Chucho, Gonzalo & the (brief) story of Cuban music

I was invited to speak last night at a reception prior to last night's Symphony Center concert Chucho Valdés and Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Trance. It came my way because of the writing I do for Agúzate, Chicago's online magazine of Afro Latin Music and Culture.

I thought, because of a misunderstanding on my part, that I would be speaking from a lectern, so I prepared a presentation that would last 10-15 minutes and be partially devoted to the history of Cuban music, leading to Chucho and Gonzalo's place in that ongoing story. What happened instead is that I was the featured panelist in a one-on-one discussion moderated by Karla Leal, a reporter with Telemundo's Chicago outlet. That turned out to be a far superior experience for me and, I believe, the audience, because I was able to respond to the questions from a place of knowledge that went deeper than what I covered in my notes, yet do it in a more casual, engaging way. At the same time, lots of the more academic stuff got left out. Ah, well. At least I was prepared.

I've moderated plenty of discussions in my day, but here the roles were reversed, and I was the "expert". I generally loathe being considered an expert at anything, because for me the joy comes from something that I don't yet know but might discover tomorrow. I recently did some work under my marketing persona of Home Base Arts for Puerto Rican drummer Henry Cole, and as he told me about his creative process and the history and heritage that feed it, I was blown away as the cultural connections between past, present and possibly future were revealed.

Nonetheless, here I was in the role of expert, with people depending on me for insight on the music they were about to hear. And I gotta admit, having several people come up to me afterward to thank me or even solicit my opinion (What do I think about Rubén Gonzales?) was a blast.

I think it is my sociology training that has led to my curiosity (or is it the other way around?). When I hear music that I like, I tend to become a bit obsessed and need to immediately start looking into what it is and where it came from and what forces shaped it. I told as much to someone after the presentation last night, that I first heard Latin music in high school in the form of Santana, then heard my first pure salsa record a short time after graduating from college (El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico) and I've been finding out everything I can about Afro Latin music ever since.

This blog, too, comes out of my sociology training. The concept of community and the cultural unfolding and transformation that results from migration are my two overarching themes, but I'm pretty sure I came to that from music, not the other way around.

Anyway... I went through the process of writing 1,100+ words on Cuba and Chucho and Gonzalo, and I even learned a thing or two while doing that. If you're still reading, then maybe I've got you for the next 1,100 words, too.

Enjoy.


Tonight you will hear two Cuban piano masters engaging in a dialog. The music that they will be playing emerges out of a tradition that goes back several centuries or more, and it contains both folkloric and classical elements. In the end, though, it is uniquely Cuban.

To trace the roots of the music that you will hear tonight, you have to go back nearly 3000 years, to when the Phoenicians, a Semitic people with origins in the Middle East, established a trading post in what would become the bustling port city of Cadiz on Spain’s southwest coast. Before Christopher Columbus set off on his expedition in 1492, the Iberian Peninsula was a collection of smaller kingdoms with distinct traditions, languages and customs. The southern area of Andalucia was ruled by the Moors, who were Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East. When you hear flamenco music, you are hearing a direct link to Arabic melodies and rhythms. Meanwhile, the northern and central areas were more connected to the rest of Europe, and their customs and culture followed suit.

By the time the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria departed that same port of Cadiz, the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile were united and these two cultures were blended. Together, this new superpower exerted greater control over the rest of Iberia. Over the next century and a half, the “New World” colonies were established, bringing untold wealth back to Europe in the form of such newly discovered, and instantly fashionable, products like coffee, chocolate, tobacco and spices. The labor engine that facilitated that wealth was the Atlantic slave trade, which brought millions of Africans to the Americas. The Caribbean port through which much of this movement of people and goods passed through was Havana, Cuba. When you listen to Cuban music, then, you are listening to a mixture of European structure, Middle Eastern harmonics and African rhythms.

A distinct Cuban style of music, and especially piano playing, emerged out of European classical music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In Cuba, the French contradanse, or ‘country dance’, evolved into the contradanza as syncopations of African origin were blended into it. This musical style further evolved into the danzón by the late 19th century. Perhaps the most famous composer and pianist of this classical style is the orchestra leader Ernesto Lecuona, who wrote the classic tune Siboney, among many others. Smaller danzón ensembles like Orquesta Aragon began including bongos and other drums, blending them with violins and flutes to create a sound known as charanga.

