Afro-Cuban culture, Blog, Cuba, Cuban Jazz, Latin Jazz
TECHNICAL NOTE: It’s not your eyes. This is an hazy, old piece of video.
It’s one of the great mysteries of music history.
Israel López Valdés (“Cachao”) was born in September 14, 1918 in Havana, Cuba.
Less than a month later, Jimmy Blanton was born on October 5, 1918 in Chatanooga, Tennessee. He died at twenty-four on July 30, 1942.
Before these two giants came along, no one played the bass this way. Cachao in Cuba and Blanton in the US completely revolutionized the instrument.
Blanton opened the doors for people like Charles Mingus, Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, and so many other great artists and Cachao changed the sound of Latin music.
Did they know each other? Did they ever have occasion to hear each other’s music?
From my analysis, while it’s possible, both artists had already created their respective styles before their recordings would have made it to each other’s countries.
What stars were in the sky when these two were born?
The interview video was copied off TV in Miami on the 1990s. Thanks goodness someone had the presence of mind to interview Cachao and thanks to Rick Camara for posting it.
Now Cachao in action…
Cachao & Paquito D’Rivera
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
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Afro-Cuban culture, Blog, Cuba, Cuban Jazz, Latin Jazz, Video and audio
“Irakere” is a Yoruban word that means virgin forest, a wild place unspoiled by civilization.
Tracking this band, its history, evolution and personnel changes would take a web site all by itself.
A short version of their story:
Jazz was not smiled upon by the government in Cuba in the 60s and 70s. The powers that be felt it smacked of imperialism and capitalism.
However, in order to cater to visitors and their expectations, the government underwrote a group called Orquesta Cubana de Música Modern that played American music.
In 1973, members of the Orquesta broke away to form Irakere. The founders included pianist Chucho Valdés, saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, trumpet player Jorge Varona, guitarist Carlos Emilio Morales, bassist Carlos del Puerto, drummer Bernardo García, and percussionist and singer Oscar Valdés II.
In 1977, the group performed at two “Iron Curtain” festivals, the Belgrade Jazz Festival and the Warsaw Jazz Jamboree where they had the chance to meet Betty Carter, Mel Lewis and Thad Jones.
Later that year Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Earl Hines and other American musicians visited Cuba on a “jazz cruise,” the first time jazz musicians visited Cuba since the break in diplomatic and trade relations in 1961. Gillespie and Getz jammed with the members of the band.
In 1980 with Gillespie’s help, the group won spots on at the Newport Jazz Festival in New York City and the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and their international career was launched.
The recordings of those shows were packaged by both CBS Records (JC-35655) and EGREM (Areíto LD-3769) and won the Grammy in the 22nd Annual Grammy Awards for Best Latin recording.
The concert above was recorded at the Capital Theater in Jersey City, New Jersey on March 23, 1979 in the middle of their commercial break out.
(Make sure you watch through to the end when the group takes the music right into the audience.)
Personnel:
Carlos del Puerto, bass
Carlos Morales, electric guitar
Enrique Pla, drums
Jorge Alfonso El Niño, conga drums
Oscar Valdés, vocal and Cuban percussion
Armando Cuervo, vocal and Cuban percussion
Jorge Varona, trumpet, flugelhorn and vocal
Arturo Sandoval, trumpet, flugelhorn, valve trombone, vocal, arranger
Paquito D’Rivera, flute, alto sax, soprano sax, baritone sax, arranger
Carlo Averoff, soprano sax, tenor sax, flue, piccolo
Chucho Valdés, arranger, composer, keyboards, band leader
We have two more videos from this period.
One from Venezuelan television which we believe was recorded in 1979.
We also have one from 1977 when many of the cats were still in their twenties.
From Venezuelan television – c. 1979
Personnel:
Arturo Sandoval, trumpet
Jorge Varona, trumpet and vocals
Chucho Valdés, keyboards
Carlos Averhoff, saxophone
Carlos del Puerto, bass
Enrique Pla, timbales
Jorge Alfonso El Niño, conga drums, vocals
Armando Cuervo, percussion and vocals
Oscar Valdés, percussionist and vocals
Paquito D’Rivera, not on this recording
Filmed in 1977
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
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Afro-Cuban culture, Blog, Cuba, Video and audio
This program is part of a series of radio documentaries on the musical culture of Cuba produced by Ned Sublette, author of “Cuba and Its Music”, for AfroPop Worldwide.
The program is built around the work of Dr. Ivor Miller, the only scholar to have gained access both to the Abakua society in Cuba, a social phenomenon unique to Havana and Matanzas, and to the mother culture in present-day Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon.
