Chucho Valdez speaks to Gwen Ansell about the music of musicians
`I’M the child of two piano players. Piano was just the natural choice.” Chucho Valdez shrugs expressively but can say no more. He’s a big man, eloquent about most aspects of his music. But even considering another instrument — no, it’s unthinkable.
Valdez grew up in Cuba in the 1950s, when the country was heaven for fun-seeking Americanos and hell for its own impoverished majority. But along with the superficial pleasure-seekers came jazzmen searching for African roots in the indigenous Afro- Cuban rhythms. “Because my father was a top piano player, all these guys came to our house: Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Jackson … And my father used to take me around the clubs, both the ones playing jazz and Cuban popular music.”
Not surprisingly, Valdez began playing early — at three — and entered the National School of Music at seven for a decade of studies. Parallel with his formal music classes ran his father’s home tuition in jazz and Afro-Cuban styles.
“The classical training gave me an essential foundation for playing in any style … but when I started playing professionally, my priority was to search out the African roots of our Cuban music. Cuban popular music and jazz both have those same roots in Africa, primarily in rhythms derived from the Yoruba tradition.
“I was also studying the Yoruba language, and looking at accounts of, for example, the different types of drums brought to Cuba by the slaves. A lot of those instruments were lost, but I wanted to bring them back into use in modern music.
“I got some other professional guys interested. We made our own instruments and studied the old authentic drumming styles. That was how Irakere was born, in 1973.”
Irakere (the name means “jungle”), led by Valdez, are Cuba’s best-known musical ambassadors. The group has released 42 albums since its birth, including the Grammy-winning Black Mass (which isn’t, unfortunately, available in South Africa, although the two latest for Blue Note, Chucho Valdez Solo Piano and Irakere Live at Ronnie Scott’s, are).
Valdez makes the point that Irakere are not the only Cuban jazzmen: “However the media may present Cuba, there’s a very alive music scene: many clubs, all kinds of music; many young musicians coming up. And even through the blockade, there have been no cuts in the budget for music education. In fact, there’s presently a massive upsurge in music. At one of the most difficult times in our history, the music is coming through. It’s extraordinary … or perhaps not.” Beyond this, he’s reluctant to deal in political rhetoric: “I’m the musician I am, and a product of Cuba. That should say it all.”
His performances on Friday and Saturday, September 23 and 24, in the Arts Alive Jazz Piano Series, says Valdez, will explain more about the country. “I’m going to present a panorama of musical history, from the last century, the time of slavery, right up to today with all the influences of jazz coming in.”
He’s also open to what his South African co- musicians will bring to the performance. “I’m interested in contemporary South African jazz, and in its roots. I guess that’s my character: I like to know everything about a music, where it comes from and why.”
The next project after South Africa is an Irakere performance in Colombia, with a full orchestra. “We’ll be doing my composition, Chaka Zulu — which, ironically, I wrote in 1981 before there was even the possibility to come to South Africa — and a symphonic homage to Charles Mingus.”
When he’s not touring, playing, composing or teaching music at Havana’s Higher Institute of the Arts, Valdez listens voraciously. “The jazz classics: Mingus, Monk and Miles and also many other things, from rock and funk to Rachmaninov.” But jazz is his first love. Asked to define the genre, he’s lost for words again for a while.
“Jazz? What can I say? It’s the music of musicians.”