Chucho Valdés, Architect of Afro-Cuban Jazz
The 82-year-old Cuban pianist celebrates 50 years of Irakere, his groundbreaking ensemble, at the Music Center this spring.
By Ella Feldman
A wah-wah guitar pedal, the kind used by guitarists like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, and the batá, a traditional Yoruba drum, aren’t exactly a natural pairing. But you’ll hear both in “Bacalao con pan,” the explosive breakout hit by Cuba’s legendary ensemble Irakere, which still sounds fresh five decades after its release.
The song, which nods to a typical Cuban meal of codfish served with bread, illustrates exactly what Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés envisioned when he formed Irakere in the mid-1970s with fellow musicians from the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna: blending ancestral Afro-Cuban instruments and rhythms with contemporary jazz and rock sounds to create something entirely new.
With Irakere, Valdés and his bandmates turned a new page for Cuban music. Their innovative approach to Afro-Cuban jazz—a genre that first emerged in New York in the 1940s through Cuban expat musicians like Mario Bauza and Machito—rewrote the musical rules for generations of Cuban artists to come.
Half a century after Irakere’s inception, Valdés and the contemporary iteration of the band will take the Strathmore stage for Irakere 50, a tribute to the trailblazing ensemble and its enormous impact on Latin jazz. Valdés, 82, will lead a nine-piece orchestra in a musical retrospective at the Music Center on May 11.
“He is really the most influential figure for modern Afro-Cuban jazz,” says Joi Brown, Strathmore’s artistic director and vice president of programming, about Valdes. “He’s the one that broke down the door and created this incredible influx of that genre of music to the United States.”
With its bold blend of genres, instruments, and sounds, Irakere is a music aficionado’s dream. Valdés and the band, which originally included musicians like trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and multi-reedist Paquito D’Rivera, fused Afro-Caribbean folkloric and dance genres with elements of jazz-rock, bebop, funk, classical, and whatever else caught the musicians’ ears. Irakere’s lively percussion section played the Batá, a double-headed hourglass drum, along with congas, maracas, bongos, claves, chekeres, and more. Their rhythms were rooted in global musical traditions yet completely inventive.
Irakere’s colorful sonic palette captivated fans across Cuba. In 1977, it also drew a significant admirer from outside the island: Dizzy Gillespie, the eminent bebop bandleader, who heard the band play in Havana and tipped off Bruce Lundvall of Columbia Records. When Lundvall heard the band, he signed them on the spot and arranged for them to perform at Carnegie Hall. It was a breakthrough moment: Irakere swiftly became globally renowned, winning a Grammy Award for Best Latin Recording in 1980.
Valdés reminds Felix Contreras, co-host of NPR’s Latin music program Alt.Latino, of another grand pianist and bandleader: “He’s very much like Duke Ellington, because Duke Ellington used to say his band was his main instrument,” Contreras said. “With Chucho Valdés, when I’ve seen him with a big orchestra—with horns, percussion, vocalists, and all that—it’s the same thing. It’s like he’s getting the different tonalities, the different aspects, the different textures out of it. It’s the same thing he does with the piano.”
In August, Valdes visited NPR for a Tiny Desk Concert, delivering an intimate solo piano performance. It was a “total geek-out moment” for Contreras, who once interviewed Chucho’s late father, Bebo Valdés, another legendary Cuban pianist and bandleader known for his mambo and chachachá compositions.
Irakere 50 will also be a full-circle moment for Brown. In 2015, Strathmore hosted the musician for a 40th anniversary celebration, right around the time Brown began working at the venue.
This time, Valdés is “hyper-focused on working with the next generation of up-and-coming musicians,” Brown said. “On this tour, he’s really embracing his role as the venerable mentor of the genre and helping lift up the next generation of artists.”
“It’s such an honor,” Brown added about bringing Valdés back to the venue a decade later. “We have hundreds of gorgeous performances, but there’s something about having somebody with such a vast history and such a high level of contribution to the industry center stage in this room that just reminds you why you do what you do.”