Irakere - Live At Newport And Montreux [FLAC] TQMP

Irakere - Live At Newport And Montreux
1978

Cuban Music Series. The Classics.
Arguably the best record Irakere ever made.

Brought to you by TQMP
The Quality Music Project

North American Latin jazz audiences were knocked out when this LP came out, for it was the first idea many of us had of the explosive power of this Cuban jazz/rock band, which had been let briefly out of Cuba to tour. Columbia taped them live at New York's Newport Festival and Switzerland's Montreux Jazz Festival, and the result was a noisy, ambitious, frenzied, tremendously exciting mixture of everything but the kitchen sink. Co-founder, keyboardist and arranger Chucho Valdes was as thoroughly attuned to the thumping electric bass, the careening buzz of a synthesizer and bell-like electric piano as he was to his homeland's complex rhythms and his own classical training -- and despite the cultural embargo, the 11-piece group was in touch with then-current developments in American jazz/rock. "Juana Mil Ciento," curiously the only track not available on CD, comes roaring out of the box with an incendiary mix of battering Cuban drumming, Arturo Sandoval's wild trumpet and Paquito D'Rivera's wailing alto. Paquito also contributes a free-floating, sometimes slapstick fantasy on themes of Mozart. The most audacious number is the 17 1/2-minute "Black Mass," which unleashes Valdes' staggering classical piano technique, knockabout rock guitar, Cuban chanting, high-wire brass, and lots of drums without somehow losing its train of thought. All but one of these tracks were reissued on CD as part of The Best of Irakere; admittedly, the LP's raucous sound is a bit more exciting than the cleaned-up CD.
-- All Music

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Around 1972, some of the members of the Cuban Modern Music Orchestra decided to form their own group, and by 1973 it had been organized into what is now known as IRAKERE. When these musicians, all impeccable soloists, left the best orchestra in the country, they had but one purpose in mind: to put all their efforts into what could be called 'experimenting,' joining a trend begun by others who were trying to renovate popular music.

Chucho Valdés (piano) and Paquito D'Rivera (alto sax & clarinet), both composers and arrangers, were, from the beginning, the main inspirers of IRAKERE. Oscar Valdés would be in charge of giving a different personality to the percussion section, adding to it his knowledge of ancesteral songs in African language, one of the most important and least known forms of music of the Afro-Cuban musical heritage. Other members of the group also come from Cuban Modern Music Orchestra: Emilio Morales (guitar), Carlos del Puerto (bass), Enrique Pla' (drums) and Arturo Sandoval and Jorge Varona (trumpets. Later additions were Carlos Averhoff (tenor & baritone sax) Jorge Alfonso and Armando Cuervo (percussion) to complete the group as it is today.

IRAKERE has two advantages over all the other groups who have a similar musical approach: the virtuosity of its soloists, who are excellent improvisers, and then, the cohesion which comes after playing together for many years. Chucho, Paquito and Carlos Emilio have been associated almost since the beginning of their professional careers: first in the Havana Musical Theatre Orchestra and later on in a group that was led by Chucho, which had as a vocalist Amado Borcela (Guapacha'), who has since died, and with whom they made a number of records for EGREM, earning quite a lot of popularity in the sixties. Later on they formed different quartets and quintets (with Pla', Oscar and sometimes with Sandoval or Varona) to play at sporadic concerts and festivals in Cuba and abroad. Their most outstanding performance outside of Cuba was during the 1970 Polish Jazz Festival, where the Cubans were heard and praised for the first time by renowned jazz artists like Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan.

But let us leave IRAKERE's past history and come to present times. After having become the most brilliant and solid group within the new stream in Cuban music, they met, during the (one and only) Jazz Cruise's stay in Havana in 1977, (such luminaries as) Stan Getz, who had come to Cuba often during the fifties, and Dizzy Gillespie, who strangely had never visited the country of his collaborator, Chano Pozo. The interest and enthusiasm that IRAKERE stirred up among the members of the Cruise - including musicians, jazz critics and producers - was like a preview of what would happen during the group's tour through the United States and Switzerland during June/July, 1978, and outstanding performances at the Newport and Montreux Jazz Festivals.

The press reviews that appeared in The New York Times, and San Francisco Examiner and Billboard, were very enthusiastic about IRAKERE, but a few questions arose that showed that there was some confusion. Is it really jazz that IRAKERE plays? Has it anything to do with "salsa"? Can the group be classified as "Latin-jazz-rock'' or as ''Latin-fusion'' or ''salsa-fusion"?

The truth is that although the majority of the IRAKERE musicians have played jazz for many years, they have more experience and more solid roots in Cuban music. And the presence of Cuba in IRAKERE is not only in its percussion, it is also in its way of playing: in the phrasing, in the attack and sense of rhythm of the soloists, as well as in whole passages.

