAN and, number two, that he
was once a member of Coca-Cola el Mexico(ph), the president of Coca-Cola el
Mexico and he comes from this big-business background. But like Mexico, Fox
is very, very difficult to label, in this sense. And I think that it's not
entirely fair to label him conservative. As governor, for example, he was
the first one. He established a version--a Mexican version of the Grameen
Bank. The Grameen Bank is the bank in Bangladesh that was set up to get
credit and loans into the hands of the poorest women in the society. And he
set up a version of that. Now that's not in my book--you know, a very
conservative policy. I don't know.

He is the first one to treat emigrants--people coming from--leaving Mexico
and going to the United States to work--with dignity and treating them,
actually, as people who had economic power and the ability to provide jobs in
their own communities. He's had a number of programs that have tried to tap
their savings in the United States for productive investment in Mexico. This
is the--a radical, radical change in how the Mexican government views the
people who are working in the United States. For many years, you know, they
treated them as kind of turncoats, as these nasty people who were stomping on
the Mexican flag by going to the gringo and working for the gringo and this
kind of thing, even though these people were leaving through no fault of
their own, but they just couldn't find work in Mexico.

This change, you know, is that conservative or is it liberal? I don't know.
I think it's a lot of both and it defies, in a sense, I think labels. And
that's why he is very interesting. That's also why Mexico is very
interesting. It defies political ideology and dogma and rhetoric. And his
conservatism--yeah, he is a very--he is a man very interested in the free
market and--but he's also very interested in getting the lower segments of
Mexican society involved in the market, which is something they've never
been, really, able to do up to now.

GROSS: My guest is journalist Sam Quinones. His new book is called "True
Tales from Another Mexico." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is journalist Sam Quinones. He's been writing about Mexico
for about seven years. His new book is called "True Tales from Another
Mexico."

What are some of the promises that President Fox has made to Mexicans?

Mr. QUINONES: Well, he promised a whole lot, a whole lot; essentially, a
transformation of the country in almost every area you can imagine;
environmentally, in education, in terms of the government practices,
economically. All of this is gonna take many, many years to accomplish.
It's not going to happen in his six years in office. What he can do, in his
six years, is set the foundation so that, in the future, first of all, Mexico
will not revert to a kind of a PRI-style system ever again--number one.
That's most important.

And, number two, that the next president and the next presidents,
really--'cause it's gonna take 15, 20 years, I believe--will go beyond what
he's done and establish a government that is modern, that is--that responds
to its people and is accountable and fair and open. And in education he's
got a total revamping of the entire public education system, if you ask me.
He's got this horrid system that is a drag on the Mexican economy; turns out,
really, sheep. I don't believe that it turns out thinking, critical,
analytical citizens, like a democracy needs. And he--it turns out, it has a
number of teachers that are really not, really, worth the money that they're
paid. And they're paid very little.

Environmentally, the entire country is a disaster. There's not a watershed
in Mexico, I think, that's not polluted. He's got to instill a feeling for
the environment that does not exist right now. In almost every area you can
imagine, he's got building to do. And it's really, essentially, what he's got
to do, in general terms. It's just country building.

GROSS: Do you have a sense of what President Bush and President Fox want out
of the relationship with each other?

Mr. QUINONES: I have to say I don't know what President Bush wants out of
the relationship with Mexico, although I assume it's a closer relationship,
in many ways. I know that Vicente Fox has a number of goals that he'd like
to see happen. Number one, just a closer, economic relationship; a
relationship that deals more in a position of equals and less from
parent-child, which has been the attitude up till now of the United States
towards Mexico. And that has to change because Mexico now has a legitimately
elected government and it's not gonna stand for this kind of attitude on the
part of, say, people like Jesse Helms and others to treat Mexico as if we're
like a, you know, bad, naughty child.