By the 1930s, North American jazz was flavoring the stew along with a stronger emphasis on what were now distinctly Afro-Cuban rhythms, and you hear the beginnings of the mambo and the cha-cha. The Afro-Cuban conga and bongo drums, whose rhythms were up to this point merely hinted at, were now front and center, along with horn arrangements borrowed from jazz. There were a handful of innovators who led the way here. Bassist Cachao and pianist Bebo Valdés were primary among them. 

When the descarga scene, marked by lengthy improvisational jam sessions, emerged in the 1950s, Bebo and Cachao were often leading the sessions. At the same time, African-American jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie were taking note of what was going on and started experimenting with Cuban rhythms, giving rise to what would be known as Latin jazz. When you hear a salsa or Latin jazz band really stretch out and cook, you are hearing a descendant of those descargas.

Bebo Valdés’ son Chucho emerged in the 1970s as a founding member of the groundbreaking group Irakere, arguably one of the best and most influential bands to emerge from post-revolution Cuba. The ensemble, which also included trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, might very well be called Afro-Futurist today in the way that they combined deeply spiritual Afro-Cuban rhythms to forward thinking jazz and electric rock band energy. When I say “deeply spiritual”, I’m referring to the role of the drum itself, because before it appeared in popular music, its function was strictly a sacred one in the rites of the Afro-Cuban santaría religion that derived from the spiritual concepts and practices of the West African Yoruba people.

Chucho Valdés kept Irakere going after Sandoval and D’Rivera left Cuba for the United States, but he also grew as a solo artist and leader of several jazz ensembles, moving over to acoustic piano as his main instrument.

Meanwhile, another pianist from a musical family, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, was growing up listening to Valdés and Irakere. In the 1980s, he formed Grupo Proyecto, one of several young bands inspired by the pioneering Irakere. By the end of the decade, Rubalcaba also turned to acoustic piano and was soon part of a trio that included American jazz giants Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, and made his international debut in 1991 with the album Discovery: Live in Montreaux. That album was put out in the U.S. by the legendary jazz label Blue Note, who also released Chucho Valdés’ U.S. debut Solo Piano the same year. 

Both pianists went on to stellar jazz careers that nonetheless have the heartbeat of Cuba at their center, regardless of whether they are playing solo, small ensemble or big band dates. Both have proved adept at the two-piano format. Over the last three-plus decades, Chucho Valdés has released over 30 albums, including his 2015 “Tribute to Irakere” with his group the Afro-Cuban Jazz Messengers, which he performed live here at Symphony Center. Rubalcaba has been similarly prolific, releasing nearly 30 albums since then, and he too, has recently been at Symphony Center, performing solo in 2012.

Because of the nature of tonight’s concert, I need to make special mention of Chucho’s 1998 duet album with his father Bebo Valdés. Entitled Juntos para Siempre, the album is a gorgeous masterpiece that stands as a testament to what can happen when you get two Cuban pianists in a room together.

So that’s what you’ll be hearing tonight: Thousands of years of musical history distilled through a very special place called Cuba that will manifest itself as a musical conversation between friends who are perhaps the most important pianists to emerge from Cuba in the modern era. They began this collaboration a few years ago and call it Trance because it explores the profound spiritual connection that remains at the heart of Cuban music. You won’t hear any drums tonight, but you will feel them.

Instead, you’ll hear two musicians with a historic relationship to the Cuban piano tradition engaged in open-ended, respectful conversation. You’ll hear two friends whose mutual admiration for each other and the tradition they represent weave everything together until ultimately they almost speak as one.

And lest you think this will be some laid back recital, be assured that there will also be sonic fireworks from these master musicians. Their hearts, after all, beat to the rhythm of Cuba.

Chucho & Gonzalo: Masters at Work, Symphony Center, 2/23/18

Orbert Davis and the new faces of Cuba

As I entered Chicago's Auditorium Theatre on a blustery Friday evening, I believed that I was quite prepared for what I was about to see and hear. Orbert Davis and his Chicago Jazz Philharmonic was presenting an ambitious new project, "Scenes From Life: Cuba!" in collaboration with one of Havana's top music schools, the Universidad de las Artes (ISA). My expectations were shaped by the fact that I had been tracking the project for several months and had very recently interviewed Davis about it for a preview article published at Agúzate, the blog of a Chicago-based organization dedicated to Afro-Latin music and culture.

