http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/arts/music/11jazz.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 10, 2010
In Havana, Jam Sessions With a Master Trumpeter
By VICTORIA BURNETT
HAVANA — Wynton Marsalis pulled a young Cuban trumpeter aside as he left the
Mella Theater here on Wednesday after a Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
concert. The band was here for a residency that ended over the weekend, and
Mr. Marsalis had seen 17-year-old Kalí Rodríguez play a few nights earlier
at an official reception for the American musicians.
“He told me, ‘You have something special,’ ” recalled Mr. Rodríguez, who has
been studying music for seven years at the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory in
Havana.
Mr. Marsalis led Mr. Rodríguez to the empty theater and gave him a
late-night lesson, playing blues on the piano while Mr. Rodríguez played his
trumpet. The master trumpeter gave his pupil tips on musical phrasing and
some encouragement as well, Mr. Rodríguez said.
“He told me, ‘You’re serious about what you do, and I like what you do,’ ”
added Mr. Rodríguez, who said he was so overwhelmed by Mr. Marsalis’s
attention that he broke down in tears midway through the class. “I felt like
my soul was bursting out of my body. I mean, if Wynton Marsalis says you’re
good at the trumpet, then that’s a big deal.”
Not everyone, though, was awed by the famous American players who descended
on Havana for a whirlwind series of encounters that took them from dark
rumba joints to the scruffy, vibrant conservatories where Cuba’s young
talent is schooled. Dayrón Rodríguez, no relation to the trumpeter, a
12-year-old bongo fiend, didn’t flinch when he was invited to jam onstage
with the Lincoln Center band and 13 other Cuban musicians for the rousing
Saturday finale of the group’s residency. Mr. Rodríguez, the trumpeter, also
played in the concert.
“It’s not the first time I’ve played with great musicians,” said Dayrón, who
noted that he had sat in with Yaroldy Abreu Robles, a family friend and
percussionist for Chucho Valdés’s Afro-Cuban Messengers.
A grinning Dayrón skipped onto the stage on Saturday night. Along with his
bongos he brought a copy of a CD on which he had played, flashing it to band
members whenever he got the chance.
The Lincoln Center players came to spread the word of American jazz to Cuban
music lovers, and they found an eager audience. Cuban musicians are hungry
for all the information they can get. Relatively few foreign bands visit
Cuba, and the island’s Internet reach is low. (In a recent government survey
less than 3 percent of Cubans said they had been online in the past year.)
Several of the teenage students who jammed with the Lincoln Center players
last week said they had never used the Internet and did not have access to a
computer or own an MP3 player. They relied on people who traveled overseas
to share music with them, they said.
Many members of the Lincoln Center group said they were impressed by the
young musicians who performed at workshops, sat in on rehearsals and filled
the hotel lobby at night to pepper them with questions. “I love their
talent, their attitude, their seriousness and their culture,” said Carlos
Henriquez, the Lincoln Center bass player. “Their dedication is
unbelievable. We don’t get that in the States.”
There was much talk of bridges last week: the one between Cuba and the
United States, and the one between Afro-Cuban music and American jazz.
Jazz at Lincoln Center came trundling over that bridge on Oct. 2 to jam with
Cuban stars and teenage students, to give a workshop for children and to
perform four concerts with a lineup of Cuban players that included Chucho
Valdés; Eliade Terry, known as Don Pancho, the country’s foremost chekeré
player; Bobby Carcassés; and Orlando Valle, known as Maraca.
“The bridge was built when Chano Pozo and Dizzy started doing their thing —
even before that,” said Mr. Henriquez, referring to the historic
collaboration in the late 1940s between that Cuban percussionist and Dizzy
Gillespie. “What we’ve done this week is repave the bridge.”
This was possible partly because American officials are interpreting travel
restrictions less rigidly under President Obama than they did under George
W. Bush. They are letting more Cuban artists visit America, and vice versa.
Now that the bridge is in use again, the musicians wondered how to keep the
traffic flowing. Mr. Valdés, the veteran pianist and co-artistic director of
the residency, said the next step would be to get American musicians to come
to Havana’s jazz festival in December. The festival has flagged in recent
years, as it became difficult for the Americans to attend after President
Bush tightened travel restrictions in 2003.
“Let anyone come who wants to come,” Mr. Valdés said during a rehearsal
break last week. “I would open the door really wide.”
Mr. Valdés also wants to see more Cubans and Americans participating in
exchange programs. “Imagine if we could get Americans coming here to study
Afro-Cuban rhythms, coming and going without any kind of problem, without
politics getting in the way,” he said. “That would be my dream.”
For about 200 years Afro-Cuban rhythms nourished the American music from
which jazz emerged, as commerce and people flowed freely between Havana and
New Orleans. But that rich trade was essentially shut down when the United
States severed diplomatic and commercial ties with Cuba and its Communist
leader, Fidel Castro, in the early 1960s.
The two cities may be cut off from each other, but the spirit of New Orleans
was present in Havana during the Lincoln Center residency. “I see many
things here that are exactly like New Orleans: the architecture, the feeling
of the people, the climate, the community,” said Mr. Marsalis, a native of
New Orleans.
He pointed to the shared African roots of the roll call, in which New
Orleans musicians call the names of deceased players, and the Yoruba
blessing sung in Cuban rumba; and to the influence the Cuban habanera rhythm
had on ragtime. “Cuban music is in the roots of our music. This is an
opportunity to reconnect, to deepen our communality” he said.
So it was fitting that the penultimate event of the residency should include
a New Orleans-style parade. On Saturday the players treated 1,500 music
students from five schools around Havana to a workshop at the Mella Theater,
dissecting the “three pillars” of jazz — swing, blues and improvisation —
and bringing students onstage to play with them.
At the end the audience danced and clapped as the Americans played blues and
paraded through the auditorium, trailing a line of Cuban trumpeters,
violinists, clarinetists and saxophonists.
And then the band marched out of the theater, through the stage door and
into the warm Havana afternoon, still tooting their horns, dancers twirling
handkerchiefs behind them. A crowd waved and cheered as the musicians headed
to their bus.
Then the sound of brass trailed off, and the players were gone.
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