# Chucho Valdes toasts a lineage as well as a heritage with his new album, Jazz Bata 2: Photos, Videos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/06/27/chucho-valdes-toasts-a-lineage-as-well-as-a-heritage-with-his-new-album-jazz-bata-2-photos-videos/
- Published: 2019-06-27T21:05:05+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**As the Cuban maestro prepares for BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! on Wednesday, here’s
the story behind his influential project Jazz Batá.**

When we last heard from Chucho Valdés, the magisterial Cuban pianist and composer,
he was engaged in patrilineal homage.

On Familia: Tribute to Bebo and Chico, released last year, he joined forces with
Arturo O’Farrill to celebrate the legacies of their fathers, who were in the first
rank of Cuban jazz royalty.

Chucho’s father, Bebo Valdés, was among the key figures in the midcentury golden
age of nightlife in Havana — a prominent pianist; a house arranger at the Tropicana
Club; leader of a popular orchestra, Sabor de Cuba. He fled Cuba in 1960, after 
the Castro revolution, and ended up in Stockholm, Sweden.

Chucho stayed in Havana, where he became one of the most accomplished Cuban musicians
of his generation — the founder of Irakere, a barnstorming supergroup, and a virtuoso
who eventually assumed the regal bearing of a statesman. He had little contact with
his father prior to a reunion captured in the 2000 film _Calle 54_, which effectively
formed [the emotional center](https://youtu.be/Jqg5O8OSatU) of the film.

Now Chucho Valdés has a new album, _Jazz Batá 2_, that burnishes his stature as 
a towering Afro-Cuban pianist of our time, while reclaiming a meaningful chapter
from his past. The album is out on Mack Avenue Records, which shared one track here
as an exclusive premiere: “100 Años de Bebo,” or “100 Years of Bebo,” featuring 
violinist Regina Carter.

The song’s title is a nod to Bebo Valdés’s centenary, which falls on Oct. 9. (Chucho
has the same birthday; he’ll be turning 78.) A _danzón-mambo _with a lilting melody
exquisitely played by Carter, it’s a composition that holds sentimental associations.

“No one’s heard this tune,” Valdés says in a press release. “I’m the only person
who knows it. When I was a child, Bebo played it on the piano at home. Just a tune,
very beautiful, and as many times as he played it, it always captured my attention.
I don’t believe he ever recorded it. Since it’s his centenary, I added an introduction,
I put a tumbao at the end, and recorded it.” (Don’t miss the delirious “laughing”
effect that Carter plays at the onset of the tumbao, just after the three-minute
mark — and stay put for her marvelous solo, which leads to a show of mastery by 
Valdés.)

Apart from Carter, a guest who also graces a radiant track titled “Ochún,” the supporting
personnel on _Jazz Batá 2 _consists strictly of musicians from the Guantánamo region
of Cuba: longtime Valdés associate Yaroldy Abreu Robles on percussion; Yelsy Heredia
on bass; and Dreiser Durruthy Bombalé on batá drums and vocals.

[[

As the title implies, _Jazz Batá 2 _is also a sequel — to _Jazz Batá_, an album 
that Valdés released in 1972, for the Cuban label Egrem. A forward-thinking experiment
in cultural convergence, that album paired modern jazz piano with the earthy thrum
of the _batá, _an hourglass-shaped drum adapted from Yoruban religious practice.
The percussionist on the album was Oscar Valdés (no relation), and the bassist was
Carlos del Puerto. Both became founding members of Irakere, whose explosive success
eclipsed the acoustic sound of _Jazz Batá_, rendering it a kind of curio.

But the Afro-Cuban jazz of our current moment often bears a clear connection to 
the ideas that Valdés was exploring with _Jazz Batá_. Master Cuban musicians like
Román Díaz, who plays batá drums in and out of his band Rumba Habanera, have made
manifest the pull of folkloric rhythm. Modern bandleaders from Yosvany Terry to 
David Virelles have foregrounded it in their compositions.

So there should be a place for _Jazz Batá 2_, which comes on the heels not only 
of _Familia _but also _Tribute to Irakere (Live in Marciac)_. Valdés has been touring
with this project.

![Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés performs at the Havana Jazz Festival in December 
2016.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wbgo.org/sites/wbgo/files/styles/medium/public/201906/
gettyimages-630091372_wide-d66a300d46f352d4759878da4827cd3a47c9a56e-s800-c85.jpg?
w=640&ssl=1)

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