Vicente Fox also wants to create along the border with the United
States--similar to the border with the United States and Canada, where
there's this free flow of people, goods. Everything is, more or less, easy
to take across. He is a supporter of NAFTA, but he thinks NAFTA didn't go
far enough. And Fox would like to see human beings included in NAFTA, in
some regard, so that it's not just a free flow of goods and services, but
that people can more easily go to the United States and work, maybe, a guest
worker program. This kind of thing.

Eventually, what he'd like to see is some kind of common market idea similar
to Europe where people go across the border very easily--a lot more easily
than they do now. That's gonna take a while because Mexico--we can't open up
the borders and--without thousands and thousands and thousands of people just
pouring into the United States, I think. However, it is something that I
think can be achieved in the future. All--Mexico just has to develop,
economically, to the point where people don't want to go so much to the United
States. And it's just--crossing the border is more of, like, a business trip
and that kind of thing.

GROSS: I don't know if you've had a chance to see the movie "Traffic" about
drug trafficking?

Mr. QUINONES: Yeah, I did.

GROSS: I think that movie is having--is making an impression on a lot of
Americans who see it, and part of the movie is about corruption in the
Mexican police. What does President Fox have to say about corruption in the
police that deal with drugs?

Mr. QUINONES: Well, it's a--I think he has to say that it's gonna be a long
fight to weed it out and change the culture of the police forces that deal
with drugs. The one dominant thing that I think that many Mexicans feel is
true is that as long as the United States continues to use copious quantities
of illegal drugs--primarily cocaine and marijuana that come through
Mexico--there will be no end to this problem, really. There will always be
drug traffickers and there will always be a certain amount of drug corruption
in the police forces. And so it's something that, maybe, the president can't
say. Many, many Mexicans say it all the time.

He is set about trying to reform the police departments that deal with drug
trafficking. This has happened in my seven years in Mexico at least two or
three times, now, where there's a big war on drugs and it involves a reform of
the police departments, this kind of thing. I don't know how well it's gonna
work. You still have the reality of millions, billions of dollars worth of
illegal drugs being demanded on the part of the American population. And a
lot of them come through Mexico. And that's gonna continue to corrode the
police forces. So it's a long-term effort. It needs the participation of the
American government and more than just hectoring Mexico to just stop being so
corrupt and get their act together and this kind of thing. It needs a subtler
approach, I think.

GROSS: President Bush and President Fox each like to wear cowboy boots. Do
they have much in common beyond that?

Mr. QUINONES: Oh, boy. I don't see a whole lot in common. Certainly,
Vicente Fox is not, you know, a child of privilege. His parents weren't poor,
but they certainly weren't, like, really wealthy. And I think what he's
created--he and his brothers--he and his family have created has been,
generally, with their own--it's been a bootstrap kind of operation, in some
sense. Certainly, though, they were never poor, but they never had the kind
of opportunities, I think, that were afforded to George W. Bush, either in
business or in schooling by his father. I think they come in some sense from
a little different background in that regard. They don't--Vicente Fox is more
of a self-made man, I would say, than George W. Bush.

GROSS: When you return--you're in Los Angeles right now. When you return to
Mexico, which I know you'll be doing soon, what are you going to be looking
for?

Mr. QUINONES: Mm-hmm. I think what I want to do when I go back is, in part,
cover this country building that Vicente Fox has to engage in. I'm gonna--I
think that's gonna be very, very interesting and it's gonna be hard to do.
It's gonna be a challenge, journalistically, but I think that there's gonna be
a lot of stories that come out of it that will be important for, I think,
Americans to know about.

I also want to start covering Mexico--the Mexican diaspora more. I'm from
the Los Angeles area, and every time I come up here I'm just stunned at the
number of Mexicans and how they are changing Mexico--they are changing the
United States and how the experience here in the United States is changing
them; making them see government, see economics in a different light. But,
certainly, here in the Los Angeles area, you spend just a short amount of
time and it becomes completely that they are the backbone of the LA economy,
doing all the worst jobs and some of the better ones, too, nowadays. And so
I want to get away from simply looking at Mexico as a country bound by these
borders that we all know and looking at Mexico in terms of Chicago and Texas
and Los Angeles and the Central Valley of California. That, I think, is where
my journalistic tendencies are leading me these days.

