mayra caridad valdes a new voice in Cuban jazz - Artículo Breve

Latin Beat Magazine, Feb, 2002 by Jesse Varela

"I saw her sing in France and immediately called her the Cuban Ella Fitzgerald," said Bebo Valdés, the legendary mambo era pianist, arranger and musical director, from his home in Sweden, where he was talking about his daughter Mayra Caridad Valdés. "She was just a little girl when I left Cuba. She was born in 1956 and I left in 1960. I didn't see her again until 1995. What an incredible voice. I never taught her, but it was Chucho who did; she adores her brother. She also plays great piano."

Though Mayra Caridad--the sister of the prolific Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdés--was just a little girl when her esteemed father left the island nation after the 1959 Cuban Revolution (along with a trail of stars such as Celia Cruz, José Fajardo and Olga Guillot), she never had any remorse about his departure. The elder Valdés eventually settled in Stockholm, Sweden where he still resides at the ripe age of 83 years, and Mayra feels very good about keeping the Valdés musical torch burning.

"It's a great honor to be complimented by my father, who is an incredible musician," Mayra commented from her Havana home in early November 2001. "I admire and respect him very much and those words comfort me and make me feel good. I"m also his baby girl."

As a youngster she studied piano, but by her teen years she found more satisfaction as a singer. At home, around Chucho, she ingested a steady diet of jazz artists, listening to Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and Billie Holiday.

Since the days in the late 1950s when Bebo lived with the family of three (which included her brother Raúl, and engineer), there were always musicians coming by. Their home was an incubator for jazz and Cuban music, where Chucho held jam sessions and rehearsed his first jazz trio with Enrique Plá and Carlos Del Puerto in the mid-1960s. It left an indelible impression.

"I used to get scolded in school because the repertoire was classical and I would jazz it up," she recalls. "'This isn't American music,' they would tell me, but I couldn't just sing parts like all the rest. I graduated with a degree in choral direction from the National School of the Arts when I was 21 years old. Because of Chucho, I heard a lot of jazz at home, but when I realized I couldn't play it with my fingers, I found that I enjoyed singing and decided to be a jazz vocalist. It was the only way to express what I felt."

While Bebo was Chucho's biggest influence, for Mayra it was her mother Pilar Rodríguez who inspired her to pursue a career as a soloist. As a teen, Pilar had been part of the singing duo Las Hermanas González. She met Bebo when they were both up-and-coming performers in the thriving cabaret scene in Havana in the late 1930s.

While they never married, Pilar was Bebo's common law partner and took responsibility for raising their family. She left the stage when the children were born. She still sings and loves the boleros and la onda filin.

"I grew up with people like César Portillo de la Luz, José Antonio Méndez and many others, dropping by our house and my mother singing along with them. My family is everything. It's our union and without union there is no strength."

Many of us first became acquainted with Mayra Caridad Valdés when she sang a compelling rendition of the santería prayer Yemayá as the title track for Irakere's 1998 Blue Note release. Now, after touring with her brother's trio and Irakere, she took the leap of faith as a recording soloist, and in 2001 finally put out a beautiful debut album --La Diosa Del Amor (Mateca)-- that showcases her soulful voice in a variety of contexts. From bebop to boleros, she interprets the pieces Billie's Bounce, Como Fué, Drume Negrita, her brother's Mambo Influenciado, and several others in a combo setting.

"I want to feel good about my first album," explained Mayra, "and ask people to judge this album on its own merit. This is a new beginning for me as a soloist and it's a big step forward for my career. Since 1980, I've sang in some of the most prestigious performance spaces in the world. I'm not a beautiful woman, so I have to win people over with my talent. I'm also not a jazz purist but what I bring to jazz as a cubana is my roots and culture." From her days singing on the amateur show Todo El Mundo Canta in 1980, the bolero--done with a facility and feeling that seemed effortless--was the idiom that best showcased her voice. At that time, many Cuban artists thought she was crazy performing a repertoire from a bygone era, but it drew attention from outsiders such as Harry Belafonte, who gave her a slot back in the early 1980s, when she opened for him in Japan and Puerto Rico. "I just returned from Aruba, where I performed as part of the Festival de Boleros. Throughout the Caribbean as a stage performer. I'm known as a bolerista. Right now in Cuba we are seeing some exceptional women singers emerging who sing boleros well, and whom I love and admire very much. It was about time that a younger generation came to fruition. We just can't survive on the legacies of the past, and new artists are needed or this music will die, and we can't let that happen."