Mayabeque, Cuba: The composer, pianist and cultural breaker from Mayabeque, Chucho Valdés premiered at the Fine Arts Palace of Mexico, a composition in homage to his grandmother Caridad Amaro, who made him musician, and amended the history of music written in the popular imaginary, Cubadebate publishes.
If it is true that Chucho entered music by the hand of his father, Bebo Valdés, he owes the love for sounds and its silences to his grandmother. And that happened in the middle of a bacchanal of very fine music, which mixed the traditions of baroque, romanticism, modernism, with the trio of batá drums and the touches of Nigeria and Arará.
The return of Chucho Valdés after nine years of absence was majestic.
The illustrious son of Quivicán was received at the Palace for what he is: one of the best musicians in the world and also very beloved and he, surprised at the storm of applause, cheers and jubilation, clasped his hands in front of his chest, smiled and the public went into delirium after that smile illuminated the entire night, which was filled with guajiro, bolero, rumba, spell and guaguancó.
Dreiser Durruty stood at the center of the stage under a ritual tied: the trio of wooden cones, ebony clepsydras, hand-carved and one-piece pieces, which are called batá: three ritual drums of magic and Santeria: Iyá , Itólele and Okónkolo, thus named for their size, from greatest to least and symbol and use to cure the evils of the soul.
From those drums, Dreiser answered every note, every wink, chord, beauty in alluvium born from the hands of Chucho Valdés, whose enormous humanity gave rise to the entrances of Yaroldy Abreu in the congas and to the spell of the acoustic stringing of Ramón Vázquez, double bass player which brings together in one the styles of Eddie Gómez and Anders Jormin, the first, Bill Evans' comrade, the second, Swedish bassist.
It was no accident such a mixture of styles, since Chucho's father, Bebo Valdés, settled in Sweden and Eddie Gómez in turn refers to a way of measuring the genius and musical importance of Chucho Valdés, whom European experts place among the first five pianists of the planet, his music dazzles, nourishes, puts people in orbit.
But Chucho Valdés is one of those geniuses of a deveras, a simple man who before announcing each piece warned: "it is something very simple, we just composed it and now we are going to release it and it is dedicated to my grandmother. She liked Rachmaninov very much. "
And Rachmaninov was the first author visible in the imaginary of what sounded in Fine Arts. The hands of the Mayabeque’s pianist slid clusters to the Cecil Taylor and immediately deployed in the left hand the theme of Eleanor Rigby while the right faced a son montuno.
Now the right hand intones Thelonious Monk while the left plays with the main theme of Ravel's Bolero.
The second part of the concert was just playing and everything was ecstasy and smiles between musicians and audience. Music of extreme beauty, simple and at the same time extremely complicated, haunting, irresistible.
Chucho Valdés in Fine Arts. A celestial orgy of congas and batá, a baroque concert without a wig, no makeup, no perfume. Only the powerful aroma of naked music.
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