GROSS: I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. QUINONES: It's been great being on. Thank you very much.

GROSS: Journalist Sam Quinones is the author of the new book "True Tales
from another Mexico."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Profile: Tenor saxophonist Buddy Tate dies at the age of 87
TERRY GROSS, host:

Tenor saxophonist Buddy Tate died Saturday at the age of 87. He first became
known for his work with the Count Basie Band, which he joined in 1939 and
played with for 10 years. We'll hear a recording he made in 1977 with the
South African pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim. This is "Just You, Just
Me."(ph)

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite from "Just You, Just Me.")

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Chico O'Farrill talks about his life as a Afro-Cuban
jazz composer and arranger
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Chico O'Farrill was one of the first composers and arrangers to combine
Afro-Cuban sounds with jazz. He grew up in Havana and moved to New York in
1948 where he wrote and arranged for Machito, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton and
Benny Goodman. O'Farrill returned to Cuba in 1955, moved to Mexico in '57 and
stayed there eight years before moving back to New York. During the '70s and
'80s he had to make his living writing and arranging commercial jingles. He
made his jazz comeback in 1995 and began leading his Afro-Cuban jazz big band.
His band often performs in New York under the supervision of his son, pianist
Arturo O'Farrill. Chico O'Farrill is now 79. He has a new CD called
"Carambola." I asked him when he first started combining Afro-Cuban rhythms
with jazz.

Mr. CHICO O'FARRILL (Musician): Well, in Cuba, before I came to the United
States, there was a group of us who loved jazz and we found a lot of Cuban
music boring. You know, monotonous. So we all dreamed about, you know,
having the richness and excitement of jazz music harmonies with Cuban rhythms
and combine the two so that there'll be a new kind of music.

GROSS: You said you found Cuban music boring. Why did you find it boring?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, because Cuban music at the time was, you know,
montunal. So there was only one phrase that repeated itself at infinite. You
know, same thing, same thing. Same over and over and over. There was no
richness and there was no notes to go to. So it was all the same. It was,
you know, montunal. Da-de, da-de, da-de, ding, ding. Do, do, ding. Da-de,
da-de, da-de, ding, ding. And repeat that half an hour. I found that boring.

GROSS: Norman Granz's is the founder of Jazz at the Philharmonic...

Mr. O'FARRILL: That's correct.

GROSS: ...and Verve records asked you to write an "Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite" for
Machito. Charlie Parker ended up on the session because one of the other
soloists couldn't make it.

Mr. O'FARRILL: That's right.

GROSS: And so Norman Granz sent for Parker. What was your reaction? Did you
think that that was good news that Parker was going to be there instead of the
person you had planned on?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, of course, because--Bird, at the time, was already one
of the up-and-coming brilliant minds in the jazz field so to me it was a
thrill to have somebody like Charlie Parker on that recording.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear the solo that he took on your "Afro-Cuban Jazz
Suite," as recorded in 1950?

(Soundbite of "Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite")

GROSS: Chico O'Farrill, were you happy with Charlie Parker's solo?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Oh, yes. Bird was unique. He had a style and sound and a
concept that were unique. In fact, he was so unique that he influenced the
whole collection of sax players who imitate him.

GROSS: Now you've re-recorded the "Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite" on your latest CD.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yes.

GROSS: What sounds different in this version than the original?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, this version, to a certain extent, preserves the
excitement of the original Machito ultra rhythm section. Or the horn
sections, to a certain extent, have better ears and play better than in the
original session. So I think our interpretation of this one now is better, in
general, than the original one.

GROSS: Well, let's hear the new version of Chico O'Farrill's "Afro-Cuban Jazz
Suite."

