BRANDBERGEN, SWEDEN
Francesco Sapienza for The New York Times
The Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés at his home in Sweden. At 88, he is
more successful than ever.
Multimedia
Readers’ Opinions
Bebo Valdés in Havana in about 1950. He was among the Cuban
musicians who developed the mambo.
THE Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés, who will receive a proper welcome from
Jazz at Lincoln Center this weekend,
lives here, just outside Stockholm, with his wife,
Rose Marie, in a small ground-floor
apartment. Its shelves and walls serve as a kind of index to his
remarkable life.
There are books of sheet music by Rachmaninoff and Chopin; a photo of him
in a tuxedo, tall and commanding, on the cover of “Cha Cha Cha & Mambo for
Small Dance Bands,” a book he wrote and published in Havana in the 1950’s,
aiming at the English-language market; paintings by Haitian artists;
Joseph Schillinger’s “System of Musical Composition,” the dense
theoretical books beloved by intellectual musicians of the 1940’s and 50’s
that break down melody, harmony and rhythm into mathematic logic. There is,
incongruously, a shelf of pop-music lead-sheet books like “100 of the
Greatest Easy Listening Hits,” all well thumbed. Then there are some
recent awards, including several Grammys, and a ceremonial key to the city
of Miami.
To explain all this requires going back a bit. Slavery officially ended in
Cuba in 1886. Ramon Valdés, universally known as Bebo, was born in 1918.
His mother came from a Spanish family, and his paternal grandfather was a
slave. Afro-Cuban jazz is the ultimate mixture of African, European and
New World culture. It is not at all uncommon for a Latin jazz group now to
put the batá, the two-headed drum of Yoruban religious music, alongside
elements of European harmony and American swing. But hand drums were
effectively prohibited in Cuba in the early 20th century, and Mr. Valdés
remembers a time when the batá was never, ever used in dance music. He
reckons he was the first to do so, in 1952.
He graduated from the Conservatorio Municipal in Havana. “It was the poor
man’s conservatory, and the best,” he insists. A gifted arranger, he
worked with his hero, Ernesto Lecuona — probably the greatest Cuban
composer of the 20th century — after graduating in the mid-40’s.
Mr. Valdés was in the inner circle of musicians who developed the mambo,
along with the multi-instrumentalist Orestes Lopez and his brother, the
bassist Israel (Cachao) Lopez. For much of the 1950’s, during the height
of the mambo’s popularity, Mr. Valdés was the pianist of the house
orchestra at the Tropicana, the biggest nightclub in Havana, and the
club’s musical adviser. He played with, or arranged for, most of Cuba’s
star singers and musicians, including Beny More (who sang with the
orchestra at Tropicana), Miguelito Valdés, Pío Leyva and Chano Pozo. When
Nat King Cole, a habitué of the Tropicana, came to Havana to record his
Spanish-language record “Cole Español,” Mr. Valdés played piano and
arranged the album. He was the epicenter of a thriving world.
He had five children in Cuba, including Chucho Valdés, who has since
become one of the greatest pianists in the world. In 1960, after the
revolution, the senior Mr. Valdés fled Cuba — first to Mexico, where he
worked in television and in the recording studios, and then to Spain. In
Stockholm, on a European tour with a group called Lecuona’s Cuban Boys, he
met and fell in love with Rose Marie Pehrson. He was 44, and she was 18.
It was 1963. He wanted to relocate to New York, but, as a black man with a
white wife, he was warned by friends against moving to the United States.
For a while he bided his time: he remembers being of the opinion that
Castro’s regime would not last much longer.
He has never returned to Cuba. He stayed in Stockholm, starting a new
family and playing piano in hotel lounges for more than 30 years. (Hence
the easy-listening songbooks.) He has a working musician’s pride, and no
regrets.
His reputation flourished again at a point in his life when most musicians
are busy resisting decline. In 1994, at the behest of the Cuban jazz
saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, he recorded “Bebo Rides Again,” his first
album in three decades. It was to be a loose, jam-session record, but Mr.
