[presenter] This time on Film-maker.

This program is brought to you in part by Oolite Arts, what Miami is made of.

And by Friends of South Florida PBS.

Hello, my name is George V. Lopez.

I'm Michael J.L.

Mechoso.

And we are both co-directors of the short documentary, Conjunto Universal.

This is a documentary about a band that came from Cuba in the '60s and came over to South Florida, and kind of branded themselves as a 13, 14 man band.

And then they brought a culture of South Miami.

Yeah.

My family, my father, and my uncle, were both part of this band so it means a lot to me to tell this very peaceful, humble South Florida story.

Wow.

[interviewee] Everybody talks about the Miami sound, but Conjunto Universal was the benchmark for Cuban bands everywhere.

These guys, they were like legends back then.

Many Cubans found that it was kind of a little escape.

Conjunto Universal is playing this big thing in La Verbena and at the Jai-Alai, and it was like, Wow.

I wish we could be like them.

[interviewee] And I was wild, live bands, a thousand people dancing Together we were great.

Going one way, and going separate ways destroyed us.

[reporter] The story of Cuba and Fidel Castro, headliner throughout 1959.

It began the first week of the year when Castro's revolution over through the Batista regime.

First gig of Conjunto Universal was in Key West.

Conjunto Universal started rehearsing late '56.

Myself, Rene Serrano, Ramon Eguez, and Gerardo Suarez.

We were the four trumpets.

Jaime gave me the repertoire.

I basically knew all of them by memory.

[interviewee] The band was good enough to muscle it's way into the dances.

We were in the regular Saturday night baile Cubano.

That was 1967.

That was, the band got stronger with time.

Especially after I left, they became a much stronger band.

Rene's parents, mom and dad both died, within very short time of each other.

Things happened in bands, nobody's fault.

But we took great umbrage on the way Rene's parents death was handled.

I wouldn't do it again, quite all four of us, as a statement, we left the band at the same time.

[interviewee] The people out there really have no relation to any of us other than their fans.

And the show has got to go on.

is musicians of different everything, approaches and attitudes and egos and you name it.

So, Jaime was kind of, the guy that brought it all together.

He could hear the music and write it at the same time.

When I joined the band, I never sang before.

He taught me how to harmonize.

[interviewee] He taught me a lot about the intricate harmonies in his arrangements.

Every week he had something new.

The band was a musician school.

We were now a group.

Jaime had his ideas and you follow them, and that was it.

When I enjoyed Conjunto Universal it was music, you know.

Bands.

10 pieces, 11 pieces, 12, pieces, 13 pieces.

I didn't expect the fan base that Conjunto Universal had.

When we use Dinner Key for the end of the year, New Year's dances, we would pack 3, 4,000 people easily You could see the excitement in their faces, the enjoyment in their faces.

There was like an electricity back and forth.

It used to be girls from the dance floor to go up and dance with us and would meet with Aquiles.

Aquiles was also a lead singer so there was synergy in Jaime, Eddie, Aquiles.

Aquiles was a type of singer that whatever you give him, he can do it.

The sound of the Conjunto Universal wasn't Eddy or the group, it was Aquiles.

It was a very powerful voice.

[interviewee] That kind of gave a little bit of the signature sound to the Conjunto.

[interviewee] Many Cubans found that it was kind of a little escape.

Cuban music kind of helped the people who were in attendance to reminisce a little bit of their homeland.

And so, Celia Cruz came down and we would play the first set, warm up the audience until she would come on stage.

They would share the stage but we were the local big dog in the Cuban dances.

Were packed to the tune of 12, 1300 people.

[interviewee] We were always number one.

Denver, Dallas.

Houston, New Orleans, Jacksonville.

We were tight.

We could respond to motions and movements and everything.

They played events every single weekend, and that was unheard of.

We were huge.

Band was enormous.

I gotta say, we weren't in it for the money.

We didn't make that much money.

Sometimes you wonder about, Well, you should be getting more pay since you see that every venue that you're playing at it's packed to the max.

Ironically, that popularity that was in the real world, as I would say, in terms of engagements, weddings, et cetera, was not necessarily translated into the radio scene.

[interviewee] Having a record on the radio continuously helps you a lot.

'Cause it was cheaper to take a DJ to the club than a band.

Miami was growing and within it's growth, also there were different tastes.

There was a big interest or movement on disco music.

Maybe this is not gonna be a great thing for the live music part.

[presenter] From Miami Beach, the disco capital of the world.

[reporter] When you mentioned disco, the Miami sound always comes up.

Disco music is written, produced, recorded, and pressed here.

It's a multimillion dollar business and highly competitive.

When disco kicked in, then that with the killer.

[reporter] Where there's money to be made, disco is the business.

The Bee Gees recorded their Saturday Night Fever album at Criteria in North Miami, and America started dancing like never before.

When most popular music is starting to come from Miami.