(Soundbite from new version of "Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite")

GROSS: That's the opening of the "Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite from Chico
O'Farrill's new CD "Carambola." You wrote the "Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite" after
you moved to New York. And I'm wondering if you heard Cuban music in a
different way once you started living in New York and once you started
composing and arranging Afro-Cuban-inspired jazz?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, when I came to New York, my whole musical mind changed
in a way that I was a new musician. For one thing, I was listening to some of
my idols in person, people like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker. So I was
listening to people in person, which is not the same as listening to records.
And so my mind was very much more attuned to this type of thing than when I
was living in Cuba.

GROSS: When you were living in New York in the late '40s and early '50s, you
did a lot of arranging for other people's bands.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yes.

GROSS: You did some arranging for Machito...

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...for Dizzy Gillespie, for Benny Goodman...

Mr. O'FARRILL: Right.

GROSS: ...Stan Kenton.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yes.

GROSS: And you've described yourself as, `the ghostwriter of the
ghostwriters.'

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yeah, I was the ghost of the ghosts.

GROSS: What did you mean by that?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, I'm ...(unintelligible) names to certain big-name
arrangements from Puerto Rico that wrote for Benny Goodman, Count Basie, etc.
And while he wrote a lot of it, he had a ghostwriter write it. And the
ghostwriter actually, you know, had too much work.

GROSS: So you were doing ghostwriting for people who were hired to arrange
things and weren't getting much credit in the first place.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Right, right, right. That's right.

GROSS: But you must of learned a lot doing that.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Of course, I did. That was the main reason I did it, so I
was exposed directly to the musical medium that I loved and learned more about
it.

GROSS: Now I want to play something else from your new CD "Carambola." In
fact, I want to play the title track. It's a piece that you wrote for Dizzy
Gillespie. When did you write it and tell us about the occasion for writing
this.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, this--frankly, I don't remember exactly when I wrote
it. You know, sometimes you write and write and write and you just put it
away. And the thing was to--like it was a job to do so ...(unintelligible)
and it became a fairly big hit for the others. Frankly, there's no particular
reason why I wrote that. I just wrote it.

GROSS: OK. Well, let's hear it. This "Carambola," the title track of Chico
O'Farrill's latest CD.

(Soundbite of "Carambola")

GROSS: Music from Chico O'Farrill's new CD "Carambola." O'Farrill will be
back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of "Carambola")

GROSS: My guest is Chico O'Farrill, one of the first musicians to compose and
arrange music that combined Afro-Cuban sounds with jazz. He has a new CD
called "Carambola."

What was your ethnic background in Cuba? Where were your parents from?

Mr. O'FARRILL: My father was originally from Ireland. Figure that out. And
my mother was--you know, had German background. So I'm a mess, I admit it.

GROSS: So your father was from Ireland and your mother from Germany or from
German background?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yeah. No, not really, just the background is.

GROSS: So what kind of music did they listen to when you were growing up?

Mr. O'FARRILL: I did not remember much except them listening to Cuban music,
but they didn't listen to much music. They were not music lovers really. I
have to say that.

GROSS: And what did they think of you listening to and then playing jazz?

Mr. O'FARRILL: They weren't very happy about it. As a matter of fact, I
remember when I decided to become a musician, I was supposed to go to law
school and become an attorney.

GROSS: Your father and grandfather were both lawyers.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Right. So I was supposed to become an attorney and follow in
the family's footsteps, but one day decided I was going to become a musician.
And I announced it to the family and I remember my grandma was very austere
saying, `You are do-do. If you're going to be a musician, be a good one.
Remember Mozart. Mozart. Remember Mozart.'

GROSS: So she wanted you to play classical music.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yes. She wanted me to do classical music. For them jazz,
you know, ...(unintelligible) most popular music jazz and always was like a
little bit vulgar music.

GROSS: You told Peter Watrous for an article in The New York Times...

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yes.