Here were my expectations: I would see, working together side by side, Cuban music students and their American professional counterparts. I would hear the CJP's unique form of orchestral, third stream jazz. I would hear some Cuban music. I would go home happy.

A few days earlier, 37 young music students and a school administrator had arrived in Chicago from Havana. It was, for all of them, their first trip beyond Cuba's borders. The project had its origins in two trips that Orbert Davis made to Cuba in 2012 and 2014. It was on the earlier trip that he first encountered the school and its talented students. The return two years later was for the express purpose of collaborating with the school for a performance at the Havana Jazz Festival. Davis brought a few key members of the CJP with him: Steve Eisen on winds, bassist Stewart Miller, Leandro Lopez Varady on piano and drummer Ernie Adams. To say that they are among Chicago's best jazz musicians sells them short. Rather, it's more accurate to say that they are world class musicians who happen to call Chicago home. Along with Davis's trumpet and direction, the five conducted workshops, master classes and rehearsals in the days leading to the Havana concert. The idea was that the students would "become" the CJP for a day, filling out the 40 or so chairs normally occupied by the orchestra's string, woodwind and horn players.

Smack dad in the middle of those rehearsals, something happened. You could call it coincidence. You could call it divine providence. Whatever it was, on December 17, 2014, Presidents Raúl Castro of Cuba and Barack Obama of the United States simultaneously went on TV to announce the beginnings of normalized relations between two governments that had quite literally been enemies for over 50 years.

Cue the celebration.

I use the word "government" very much on purpose, because the people of each country have had no shortage of interest and affection for each other over the years. It would appear that, finally, the politicians recognize this essential truth and are taking significant steps to catch up with their citizens.

Again, I knew all of that when I took my seat in the concert hall. And I still wasn't prepared for what came next.

It starts with a backdrop of colonial Havana suspended over the orchestra, superimposed with an image of the U.S. flag. It is a huge orchestra, made up of, I'm guessing, 80 or so musicians from Cuba and the U.S., and they are performing the Star Spangled Banner together. As we reflexively do in this country (and, I suppose, in countries everywhere), the audience stands for its national anthem. Some sing along, others put their hand on their heart like they were taught in grade school. Then, with barely a pause, the flag of Cuba appears alongside that of the U.S. and the orchestra plays La Bayamesa, the Cuban anthem. The audience is momentarily confused, having already started to sit down. Everyone, though, is quickly back on their feet, showing their respect for the students and the country they came from.

My eyes are slightly moist as I sit down, and Davis, like a proud father, takes the microphone to share his enthusiasm not only for the project, but also for the students themselves, whom he has clearly come to love. The formal program begins with a version of of Davis' composition Diaspora, which appeared on the CJP's debut album 10 years ago. In some ways, the African diaspora is at the heart of this project. The slave trade forcibly brought Africans to the United States, but far more were brought to Latin America. Orbert Davis and the Cuban students are descendants of these diverging journeys, just as jazz and rumba are its cultural flowerings. The 'proud father' reference is apt, because in a very real way, Davis and the young Cubans are having a family reunion. Trust me, when all of that comes together with the mighty sound of an 80 piece orchestra, the effect is truly profound.

The diaspora plays a part in the evening's second selection as well, Chicago @173, which Davis composed for his score to the documentary DuSable to Obama: Chicago's Black Metropolis. The first part of the title refers to the city's first resident, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, a free black man, likely from Hispaniola, the island just to the east of Cuba that is now home to the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The first half of the concert concludes with five movements from Havana Blue, the project that first brought Davis to Cuba in 2012. It was written in collaboration with choreographer Frank Chaves and presented by the CJP and River North Dance Chicago in 2013. That concert was easily one of the best performances that I saw that year, but this time around, by subtracting the dancers and adding 50 or so musicians, it was, for me, a far more powerful musical experience.