Is impossible.

That is not gonna happen anymore.

[reporter] And what is considered America's first disco hit, "Rock Your Baby" came out of T.K.

in the summer of 1974.

Rock your baby The people interested in music, yesterday, not the young people of today.

Live music really dropped off in that period with a heavy input of disco music and particularly, DJs playing pre recorded music.

[reporter] The DJs pick up new releases every Monday and Thursday.

I picked up about six records on Thursday.

I really didn't get a change to listen to all of them.

I listened to like, four of them.

Out of the four that I listened to, I liked one particular record.

The Foxy record.

[reporter] DJs became popular during the recession of the early '70s, because club owners couldn't afford live bands and DJs could provide the entertainment for less.

And that's where DJs started being the musicians.

[reporter] For the most part, he just spins records and does no talkie.

That's from the old condo that they stayed in Cuba years ago.

As a producer, and as a manager, I know that one of my records is being programmed at least once a night, in, let's say 80% of the disco techs in the city.

Someone approached Jaime and said, You know, if you want to make it, you're gonna have to make changes to the band.

And he said, I wouldn't do that.

Some of them wanted to go the nightclub route, and Jaime wanted to stay the way things were.

Emilio Stefan from Miami Sound Machine had called me.

He was looking for a trumpet player.

So I went over to his house.

We had a conversation.

I told him that I was getting paid $65.

He say, I'll give you $75.

So, I told Emilio Estefan I would join the group and that's how it started.

I'll just really be brutally honest, I really liked Miami Sound Machine and I liked the stuff they were doing.

Their approach was something that I thought, fit me like a glove.

I saw the prospects of being in a really big ocean, not just a pond anymore.

And not just local, something that would go around the world.

In the music, Latin music field at the time, drugs were there.

You look in retrospect as possibility why he did not take that step.

Everybody use drugs, heroin, acet, cocaine, marijuana, everything.

I didn't use those drugs, I used only powder.

No drinking, no pills, only cocaine.

And I got so addicted to cocaine.

That was my past, I'm cleaning one day at a time.

I can do nothing about it but I'm happy now that I'm sober and cleaned.

And I got all the doors open.

I ended with Universal in 1982 and right away, right away, I joined Conjunto Cristal.

The jobs were not coming as fast as before so, that might've had something to do with the band ending.

When Jaime and I sat down and we said, Listen, this is just too much for us to take on.

And he said, Yeah.

I think you're right.

It's time to call it.

It was sad.

It was sad because you have to understand that the band began back in '66.

So you're talking about what?

18 years?

1982, the band dissolved.

It was a confirmation of what the band was between 1966 and 1982.

We packed the place It had two floors.

I would look, you would look, you couldn't see walls anywhere.

You'd only see people.

And who knows how many lives we touched.

And I hope that we, I'm grateful if we were helpful in any way.

And then we brought joy to many people.

Especially, coming from communist Cuba, to devolving Cuban music here in South Florida is a story that really needs to be told because it's very inspiring to people all over the world who get displaced by politics or war or whatever the reason.

You can end up in a different place and your society doesn't crumble, it actually becomes stronger.

So, I think this has all been a very positive situation and a very great achievement for the Cuban community and for music in Miami.

What else do you want?

Fantastic!

A hell of a time, a hell of a time.

Fantastic.

I do not regret anything.

My family talked about it a lot at the dinner table.

My dad specifically said that he played in the Cuban band when he was a teenager, all the way until he was in mid-twenties.

So, I thought to myself saying, How come no one really talks about this band as much?

It grasped me hard and I was like, You know what, we need to actually taught about a piece of this forgotten information, or forgotten history of Miami.

If we don't tell this, no one will.

Miami had such a variety of live bands playing on every single corner in Miami Beach from '59, all the way until late '60s.

That's where this band thrived on.

You will have 10, 20, 20,000 people jam-packed in this small auditorium to Milander and Auditorium.

And they will just be dancing all night long remembering something that they long for in the past.

But now they have to start a new life here in South Florida.

They remembered the past, they can acknowledge it, but this is now their new home.

And so what better to do than bring their old home into South Florida Putting together what the interviews like, each individual interview would look like, I had a blast doing that with the production team.

And we just like, you know, the different colors for each interview and what we're gonna put behind them.

Kind of like the production design was my favorite part.

Have shot list.

Yeah.

Definitely a shot list.

We were running gutters guerrilla style.

Maybe it's not the best for other styles of film but in this specific situation, I learned that shot lists were probably better.

Since I was a kid, honestly.

Yeah.

Same with me.

It's been a passion of mine forever.

The writing, just being, just anything creative.

Everyone has a story, so that's probably the big reason why I got into film is for me to tell stories that I personally know that we'll love to be on the big screen.

[presenter] This program is brought to you in part by Oolite Arts, what Miami is made of.

And by Friends of South Florida PBS.