GROSS: You said, `Cuban society has always been very racist. My parents were
shocked that I was playing black music. Black musicians rarely played
classical music and white musicians didn't play Afro-Cuban music or jazz.'
Tell me more about that, about the racial divisions within music in Cuba when
you were growing up.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, unhappily, there was a cultural difference. The
culture there--you know, in every world painting or literary worth had a side
that was purely black and a side that was purely white. Sometimes the two
matched well but most of the time they stayed separate. Why? Because Cuban
society doesn't understand it was as organized racially speaking in the same
model that it was organized in the United States.

GROSS: I imagine, judging from this quote, that in Cuba, you were considered
white and also upper middle class. When you got to New York and you were
playing jazz, do you think that jazz musicians thought of you as white or
thought of you as Latino?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, I wasn't sure at the time. And to tell you the truth,
I didn't care much what they considered me. What I wanted to do was play good
music so I didn't care whether they considered me white or Latin, whatever.

GROSS: When you started arranging and conducting in New York, I imagine
people went to you thinking, `Well, this is the guy who does the Afro-Cuban
jazz stuff, so let's have him do some more Afro-Cuban jazz stuff.' Did you...

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yeah. A steady diet.

GROSS: A steady diet, right.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yeah.

GROSS: Did you ever wish that people would just ask you to write straight
jazz without the Afro-Cuban rhythms? Did you ever...

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yes. Well, once you write something in a certain style, then
they typecast you. And you are the writer in that particular style, you're
the biggest one. I forget which ...(unintelligible), but I know someone who
was studying with Benny Good--I mean, with Norman Granz. Then I became the
Afro-Cubanesque writer.

GROSS: So was that ever frustrating, being the Afro-Cuban jazz writer, as
opposed to just the jazz writer?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, it's very frustrating because, for example, I can write
for Count Basie, African bassist Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman. I could write
for any kind of American music; you know, any kind of jazz music. But then
they, as I said, impede you and hold you and put you there, and that's it.

GROSS: Are you still composing now?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yes, of course. I never stopped composing. I'm writing
things for my own son right now, and we're planning on doing a new record
pretty soon.

GROSS: I want to play another track from your new CD, and this is called
"Crazy City (...But I Love It)." What's the city that this composition is
about?

Mr. O'FARRILL: Well, guess. Guess. Chicago? Nah. Toronto? Nah.

GROSS: Havana or New York?

Mr. O'FARRILL: How about New York? Try New York.

GROSS: New York. OK.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yeah. Of course.

GROSS: And what were the impressions of New York you wanted to capture in
this piece?

Mr. O'FARRILL: I wanted to go back to the musical sounds and the feeling of
the city and the mixture of Latin and jazz rhythms, which is so typically
unique of New York.

GROSS: So let's hear it. This is "Crazy City (...But I Love It)." Well,
this piece is called "Crazy City (...But I Love It)." Did you always love New
York when you moved there, or did it take you awhile to adjust to it?

Mr. O'FARRILL: No, I loved it. The first minute I walked in here, I loved
it.

GROSS: How come?

Mr. O'FARRILL: There was something about the atmosphere. It was such a
dynamic city, such a vibrant city. And especially I was in love with jazz at
the time, and this was the center of jazz. It became the center of my
(unintelligible) so I loved it.

GROSS: Thank you so much. I love your music, and I wish you the best.

Mr. O'FARRILL: Yes. Thank you. And I thank all the--for listening to me,
and you'll have a good time.

GROSS: So here's "Crazy City" from Chico O'Farrill's new CD, "Carambola."

(Soundbite from "Crazy City")

GROSS: Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews Rick Moody's new collection of
short stories.

This is FRESH AIR.

