Change of master is not to be free. So José Martí once said. Notwithstanding, thanks to the Comandante-en-Jefe, the Soviets were penetrating the island and breeding their vile doctrine. It was October 1962. While this was happening, my friend Luis Cruz Azaceta (who would become a famous painter) and I danced at the Roseland on 52nd Street, to music by Miguelito Valdés, Cándido Camero and the Argüeso Orchestra. Just three blocks away in a store window of Times Square, four television screens announced breaking news: “SOVIET SHIPS HEAD TO CUBA, LOADED WITH NUCLEAR MISSILES.”

The next day, President John F. Kennedy put the U.S. Armed Forces on alert. It was Monday and as usual, I sat under the Brooklyn Bridge, to eat a sandwich and read the news in El Diario: “UNITED STATES READY TO GO TO WAR AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION,” “IMMINENT INVASION OF CUBA,” “PRESIDENT KENNEDY CALLS ON YOUNG CUBAN EXILES TO ENLIST IN THE ARMY IN CASE OF INVASION OF CUBA.”

The Maximum Leader had managed to put the world on the brink of a nuclear cataclysm, bringing a confrontation of the two world powers to the Caribbean. Some friends and I reported to the Army recruiting office in the heart of Times Square. The following month, I received a letter from the Armed Forces of the United States, with a 10 cent subway token; so that by December 5th I show up in their offices. That day, they examined me from head to toe and I took several tests of mental agility. At the end I asked the sergeant when they would advise me if I’d passed the tests. The sergeant smiled and shouted in English: “Square up, Private Acosta, welcome to the Army of the United States of America.”

I was allowed five minutes to say goodbye to my parents. That night we moved to the military base at Fort Dix in New Jersey. Sixteen inches of snow had already fallen. We were greeted with big spotlights and loudspeakers, dictating all kinds of orders, none of which I could understand. By ten at night all the recruits were trembling from the cold, though not the sergeant, who wore a T-shirt and gloves, demonstrating for us his fortitude. Finally, another sergeant gave a few instructions and with a military shout, ordered: “Soldiers, attention, break ranks!” I was in the clouds, not knowing where to go. For not understanding the order, I had to go to work in the kitchen to unclog a huge pipe for which I had to get up to my waist in dirty, greasy water. At one in the morning a Venezuelan comrade told me that we could retire to our barracks. It took me half an hour to find which one was mine. At four o’clock in the morning I was awakened by a recording of cannons, machine guns and bazookas. That morning I woke up realizing that I was becoming an American soldier.

From WITH A CUBAN SONG IN THE HEART | CON UNA CANCIÓN CUBANA EN EL CORAZÓN — Iván Acosta

Internationally celebrated as the man who essentially picked up where Chano Pozo left off, Cándido Camero was among the most ubiquitous of the Cuban and Caribbean percussionists who enlivened and enriched the musical landscape of North America during the second half of the 20th century. Among the first to popularize the use of multiple conga drums and one of the inadvertent instigators of the bongo craze of the 1950s, he outlived most of his contemporaries and was still performing with extraordinary passion and precision well after attaining the status of an octogenarian.

Cándido de Guerra Camero was born in the El Cerro barrio of San Antonio de los Baños in Havana, Cuba, on April 22, 1921. As a young boy he played the string bass. After operating a tres guitar with Conjunto Gloria Habanera at the age of 14, he began to concentrate on the bongos, and had soon graduated to the conga. In addition to the Pan African combination of Yoruba, Portuguese, and Spanish folk influences, Candido named U.S. jazz drummers Max Roach and Kenny Clarke as primary inspirations. He recorded with various Cuban bandleaders including Machito, worked for six years in the house band at radio station CMQ in Havana, and performed at the Tropicana club there as a member of Armando Romeu’s orquesta from 1947 to 1952.

The North American chapter of his career began in October of 1952 and was inaugurated with a six-week engagement at the Clover Club in Miami, followed by a move to New York suggested by his new friend, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who personally took him to the Downbeat Club to sit in with pianist Billy Taylor. During 1953 and 1954 he recorded with Taylor’s trio as well as with Erroll Garner, assisted Gillespie in the realization of “Manteca Suite” (the first of many recorded collaborations with Diz), and toured with the Stan Kenton Orchestra. He then formed his own group (including saxophonist Al Cohn); made his first recordings as a leader in 1956; and toured extensively through Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Miami, and New York.

During the late ’50s, throughout the ’60s, and well into the ’70s, Cándido became the most active Latin American percussionist in both jazz and pop music, appearing on television to an unusual extent and recording with saxophonists Charlie Parker, Gene Ammons, Stan Getz, Phil Woods, Sonny Rollins, Illinois Jacquet, and Coleman Hawkins; guitarists Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery; pianists George Shearing and Marian McPartland; and vocalists Dinah Washington, Lena Horne, Patti Page, Tony Bennett, Charo, and Antonio Carlos Jobim. He appeared with bandleaders Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Doc Severinsen, Chico O’Farrill, Lalo Schifrin; drummer/bandleaders Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Mongo Santamaria, and Tito Puente; and fellow conga masters Giovanni Hidalgo and Carlos “Patato” Valdes.

Over several decades he combined his highly developed Afro-Cuban artistry with disco, funk, and practically anything else that was in the air. With more than 16 albums to his credit (including a spectacular reunion with Machito’s star vocalist Graciela Perez in 2004), a triumphant Cándido sailed through the first years of the 21st century as resilient, creative, and full of life as ever. His signature line of premium drums come in three distinct models: the Quinto, the Conga, and the resonant Tumbadora.