After intermission, Davis came out to say that we could, basically, throw our programs away. Some time between the students' arrival on Monday and today, the first three songs were scrapped in favor of the CJP leaving the stage entirely to the young Cubans, dubbing the segment "Postcards From Cuba," with each song spotlighting a different Cuban rhythm. First, a string quintet absolutely killed on a rendition of Cumbanchero. Then, the rest of the students came out for a rhythmic Guaguanco, followed by the drop-dead gorgeous bolero Quiereme Mucho that brought one of the violinists out of her regular element for a beautifully sung lead vocal. Finally, a spirited Guantanamera in which several students took turns putting down their instruments so they could dance to the guajira-son.

I should, I suppose, say something about the musical talent of the students, because it was, from time to time, jaw-droppingly good. Violin players, reedists, trumpeters and percussionists all took turns soloing. For me, the violinists were especially noteworthy. You just don't hear that much swinging violin outside of a Regina Carter concert (although in Chicago we are blessed with James Sanders and his Latin jazz ensemble Conjunto), but one after another, these kids stood up and swung with total assurance. It no doubt helps that Cuba has such a strong charanga tradition, but still... Oh, and the three Cuban percussionists... The CJP has a certified maestro conguero in Joe Rendón, but he spent a fair amount of the evening proudly watching his young charges do most of the heavy lifting.

The entire CJP+ISA Orchestra came together for another powerful take of an older CJP tune before the night's premiere, Scenes From Life, a work composed especially for this collaboration. This new work perfectly captured the essence of everything the collaboration stood for: Davis' third stream jazz/classical aesthetic matched to Cuban soul and sensibility. It occurred to me quite suddenly that I was hearing something unprecedented: An 80 piece orchestra roaring with the power and finesse of  Machito's big band in a piece every bit as ambitious as Tanga, Mario Bauzá's famous Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite.

Nope, I wasn't prepared for that, either.

All photos by Darron Jones

The evening ended with the joyous jam session Orlando's Walk, also written by Davis for Havana Blue. I think pretty much everyone took a solo on this one. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but there were a lot. This included Davis, whose trumpet spent much of the evening on its stand, but he had the time of his life trading choruses with two young Cubans for several minutes.

All good things must end. A long standing ovation and countless on stage hugs finally gave way to the audience filing out of the hall with a marked bounce in their step. But I still had one more unexpected experience in store. Two of the students had family in Chicago that they had never met. Such was the crime that was the 50 year separation between often hostile governments. Witnessing this actual family reunion gave me hope for a world that, on this particular Friday night, was just learning the horrific news of the terror in Paris.

Chicago has benefited from the tours of several Cuban greats in the past couple of years. Together, the legends that are Orquesta Aragón, Buena Vista Social Club, Los Van Van and Chucho Valdés represent generations of Cuban music dating from both pre- and post-revolutionary eras. With Scenes From Life, we now have a look at the faces of a brand new era.

Bring it on.

How I became an expert on Latin music.

If you are chuckling at the audacity of that title, trust me: I am laughing out loud.

That said, it's a claim that, were I of the mind to do so, I could make with some justification. After all, I have been writing features on artists, concerts, recordings and other música latina topics for Arte y Vida Chicago for over three years. Just two weeks ago, I agreed to be a regular contributor to Agúzate, an Afro-Latin cultural organization. I've been approached by a couple of other Latino-focused publications about doing some writing for them as well. And, of course, this blog largely covers that very topic.

But an expert? I'm still more of an apprentice. And that, dear reader, is the beauty of it.

The question, as David Byrne might put it, is "How did I get here?"

The bio summary that accompanies this blog references my studies in sociology, for which I earned a degree from the University of Illinois. And, surely, it is my grounding in that social science that informs my writing and, come to think of it, my life. The story begins a bit earlier, though, with a working class childhood as the grandson of Czech immigrants and the first in my family to go to college. It also includes being an eyewitness to the ugliness of racism and injustice in 1960s America, including my own neighborhood and even family. Identity, I believe, is formed in childhood, and crystallizes as you enter adulthood. That entrance in my case coincides with community college and the aforementioned discovery of sociology.

What does any of this have to do with Latin music? In addition to those sociology courses, I also enrolled in a basic Latin American history course. I really don't remember much about it. Truth be told, there probably wasn't much to remember. After all, this was the mid 70s. Vietnam still dominated foreign policy discourse, and the dirty deeds of the C.I.A. in Latin America really hadn't come to light yet to anyone but the closest observers. I'd love to say I was radicalized by that course, but it wouldn't be true. I do, however, remember the Mexican girl that I had a huge crush on. (There's always a woman, yes?) We talked a lot over coffee in the student lounge and went to a couple of parties where we danced. Eventually she told me about her Puerto Rican boyfriend. The romance that I had constructed in my mind was over, but no matter. I had crossed my Rubicon.

