.
  
-- Latin Jazz-Funk
--
"What
does 
mean?
And
why name the band this?"
Brownman is often asked this.
In an interview with NOW Magazine in
Toronto he responded thusly:
"
... in South America the term "Cruzao" is street-slang for "Cruzado"...
which means "crossed" or "the crossing"... the cubans use it in reference
to playing on the wrong side of the ultra-present and vital 'clave', which
gringos are often guilty of. Like coming in on the 2-side when
they should have been on the 3-side... this is often followed by angry
shrieks of "oye idiota - tu esta cruzao!!" since they "crossed" the clave.
That's why I named my group that - the double edged sword is that the term
is used in reference to rule-breaking (in terms of clave)... and translated
directly it means "the crossing". Since with this band I'm writing
tunes that dispense with the montuno*
and crossing over into the realm of urban tenements such as funk, hip-hop
and drum'n'bass ... it seemed apt."
*CRUZAO
is the first chordless (no piano, no guitar, no chordal instrument) latin-jazz-urban
group in history
and
is currently included in the NYU latin-jazz cirriculum as an example of
"modern professive latin-jazz"
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