IRAKERE - Featuring Chucho Valdes

Latin Beat Magazine, March, 1999

Yemayá

(Blue Note)

Before he left his son Chuchito in charge of the preeminent Latin jazz band of the 20th century, pianist/ composer/arranger Jesús "Chucho" Valdés recorded a couple of final sessions with his Irakere cohorts, including Babalú Ayé (Bembé, 1998).

Chucho left an entirely different message in Yemayá, released in January of 1999 (despite the erroneous date on the cover). Based solely on artistic merit, Yemayá is even comparable to a couple of 1986 Irakere landmarks: Tierra en Trance (Aretito) and Black Mass (Messidor).

Paquito and Arturo left many moons ago, but Irakere's amazing brass section still reflects Chucho's unrivaled clinical eye for metales del terror, as El Tosco would say. On this occasion, however, Chucho is willing to unleash the magic powers of his monstrous rhythm section. Notice, for instance, how Carlos Emilio Morales, Cuba's main electric guitar pioneer, reveals his overwhelming credentials in the self explanatory Son Montuno. By the same token, Carlos del Puerto Sr. --one of the most influential bassists in Cuba's music history-- is given the opportunity to do his thing here and there, and even Enrique Plá (Irakere's fourth surviving founding father) gets to exhibit his vigorous drumming abilities. As expected, the rhythm section's reaction to the bandleader's last-minute generosity creates a boomerang effect, propelling Chucho's chameleonic piano to unprecedented heights. Something similar happened in his post-Irakere Bele Bele en La Habana, but that's another story.

Capable of weaving ah amazing range of styles (from Ellington and Tatum to Lecuona and Arsenio), Chucho presents seven original compositions which offer something for everyone. Dedicated to the birthplace of pitusas (that's Cuban for blue jeans), San Francisco updates Mongo Santamaría's best R&B-tinged Latin jazz experiments of the early 1970s, while Santa Amalia reinforces Chucho's connection to lo más sublime and to his former Havanese hood.

Cuba's tallest (in more ways than one) piano player provides his most impressive farewell salute on the title track, renewing the sacred vows of the lucumí-jazz marriage consummated in his Misa Negra. But this time he is fortunate to count on the energetic vocal skills of his favorite sister --the one and only Mayra Caridad Valdés, the number one jazz songstress of the Caribbean.

Once again, El Caballón's prodigal child claims his hierarchic position, along with the late Emiliano Salvador and very few others, as one of the post-1959 emperors of Cuban piano, with or without Irakere. Keep in mind, of course, how difficult it is to become a piano emperor in a land with a surplus of piano kings... Last but not least, the disc is enriched with the marvelous liner notes of Leonardo Acosta, the most prolific historian of Cuban jazz.