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Review: Rick Moody's "Demonology"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Rick Moody, who's perhaps best known for his novel "The Ice Storm," has been
hailed as one of the best of the younger generation of writers by magazines
like Harper's and The New Yorker. Critic Maureen Corrigan says that his
writing can win your heart, but like lots of other young men, he's fickle.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN reporting:

The first-person narrators in the best of Rick Moody's short stories published
in "Demonology" remind me a bit of Holden Caulfield: older, even sadder.
Nevertheless, Moody's narrators can't quite tamp down their funny enthusiasms,
nor do they even try to restrain their loathing of phonies.

The first story, "The Mansion on the Hill," and the last one, the title one,
"Demonology," are astonishing, the kinds of stories whose atmosphere and
voices haunt you long after you forget other details. The other 11 stories
range from entertaining to accomplished to annoying, creative-writing class
finger exercises. No matter, just as it's worth reading the minor tales in
James Joyce's "Dubliners" to get to "The Dead," it's worth buying "Demonology"
just to own copies of Moody's two stunners between hard covers.

Like Joyce's "The Dead," like, it seems, 75 percent of all the literature ever
written, Moody's two great short stories are about death. In fact, they have
more in common; they're both about the deaths of the narrators' sisters. At
first, "The Mansion on the Hill" threatens to feature one of my least favorite
types of characters: the American eccentric, that whimsical fellow--or more
rarely, that gal, who teeters on the margins of the mainstream. I was wrong.
Granted, Moody's narrator, Andrew(ph), does first appear in a rubber chicken
costume handing out fliers for a fast-food joint called Hot Bird(ph), but he
has a good excuse; he's reeling from a tragedy. We find out partway through
the story that his cherished sister, Eileen(ph), recently died in a car crash
on her way to her own wedding-rehearsal dinner.

Andrew soon lands a better job at the place that gives this story its title.
"The Mansion on the Hill" is a cinder block wedding palace, where, Andrew
says, `we were in the business of spreading joy by any means necessary. We
were in the business of paring away the callouses of woe and grief to reveal
the bright light of commitment.' Even in the hands of a lesser writer than
Moody, "The Mansion's" endless weekend processions of over-the-top wedding
affairs would provide plenty of material for mirth. But when Eileen's former
fiance, a certified, beret-wearing charlatan named Bryce(ph), turns up at the
mansion to wed a new intended, Andrew's raging grief bursts through his
acceptable demeanor of ironic melancholy.

Clad in his old chicken mask, Andrew showers Bryce not with the traditional
rice, but with the ashes and bones of his cremated sister. And why not, the
story seems to calmly ask. After all, what could be more absurd, more
grotesque than death itself?

As a story, "Demonology" is much more raw than "Mansion on the Hill," and
that's the brilliance of its placements in this collection. Since it comes at
the end of the book, "Demonology" predictably should be more resolved, more
accepting of the death--here, by a freak heart seizure--of the unnamed
narrator's sister. Instead, it's rambling, indecisive and vividly elegiac.

The story opens on Halloween, and here's part of its dizzying,
paragraph-length first sentence: `They came in twos and threes, dressed in
the fashionable Disney costumes of the year--Lion King, Pocahontas, Beauty
and the Beast--or in the costumes of televised superheroes--protean,
shape-shifting--thus arrayed in twos and threes, complaining it was too hot
with the mask on. "Hey, I'm really hot," lugging those orange, plastic
buckets as the parents tarried behind, grown-ups bantering about the schools
or about movies, about local sports, about their marriages, about the
difficulties of long marriages; kids sprinting up the next driveway, kids
decked out as demons or superheroes or dinosaurs or as advertisements for our
multinational entertainment providers, beating back the restless souls of the
dead in search of sweets.'

If you really want to hear about it, as Holden Caulfield would say, the rest
of Moody's stories in "Demonology" concern stuff like yuppies homesteading in
Hoboken, middle Americans trying to get rich quick by raising ostriches and
Cheeveresque suburbanites staring at their own mortality in the bottom of a
martini glass. Those stories are mostly fine, but the two tales that frame
this collection are in a different short-story stratosphere altogether.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She
reviewed "Demonology: A Collection of Short Stories" by Rick Moody.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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