Growing up on the south side of Chicago, I had always liked rhythmic music, and as I've detailed elsewhere on this blog, you can trace most of American popular music like R&B, jazz and rock n' roll back through Cuba and beyond to Africa. So, even though I was listening to Otis Redding, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and Marvin Gaye, I was being subliminally exposed to that Latin tinge. And, of course, there was Santana. The decade following college is a bit of a blur (draw your own conclusions), but somewhere along the way I was exposed to salsa music, yet still didn't know what it was or where it came from. Then Rubén Blades got his big major label crossover push and for the first time I was hearing not only the rhythm, but also the complexity of the songs and, perhaps most importantly, Blades' incredibly incisive lyrics, which the record company thankfully translated for people like me. That was when I began to understand much more than I was told back in community college. By 1988 I was traveling to Guatemala with a human rights delegation and finding common cause between civil rights struggles at home and abroad. Inequality? Check. Racism? Check. Violence and repression? Check. The distance between What's Going On and Buscando America wasn't that great.

I've subsequently discovered, much to my delight, that there's a lot more to Latin music than salsa. Well, duh, you might say, but believe me, that wasn't so obvious a few decades back, where everything 'south of the border' was viewed through the same foggy lens. By and large, I'm indebted to gringos like David Byrne, who used his clout as the face and voice of the Talking Heads to get his record company to issue collections of essential Cuban, Brazilian and Afro-Peruvian music.

Twenty-plus years later, I'm still learning. In an earlier blog post, I talked about my lack of Spanish language comprehension and my feeling of being walled off from certain experiences because of it, but for a long time simply accepting that and merrily going along my way listening to Latin American music without a clue as to its context, just digging the sound. Music is a universal language, right? Sort of.

Last week, I was asked to review a concert by the legendary Cuban ensemble Orquesta Aragón for Agúzate, which you can read here. I own some of their classic music from the 50s as well as a couple of their more recent releases. I even saw them perform live 14 years ago, and since then have learned to discern between various eras and styles of Cuban music.  It was a great show, which I experienced in my typical fashion; smiling, drinking and dancing. The next day, though, I had to write something, which of course required reconstructing the previous evening in my mind. I was missing some details, mainly song titles, so I wrote Agúzate's publisher with a few questions. He told me what he remembered and also translated the gist of a spoken tribute to Cheo Feliciano, who had died suddenly the previous day.

So, here's the really cool thing. The act of writing the review and conducting a little research in order to do it vastly enhanced my understanding of everything that went on that night. Despite everything I've learned about Latin music in the last couple of decades, I know something today that I didn't ten days ago.

Ultimately, I think that's why I write and why I'm thankful that publications like Arte y Vida and Agúzate ask me to do it. I can't just cruise through a concert and fail to understand what I'm hearing if I have to write about it. Similarly, I can't just cruise through life because writing this blog forces me to sift through my memories and assumptions and arrive at a fresh understanding of myself and the world I live in.

Now, that's the real beauty of it.

Culture, Music, and... Food!

I've touched on food in earlier posts. The experience of partaking in a culture's richness through savoring their cuisine is, to me, intrinsically intertwined with their music, their poetry, their history...  In fact, I'm often mildly annoyed when I'm in a taqueria and the music blaring overhead is from a Top 40 Anglo radio station. But I digress.

I recently suggested to Arte y Vida that Choose Chicago, the city's tourism website, let me write about the experience of eating in various Latino restaurants. For now, what we came up with was three that come from distinctly different countries and traditions, but share a BYOB policy. Hey, ya' gotta have a hook...

Enjoy the read. And then go eat!
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Anyone who goes out to eat on a regular basis knows that the bar tab can often rival the cost of the food itself, effectively doubling your expense. Fortunately, Chicago has a good number of dining options that allow you to bring your own beverage. Here's three of the best on the Latino food scene.

90 Miles Cuban Cafe...

Chilam Balam...

Tango Sur...

Click here to find out why they are each unique and (more importantly) delicious.