CHUCHO VALDÉS: IRAKERE 50

Cuban pianist, composer, and arranger Chucho Valdés is the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz. In a career spanning more than 60 years, both as a solo artist and bandleader, Mr. Valdés has distilled elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, rock, and more, into a deeply personal style.

Winner of seven GRAMMY® and six Latin GRAMMY® Awards, Mr. Valdés, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Science last year and was also inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Mr. Valdés celebrated his 80^th birthday on October 9, 2021, completing La Creación (The Creation), a three-movement suite for a small ensemble, voices, and a big band. The piece, the most ambitious work of his career, tells the history of Creation according to the Regla de Ocha, the Afro-Cuban religion known as Santería.

The Creation was a commission of the Adrianne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, the Chicago Symphony Center, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. It had its world premiere on November 5, 2021, at the Adrienne Arsht Center. Performances followed in several U.S. cities, including Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, the Detroit Jazz Festival in Detroit, MI, and the Monterey Jazz Festival, in Monterey, CA. In Europe, the tour began at the Philharmonie in Paris and included performances in Berlin, London, Hamburg, Lyon, and Barcelona (Mr. Valdés is the godfather of the International Jazz Festival).

Another significant recent development was the long-awaited reunion with his old friend and co-conspirator in many musical adventures, the extraordinary clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer Paquito D’Rivera. They have rarely played together for the past 40 years, and since their reunion, they have wasted no time. In January 2022, they recorded an album entitled I Missed You Too, and embarked on a tour with their Reunion Sextet that took them to Europe and the United States.

Born in a family of musicians in Quivicán, Havana province, Cuba, on October 9, 1941, Dionisio Jesús “Chucho” Valdés Rodríguez, has distilled elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, and rock into an organic, deeply personal style.

His first teacher was his father, the pianist, composer, and bandleader Ramón “Bebo” Valdés. By the age of three, Mr. Valdés was already playing on the piano melodies he heard on the radio — using both hands and on any key. He began taking lessons on piano, theory, and solfege at the age of five. He continued his formal musical education at the Conservatorio Municipal de Música de la Habana, from which he graduated at 14.  A year later, Mr. Valdés formed his first jazz trio. In 1959, he debuted professionally with the band Sabor de Cuba. The ensemble, directed by his father, is widely considered one of the great orchestras in modern Cuban music.

Fittingly, Mr. Valdés made his early mark as the founder, pianist, and leading composer and arranger of another landmark ensemble: the small big band Irakere (1973-2005). With its audacious mix of Afro-Cuban ritual music, Cuban dance music, jazz, classical music, and rock, Irakere marked a before and after in Latin jazz. Irakere’s self-titled debut recording in the United States won a Grammy as Best Latin Recording in 1979.

While he remained with Irakere until 2005, Mr. Valdés launched a parallel career in 1998 both as a solo performer and a small-group leader. It marked the beginning of an enormously fruitful period highlighted by albums such as Solo Piano (Blue Note, 1991), Solo: Live in New York (Blue Note, 2001), as well as quartet recordings such as Bele Bele en La Habana (Blue Note, 1998), Briyumba Palo Congo (Blue Note, 1999), New Conceptions (Blue Note, 2003), and Live at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 2000), which won a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album.

After leaving Irakere, Mr. Valdés also won Grammys for Juntos Para Siempre (Calle 54, 2007), the duet recording with his father, Bebo; and, Chucho’s Steps (Comanche, 2010), which introduced his new group, the Afro-Cuban Messengers.

But such success didn’t mean forgetting past achievements. In 2015, Mr. Valdés celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the birth of Irakere, his iconic band, with a world tour. Tribute to Irakere: Live at Marciac  (Jazz Village / Comanche Music), which captured a performance on that tour, won a Grammy for the Best Latin Jazz Album in 2016. He also won a Latin Grammy as Best Latin Jazz album for Jazz Batá 2, in which he revisited a revolutionary idea Mr. Valdés first recorded in 1972: a piano jazz trio featuring batá drums.

In 2022, Chucho Valdés won a Grammy and a Latin Grammy for Mirror Mirror, an album of duets by pianist and singer Eliane Elias with Mr. Valdés and the great late pianist Chick Corea.

Cuban music has a new global ambassador: Cimafunk. With a name and image that pays tribute to the Cimarrons – Cubans of African descent that resisted slavery – and music and showmanship that re-embodies funk legends from the last century, the medical-school student turned funk artist has developed into a musical force crafting the sonic future of the island and a global, cultural phenomenon that unites and celebrates blackness across borders, oceans and languages. 

With his unmistakable AfroCuban sounds, no holds barred live show and multiple Grammy-nominations, Cimafunk is redefining what the planet understands as Cuban music. Cimafunk’s debut album “Terapia” (2018), with its groundbreaking #1 single “Me Voy” – followed by his breakout performance at SXSW 2019 and widely praised NPR Tiny Desk Concert, started a movement of converting millions of people to the religion of groove, one live show at a time. The AfroCuban rockstar has moved the spotlight well beyond the Buena Vista Social Club, salsa and reggaeton.

From a local sensation on Havana’s small alternative music scene to global success, Cimafunk’s ascent is as dizzying as an F1 race. Performing with La Tribu (The Tribe), his 9-piece band from Havana, Cimafunk has electrified global audiences on massive stages and worldwide temples of music, making a name for himself as one of the great showmen of today. From New Orleans Jazz Festival and Lollapalooza Chile to becoming the first Cuban-born artist to play Coachella, this undisputed star of Afro-Latin music has earned the adoration of musical icons such as Argentine Fito Páez, who has hailed him as “one of the lights of the continent’s future,” the Godfather of Funk George Clinton, who refers to him as “the next one,” and Chucho Valdés, who credits Cimafunk with masterfully and organically blending “AfroCuban with African American, converting this into a new school that until now I haven’t heard done.”

Cimafunk’s distinctive musical fusion continued to grow in its artistry with both the release of his second album  “El Alimento” (‘The Nourishment ) –which was met with an abundance of critical praise that included Best Albums of the Year lists of Rolling Stone, NPR and more… as well as an equal volume of glowing reviews for his unrivaled live shows, which quickly made him one of the most in-demand festival performers.

Cimafunk has collaborated on records and shared the stage with the likes of Alejandro Sanz, CeeLo Green, ChocQuibTown, Chucho Valdés, Fito Páez, Fonseca, Fred Wesley, Galactic, George Clinton, Jon Batiste, Juanes, Leoni Torres, Lettuce, Lupe Fiasco, Preservation Hall,, Omar Portuondo, Orquesta Aragón, Robert Glasper, String Cheese Incident, The Soul Rebels and Trombone Shorty. Susan Sarandon, Ron Delsner and other personalities have become superfans, often seen side-stage lost in the groove, and the likes of Paul McCartney and more have come out to check out the AfroCuban sensation.  

After the success of El Alimento, Cimafunk delves even further into his exploration of the intersections between funk and the sounds of the continent and gives us Pa’ Tu Cuerpa (Mala Cabeza Records), his most polished and mature production to date, on August 23^rd, 2024.