Our novelist, Alejo Carpentier, who is also a renowned authority on music, has said that Cuban popular music is "the only music that can be compared with 'Jazz in the 20th century.' Is it not strange that these two musical forms have been compared so frequently. Their affinity comes from before the existence of jazz as such. We know all about the history of the beginnings of jazz, but we don't always associate it with the ending of slavery in Cuba, between 1880 and 1889, and the massive immigration of black Cubans, free but jobless, to places like New Orleans. Neither is it unusual that along with French and English names, one finds among the first jazz musicians names that show their Spanish roots (Lorenzo Tio, Luis Tio, Manuel Perez, Willy Marrero, Paul Dominguez), nor that Jelly Roll Morton, when asked about where jazz came from, included Cuba among its places of origin.

More well known are the international influences of the habanera and the rumba, until we come to the 1940s and 1950s, the Cubop era. During this period, the impact caused by the meeting between Chano Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie can be added to the influences of Machito, Perez Prado, Mario Bauzá, Mongo Santamaria, Chico O'Farrill and many others. The "fusion'' between elements of jazz and Cuban music has a long history having nothing to do with the more recent merging of jazz and rock, which sometimes adds certain so-called ''Latin'' elements which are in reality, Afro Cuban or Afro-Caribbean. As far as salsa is concerned, it is 99 percent Cuban music of the '40s and '50s. This is why if IRAKERE are jazz musicians, they are so in a very substantially Cuban way.
If Chucho Valdés was familiar with the piano styles of Horace Silver or Bill Evans more than ten years ago, he also knew the peculiarities of the son, the contradanza and the danzón. At times we here reminiscences of Art Tatum in some passages, yet the other side of Chucho's style is given by his mastery of Cuban classical piano: Cervantes and Samuell in the 19th century and Lecuona in the 20th, and in a more popular vein, Antonio Maria Romeu. Going down this road, who knows if, with the coming of IRAKERE onto the musical scene, we are getting to the roots and to the redevelopment, with a newer viewpoint, of practically inexhaustible materials.

Chucho's compositions, as well as those of other members of the group, reflect a receptiveness; to what is going on internationally, including free jazz and the so-called European musical vanguard. They put these to work as a form of personal expression, underlined by the knowledgeable use of rhythms that have African origins and which are mixed and renovated with great originality. One of the contributions has been to incorporate, into a musical context that once only accepted Congo and Dahomeyan elements, the intricate and vigorous Yoruba and Carabali rhythms which have been well known in Cuba but which had not been "integrated'' into the mainstream of our music. Another characteristic of these compositions are the frequent changes in time and atmosphere, a typical element in Yoruba music. "Misa Negra" ("Black Mass"), is perhaps the best example of this, although it can also be heard in "Ilya,'' "Aguanile'' and others.

As to the individual contribution by each soloist, we must let them speak for themselves. You can't deny Paquito D'Rivera and Arturo Sandoval owe a lot to Parker and Gillespie, but can there be a more logical debt?

In Paquito's explosive sense of humor, the fierce intensity of Arturo, and Chucho's controlled lyricism, we find very personal facets in their playing. Like IRAKERE, there are many other young Cuban musicians who also play jazz in a style deeply rooted in Afro-Caribbean music and who at the same time have definite personal styles. IRAKERE is an outstanding example within a real musical 'explosion.' Which is saying a lot.
-- Jazz Profiles

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Personnel --
Jesús "Chucho" Valdés, piano
Oscar Valdés, vocals, percussion
Carlos Emilio Morales, guitar
Carlos del Puerto, bass
Paquito D'Rivera, alto sax & clarinet
Carlos Averhoff, tenor & baritone sax
Arturo Sandoval, trumpet
Jorge Varona, trumpet
Enrique Pla, drums, percussion
Armando Cuervo, percussion
Jorge "El Niño" Alfonso, percussion

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This is a bootleg. It seems to be taken from the original Columbia LP release. Also, for some reason the part where Averhoff introduces the band members has been removed from the end of track 2. Other than that, the music seems untouched and the sound is great. Columbia never cared to give proper credit and it seems we will never know which tracks come from each festival.

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Esta es una edición pirata. Al parecer fue extraída del vinilo original de Columbia. La parte en la que Carlos Averhoff introduce a los miembros de la banda ha sido eliminada del final de la pista 2. La música como tal parece estar intacta y el sonido es excelente. A Columbia nunca le importó aclarar de qué festival venía cada pista, así es que al parecer nunca lo sabremos.

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Track List
01 - Juana 1600
02 - Ilyá
03 - Adagio On A Mozart Theme
04 - Misa Negra (Black Mass)
05 - Aguanile Bonkó

Artwork, EAC log and CUE sheet included.
Audio format: FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
http://flac.sourceforge.net/index.html

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PastafariCubensis
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