Valdés insisted on structure. He arranged nine of his own songs for a
nonet in two days.
In 2000 he took part in “Calle 54,” Fernando Trueba’s documentary film
about Latin jazz. Subsequently Mr. Trueba formed a record label with the
film and music historian Nat Chediak and made a series of recordings
involving Mr. Valdés. One of them, “Lágrimas Negras,” an album of boleros
by Mr. Valdés and the flamenco singer Diego El Cigala, sold nearly a
million copies, mostly in Europe. In Madrid and Barcelona particularly,
crowds have started to applaud him on the street and in restaurants. He
has done better financially in his 80’s than at any other time in his life.
Listening With: Bebo Valdés
Far From Cuba, but Not From His Roots
BRANDBERGEN, SWEDEN
Skip to next paragraph
Francesco Sapienza for The New York Times
The Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés at his home in Sweden. At 88, he is
more successful than ever.
Multimedia
Readers’ Opinions
Bebo Valdés in Havana in about 1950. He was among the Cuban
musicians who developed the mambo.
THE Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés, who will receive a proper welcome from
Jazz at Lincoln Center this weekend,
lives here, just outside Stockholm, with his wife,
Rose Marie, in a small ground-floor
apartment. Its shelves and walls serve as a kind of index to his
remarkable life.
There are books of sheet music by Rachmaninoff and Chopin; a photo of
him in a tuxedo, tall and commanding, on the cover of “Cha Cha Cha &
Mambo for Small Dance Bands,” a book he wrote and published in Havana in
the 1950’s, aiming at the English-language market; paintings by Haitian
artists; Joseph Schillinger’s “System of Musical Composition,” the dense
theoretical books beloved by intellectual musicians of the 1940’s and
50’s that break down melody, harmony and rhythm into mathematic logic.
There is, incongruously, a shelf of pop-music lead-sheet books like “100
of the Greatest Easy Listening Hits,” all well thumbed. Then there are
some recent awards, including several Grammys, and a ceremonial key to
the city of Miami.
To explain all this requires going back a bit. Slavery officially ended
in Cuba in 1886. Ramon Valdés, universally known as Bebo, was born in
1918. His mother came from a Spanish family, and his paternal
grandfather was a slave. Afro-Cuban jazz is the ultimate mixture of
African, European and New World culture. It is not at all uncommon for a
Latin jazz group now to put the batá, the two-headed drum of Yoruban
religious music, alongside elements of European harmony and American
swing. But hand drums were effectively prohibited in Cuba in the early
20th century, and Mr. Valdés remembers a time when the batá was never,
ever used in dance music. He reckons he was the first to do so, in 1952.
He graduated from the Conservatorio Municipal in Havana. “It was the
poor man’s conservatory, and the best,” he insists. A gifted arranger,
he worked with his hero, Ernesto Lecuona — probably the greatest Cuban
composer of the 20th century — after graduating in the mid-40’s.
Mr. Valdés was in the inner circle of musicians who developed the mambo,
along with the multi-instrumentalist Orestes Lopez and his brother, the
bassist Israel (Cachao) Lopez. For much of the 1950’s, during the height
of the mambo’s popularity, Mr. Valdés was the pianist of the house
orchestra at the Tropicana, the biggest nightclub in Havana, and the
club’s musical adviser. He played with, or arranged for, most of Cuba’s
star singers and musicians, including Beny More (who sang with the
orchestra at Tropicana), Miguelito Valdés, Pío Leyva and Chano Pozo.
When Nat King Cole, a habitué of the Tropicana, came to Havana to record
his Spanish-language record “Cole Español,” Mr. Valdés played piano and
arranged the album. He was the epicenter of a thriving world.
He had five children in Cuba, including Chucho Valdés, who has since
become one of the greatest pianists in the world. In 1960, after the
revolution, the senior Mr. Valdés fled Cuba — first to Mexico, where he
worked in television and in the recording studios, and then to Spain. In
Stockholm, on a European tour with a group called Lecuona’s Cuban Boys,
he met and fell in love with Rose Marie Pehrson. He was 44, and she was
18.