Interwoven with the conversation with Miller, Ned offers examples of how Abakua members continuously influenced the development of popular Cuban music.
Here are the original notes from the program:
The leopard cult of ekpe in Calabar, in present-day Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon, has one of the most unique performance traditions in all of Africa–a complex theatrical tradition, referred to in calabar English as “play,” which encompasses a cycle of sacred dramas that takes many years to execute.
The music of this society is almost completely unknown outside the region, because it was not recorded until the 1980s.. This program will feature Calabar-themed recordings by artists including Sexteto Habanero, Chano Pozo, Arsenio Rodriguez, and Los Munequitos de Matanzas.
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
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Blog, Cuba, Cuban Jazz, Latin Jazz, Video and audio
This one-camera, no-edits video was shot by Al Carmona (Albert P. Camona) at the The University of the Arts of Cuba / Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) and posted to YouTube in 2006.
ISA was founded September 1, 1976, by the Cuban government as the national school for the arts.
The soloists are:
Jorge Vistel (trumpet)
Regis Molina is described in the YouTube notes as playing “alto sax”, but since the primary saxophone in this performance is a baritone, I’m going to guess that the author meant baritone sax.
The composition “Moanin'” is by Charles Mingus and first appeared on the album “Blues and Roots” recorded on February 4, 1959 at Atlantic Studios in New York City.
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
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Blog, Cuba, The Cuba-US connection, Video and audio
WKZE’s Susan Shaw, host of “Saturday Gumbo”, interviews me about the secret Cuban roots of rock and roll.
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
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Blog, Cuba, The Cuba-US connection
We’re putting a lot of time into expanding our links with Cuba following up on our trip there last March.
So many exciting things are going on, but our main focus is creating a Cuba Jazz News Service.
Believe it or not, for all practical purposes there is no Internet in Cuba. There is no country I’ve been in – and that includes Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua – with such limited access.
You can and send and receive email, but accessing the web, looking at videos, and publishing web sites from Cuba is so difficult as to practically be impossible for the average person.
Therefore the vibrant music scene there – which includes jazz of all types – is unknown outside of the country and no one “up here” reports on it.
Even Downbeat failed to include Havana’s three excellent venues dedicated to jazz in their 2016 jazz venue listings.
Certainly big name players who perform outside of Cuba are well known, but the scene on the island is unknown and unless you’re physically there, unknowable.
We’re working to change that.
Our dream is to have a correspondent in Havana who can send us a weekly bulletin about what’s happening: performances, club schedules, artist profiles, CD review, venue profiles etc.
* Horns to Havana
We’re making contacts with groups that are working with and helping jazz music education projects in Cuba.
Cuba has a world class musical education system, but there is very little opportunity for formal jazz instruction.
“Horns to Havana” which we featured recently on the Jazz on the Tube site is helping change that.
First, they’re sending instruments and parts which are in extreme short supply in the country.
Second, they’ve created an instrument repair shop in Havana.
Third, they are sending experienced jazz musicians and educators to teach in Cuba like Victor Goimes (director of jazz studies and Northwestern University and a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Workshop)
Fourth, they are starting to bring Cuban kids to the US to perform and be exposed to our jazz scene. A group of VERY accomplished teenaged jazz musicians were in New York City and just performed at Lincoln Center. We covered their performance at the United Palace of Arts in Upper Manhattan for school kids.
* The flash drive project
As I mentioned, things we take for granted here like casually watching jazz videos on the Internet are impossible in Cuba right now.
So how do people “access” the Internet?
With flash drives.
Someone will come to the country with a flash drive full of whatever and then it gets passed around from person to person.
We used to call this “Sneaker Net” in the days before the Internet.
Someone – and I don’t remember who – put 100 top videos such as the kind that we legally stream on Jazz on the Tube on a flash drive and gave it to a person who is central to the jazz education scene in Cuba. (Hopefully this violated no laws, but in any event I have total amnesia on the subject.)
Armstrong, Ellington, Basie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Wes Montgomery, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and a whole lot more.
As best as anyone knows, this is the first time these clips have ever been available on the island of Cuba.
We expect these “seeds” to bear fruit in the fertile soil of Cuba.
And that, by the way, is what Cuba is: Fertile Soil.
With this 50+ year trade and travel ban, we’ve forgotten the depth and breadth of the Cuban contribution to American music and the brother-to-brother relationship that American and Cuban musicians and fans used to share as a matter of course.
We’re going to do everything we can to help bring it back.
Meanwhile, pray we don’t get a crazy person in the White House next year who undoes the progress that was made this past year.
* Links to check out
Here’s the reporting we’ve done so far on music in Cuba.
Much much more is coming:
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.
