In 1963 took place at Payret Theater the First Jazz Festival celebrated in Cuba with the performance of all the groups of that moment, including the jazz band of the trumpeter Leonardo Timor, the only big band active after Armando Romeu left Cabaret Tropicana in 1961.

In 1966 it was organized the Young Orchestra of Modern Music, under the conduction of pianist Adolfo Pichardo, and a year later the National Council of Culture decides to create a new jazz band with the conduction of veteran Armando Romeu. By that time different groups of Jazz and latin jazz flourished, as the ones of Chucho Valdés and Samuell Téllez.

Around that time it was created, under the conduction of composer and guitarist Leo Brouwer, the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC, which was characterized by the fusion of diverse music as Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian, jazz rock, Asian and European for concert.

Then the forties came and marked the beginning of the Cuban jazz potentialities with the integration of Irakere, in 1973, the first Cuban group that won a Grammy award. The super band conducted by Jesús “Chucho” Valdés was born from the Cuban Orchestra of Modern Music and the works realized by the great pianist with groups of different formats. Almost from the beginning Irakere was a school to many young jazz men.

Among the most relevant jazz men of this period it can be mentioned Emiliano Salvador, Ronzalito Rubalcaba, Ramón Valle and Ernán López-Nussa among others great talented musicians. In the case of jazz women we have María Caridad Valdés, Lilia Expósito (Bellita) and Lucía Huergo among others.

In 1979, the singer and multi-instruments player Bobby Carcassés organized a group of concerts in Casa de la Cultura of Plaza in Havana City, which would be the prelude of the event, first nationally and then internationally, that is nowadays the Jazz Plaza Festival, and that had his first edition in 1980. Among the visitors to this event is good to highlight the presence of Dizzy Gillespie and the British saxophonist Ronnie Scout, who was also the co-organizer of the festival in 1993.

As a conclusion, I agree with the researcher José Dos Santos about the permanence of the jazz in our country … Most of the Cuban musicians from the new generations, with classic academic education and spontaneous commitment with what is popular, are at the same time admirers or cultivators of jazz. That is why nobody should be surprised at knowing that the bands which accompany the main Cuban soneros nowadays, the so-called salseros, have very capable musicians for improvisation and friends of the descarga when there is a possibility…

Article by journalist Ubilde Gómez

On the piano, Chucho Valdés (II part)

In 1965, when important changes begin to take place within the Cuban music, Chucho gets enrolled in the creation of his first musical group: Chucho Valdés y su combo with Amado Borcelá, (Guapachá) as signer.

At that moment his potentialities, not only as musician but also as renovator, were already evident. But the experience lasts short time, because Guapachá dies suddenly and Chucho goes back to the bookrest of an orchestra, this time the Cuban Orchestra of Modern Music, a whole constellation of stars, conducted by Armando Romeu.

But the Jazz, always the jazz, will be in his life as a constant that develops parallel; thus we get to 1969 where his name surpasses the Cuban frames

Experimentation should continue and Chucho bets to the fusion of Afro-Cuban elements with jazz, so it will begin Irakere’s era, or what is the same his legend.

Irakere, besides it is his personal dream, is the turning point of his musical carrier. Ever since he will mark the new tendencies within the Cuban and universal music and will finish the period of the latin jazz that Mario Bauzá began in the forties in the United States, that was defined by Chano Pozo next to Dizzie Gillespie when he made the genre to return to his African roots.

The truth is that Irakere is Chucho Valdés and Chucho Valdés is Irakere; they are part of the same human and musical body. Through that education passed all the best talented musicians generated in Cuba during the seventies, eighties and nineties.

But Chucho should go beyond the jazz and the experiments, therefore he returns to piano as unique and universal element and one day in the loneliness of the concert room he played again Rashmaninov and Beethoven, but with his own style, in Chucho’s way as someone said once.

Listening to Chucho is to cross from one side to another the five continents, it is also venturing to challenge tendencies and schools, but above all things it is to get inside Cuba and those exuberant mastery that is hidden behind the man that once dreamed to be a great basket player the day his hands failed.

Barreto, an excellent percussionist

From one day to another, orally and by e-mail, Giraldo Piloto called to pay a tribute to Gullermo Barreto at La Zorra y el Cuevo Club. A great group of jazz men and jazz women attended. Logically: Barreto (1929-1991) left an indelible trace in the Cuban music, not only as an excellent percussionist but also for his strong personality.

We must remember his interpretations in the orchestras of Martínez Brothers, Obdulio Morales and the very famous one from Tropicana Cabaret conducted by Master Armando Romeu, his participation in Instrumental Quintet of Modern Music with Frank Emilio Flynn and Tata Güines, and his mythical recordings of descarga during the fifties.

Actually the homage was a great descarga with the group of Orlando Sánchez and the double bass player Jorge Reyes as main line, and the contribution by musicians of different generations with special accent on the percussion line headed by Piloto himself and with important improvisations by Panga, Mauricio and Mandy among others.

However there were four moments out of this event worthy to be highlighted: the piano duel between Rolando Luna and Emilio Morales, the melodic finess by Javier Zalba in the flute; the extraordinary version in scat of Son de la loma by Bobby Carcassés, the vocal improvisation by Josefina Barreto, Guillermo’s sister, who made many people to remember the time of enjoying jazz without prejudices and freshness in the Havana city neighborhood of Santa Amalia. The veteran drummer would have really enjoyed that feast of honesty and conviction!

Article by Pedro de la Hoz, taken from Cubarte.