It was 1963. He wanted to relocate to New York, but, as a black man with
a white wife, he was warned by friends against moving to the United
States. For a while he bided his time: he remembers being of the opinion
that Castro’s regime would not last much longer.
He has never returned to Cuba. He stayed in Stockholm, starting a new
family and playing piano in hotel lounges for more than 30 years. (Hence
the easy-listening songbooks.) He has a working musician’s pride, and no
regrets.
His reputation flourished again at a point in his life when most
musicians are busy resisting decline. In 1994, at the behest of the
Cuban jazz saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, he recorded “Bebo Rides Again,”
his first album in three decades. It was to be a loose, jam-session
record, but Mr. Valdés insisted on structure. He arranged nine of his
own songs for a nonet in two days.
In 2000 he took part in “Calle 54,” Fernando Trueba’s documentary film
about Latin jazz. Subsequently Mr. Trueba formed a record label with the
film and music historian Nat Chediak and made a series of recordings
involving Mr. Valdés. One of them, “Lágrimas Negras,” an album of
boleros by Mr. Valdés and the flamenco singer Diego El Cigala, sold
nearly a million copies, mostly in Europe. In Madrid and Barcelona
particularly, crowds have started to applaud him on the street and in
restaurants. He has done better financially in his 80’s than at any
other time in his life.
When Mr. Valdés was solidifying his reputation in Havana, several of his
compatriots were making waves in New York. (Mr. Valdés never spent time
there: offered a visa for only 29 days in the 40’s, he decided against
such a short stay.) In 1947 Dizzy Gillespie’s big band was joined by the
conga player Chano Pozo, who drilled the band in how to play the tumbao,
the conjunction of rhythm-section lines in Cuban music. The band’s great
document of the period is the song “Manteca,” which became a hit in the
United States.
Mr. Valdés maintains that Gillespie’s American band played the Cuban
rhythms perfectly. He put the track on. “What I hear most is the conga,
and the changes in the bass. And the boom-bah,
boom-bah,” he sang, imitating the baritone
saxophone.
“That’s all the tumbao of mambo,” he said. “It’s completely the mambo
style of Cachao.” Halfway through, the song lifts out of Cuban rhythm into
jazz swing, with more arranged harmony, and he savored the shift.
Right after this, he put on a
Frank Sinatra track from 1960, “Nice ’n’ Easy,” arranged by Nelson
Riddle. It has the midtempo bounce of Sinatra records at the time, a
rhythmic feeling that thrills Mr. Valdés. “Nobody can play music like that
except in America, that kind of swing, that time,” he said. “It’s
impeccable. The most difficult thing in the world is to play slowly and
keep time. When I listen to this, I see American black people dancing.”
“Even though I’m Cuban, I’m really an American arranger,” he reflected.
“Because the way I write has as much to do with American music as it does
with Cuban music. And at the same time it has to do with the fugue.” (An
example of his fugue writing comes in the middle of “Devoción,” a
beguiling part of his “Suite Cubana.”)
It was pointed out to him that fugues have little to do with Cuban or
American music. “Yes, but I do it anyway,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I, if I
know how?”
He brought out the sheet music to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C
minor, to use as a reference as we listened to it. “I was studying
composition and harmony when I heard this performed by the Havana Symphony,
in the 40’s,” he said.
What he wanted to show, in the third movement of the piece, was how the
composer builds a beautiful, fragile melody, then protects it as the
orchestra swells around it. “When I hear the music build to a crescendo, I
feel like crying,” he said.
I asked if he was able to use this device in his own arranging. “Whenever
I can get away with it,” he thundered. He put on “Copla No. 4,” the
guajira section of his “Suite Cubana,” to demonstrate. It has the same
effect: big, brass-heavy crescendos, building in intensifying shades and
colors around the melody.
“When you know classical music, you can do what you want to do,” Mr.
Valdés said, and then he recited an old maxim to indicate that he had
succeeded on his own terms: “Es mejor ser la cabeza
de un perro que la cola de un tiburón.” It’s better to be the head
of a dog than the tail of a shark.