Neither the recently turned 82 years nor the brilliant career that Chucho Valdés has behind him have taken the name of his father, Don Bebo, out of his mouth. He remembers it even when he is congratulated on the “28 years” that Dionisio Jesús claims to have turned last Monday, October 9. "Let me tell you that on October 9, 1918, Evo Andrés was born, and on October 9, 1984, my son Yessie Valdés was born, who is a great drummer, look how the stories repeat themselves, all musicians thanks to Bebo."
The legendary Cuban pianist is one of the names of the 55th Voll-Damm Festival in Barcelona, an event that Chucho has attended on more than 15 occasions, and which is why he has become godfather of the event in his own right. “I have come in different groups, including with my father, with two pianos,” Chucho recalls in a telephone conversation from Saint Etienne, where he performed as part of the tour that this Tuesday will bring him to the Tívoli theater (tickets purchased through Vanguard Tickets They have a 15% discount). When mentioning Barcelona, the pianist remembers “the audience, the reception, the affection, and of course when they gave my dad the gold medal at the festival.”
Chucho arrives accompanied by the Royal Quartet, a 100% Cuban band with which he has just recorded an album yet to be published. “It is the most modern and contemporary formation of all my quartets, with a touch of Cubanness, but at the same time modernity different from the rest.” Three generations meet on stage, where the pianist from Quivicán is accompanied by veteran Horacio El Negro Hernández on drums, José Armando Gola on bass and Roberto Vizcaíno, only 24 years old, on percussion. “It is a perfect smoothie, all my experience and my research add to the very new trends that Vizcaíno and Horacio bring,” explains Chucho. “You don't feel different generations, like everything is part of the same thing, from the same roots of jazz, Cuban and African music, the energy returns, and the experience makes me grow much more in this work.”
The new album will be added to the rich production of recent years, in which he published I missed you too! , along with Paquito D' Rivera, with whom she could win her sixth Latin Grammy, to which she adds seven other Grammy awards. “It was like remembering each other,” says Chucho about the recording of the album, “we worked for many years together, even before Iraqere, so it was very easy to go back to what we were doing, we even recorded standards like Mambo influenced, some songs that we did before, and a song that Paquito wrote”, in reference to the song that gives its name to the album, I also missed you.
Among the songs on the album, a tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stands out, whom Chucho imagines “in Havana, smoking a cigar with a big hat and a bottle of rum. He is a Caribbean Mozart, he captivates the public.” A mix that highlights the connection between current music and that composed by Mozart, Beethoven or Chopin, “technically, anyone who doesn't start from there doesn't have the tools to be able to do something great.”
Admiration for classical music underlies another of his latest works, Creation, a three-movement suite for small ensemble, voices and big band where he recounts the myth of creation according to the Regla de Ocha, the well-known Afro-Cuban religion. like Santeria. “It is the true story of how all African roots come to America, as it develops in the Caribbean and the United States. It is the story of the god of the Yoruba, Olodumare, which is the name of the piece”, a piece that had been in his mind for years, and that the calm of the pandemic allowed him to compose.
His interest in the African continent does not make Chucho forget the Spanish influence. “We only talk about Africa, but almost all of our grandparents were Spanish; luckily we have that very large, very rhythmic root,” he explains. “There was a lot of marriage of Africans with Spaniards and Spanish with Africans, from there the flamenco rumba was born, which is the Cuban rumba with flamenco, and in this century Lágrimas negra by Bebo Valdés and Cigala were born, there are those two roots,” and there is his father, always present.
