Bebop’s Night in Havana

The scene is Havana, 1977. A cruise ship docks and is met by a surprisingly large, effusive crowd. As a familiar-looking figure with a small chin goatee and horn-rimmed glasses disembarks, the crowd cheers.

Dizzy Gillespie looks up, surprised, and smiles his patented grin. The ship, a jazz cruise that includes a number of other well-known players, is making a non-performing stop on its Caribbean itinerary. But the Cuban crowd, filled with musicians eager to see a jazz artist who is to them a virtual legend, has waited patiently for a quick glimpse at their hero.

“It was incredible to me to actually see Dizzy,� recalled trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, remembering the arrival. “It was the first time he ever came to Cuba, on this cruise with Stan Getz, Earl Hines and some others. And I not only got to see him, I got to meet him and spend time with him.�

In addition to meeting and spending time with Gillespie, Sandoval also played with him.

“I got to be his driver, to take him around town to talk to people, take pictures,� Sandoval says. “And that’s when we started to become friends.�

But Sandoval was initially reluctant to tell Gillespie that he, too, was a trumpeter.

“At the end of the first day, we went to a jam session with the players from Irakere,� he continued, referring to the legendary Cuban dance and jazz band. “He saw me working out with a trumpet, and he said to somebody, ‘Hey, what’s my driver doing with a trumpet?’

“When we played a set with him, I had a feature number I did with Irakere, and at the end, I had a cadenza, where I could play whatever I wanted. So I played all Dizzy’s licks--which I’d been studying for a long time--and he was laughing and laughing, having a great time. He couldn’t imagine that he could find people in Cuba who knew his music that way.�

Tuesday would have been the 80th birthday of Gillespie, who died in 1993 of pancreatic cancer. The anniversary takes place, perhaps appropriately, in the same week that Sandoval--viewed by many as one of Gillespie’s most talented musical descendants--will headline the first Los Angeles International Latin Jazz Festival. Gillespie, perhaps more than anyone, was responsible in the ‘40s for the interaction with Cuban musicians that produced the vital creative synthesis often described as “Latin jazz.�

“To me,� Sandoval said, “Latin jazz is bebop with Afro-Cuban percussion--back and forth. The phrasing of bebop matches very well with Cuban rhythms. You start to play some Cuban rhythm, and then play a bebop line on top, and then you’re cooking, already, because those are the main condiments of the soup of Latin jazz.�

On Saturday at the Greek Theatre, many of the different ingredients of that “soup� will be on display when the festival--subtitled “Con Ritmo y Sabor� (With Rhythm and Flavor)--gets underway. The performers include Sandoval, Herb Alpert and his Passion Dance Band, the Caribbean Jazz Project (featuring Paquito D’Rivera, steel pan player Andy Narell and vibist Dave Samuels), bassist-bandleader Israel “Cachao� Lopez and saxophonist Justo Almario. Actor-musician Andy Garcia will serve as master of ceremonies.

In a highlight of the program, Tres Maestros Congueros (conga drummers Armando Peraza, Francisco Aguabella and Giovani Hidalgo) will perform a tribute to percussionist Mongo Santamaria. The veteran artist, who took his Latin rhythms beyond jazz to create crossover pop-jazz hits with a cover of Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man� and his own “Afro Blue,� will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from Mayor Richard Riordan and become the first inductee into a planned Latin Jazz Hall of Fame.

“We wanted to produce a festival in which Latin jazz was not just one element in the program, but the complete program itself,� says Almario, who is the event’s artistic director. “But more than that, we wanted to have an event that the Latino community, all the neighborhoods here in Los Angeles, could be proud of--an event to display this important part of Latin culture.�

The nonprofit festival, which is still in its birthing phase, is partnered with an equally new entity named the Los Angeles International Latin Jazz Institute, also a nonprofit organization. According to institute Vice President Jerry Levin, a portion of proceeds from the program will be dedicated to the establishment of a scholarship fund for promising young student-musicians and the development of a series of jazz seminars for area high schools and universities. Fund-raising for further Latin Jazz Institute/Festival activities will begin after the concert, with the support of such honorary board members as Alpert, Garcia, Hector Elizondo, Anjelica Huston and Edward James Olmos.

If the attendance for local appearances by such first-rate ensembles as Irakere, Los Van Van and NG La Banda is any indication, there should be plenty of excitement. Even without major media attention, performances by such bands generate tremendous buzz among the growing numbers of Latin jazz fans.

Despite the strong Afro-Cuban orientation of the festival lineup, however, not all the participants agree with Sandoval’s definition of Latin jazz as a blend of Afro-Cuban rhythms and bebop. The legendary bandleader “Cachao� Lopez, 79, who virtually invented the mambo and was one of the initiators of mixing jazz improvisation with a variety of Cuban idioms, expresses some reservations.

“Latin jazz, it’s true, is very strongly based on Cuban rhythms with American melodies,� Lopez says. “But people in Cuba have been interested in jazz since the ‘20s, so the combination is not just limited to bebop.�

D’Rivera, 49, a saxophonist and clarinetist who, like Sandoval, defected to the United States from Cuba, has an even broader view.

“I would call that kind of music--that combination of Afro-Cuban rhythms and bebop--Cuban jazz instead of Latin jazz. Because in order to call it Latin jazz, it should use the elements of the rest of the music south of the border--from Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, from the islands. I mean, a lot of the music that Andy and Dave and I play in the Caribbean Jazz Project is from the English- and French-speaking islands of the Caribbean.�

Andy Garcia agrees, suggesting that orchestration, especially in the larger ensembles favored by Latin musicians, also can have an impact.

“A mambo that’s orchestrated in a big band configuration can be considered Latin jazz,� says Garcia, whose interest and talent for Latin music--he plays percussion--parallel his skills as an actor and a director. “I think it has more to do with a groove, a rhythmic feeling. But I also think, like Paquito, that Latin jazz can have many Latin American influences, from classical Spanish music to the music of the Americas and the Caribbean, all fused with the elements of jazz.�

The pervasiveness of the view of Latin jazz as a combination of Afro-Cuban rhythms and American bebop is understandable, however, given the impact that the melding of the two forms had upon the music of the ‘40s and ‘50s.

The key participants, at the time, were Cuban bandleaders Machito and Mario Bauza (who were brothers-in-law), Dizzy Gillespie and Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo.

Machito’s band, which he called the Afro-Cubans, was formed in the early ‘40s. Not well known to the wider listening audience, the band nonetheless was heard and given serious consideration by many musicians. With Bauza as music director, the Afro-Cubans performed on concerts with Stan Kenton’s band, and employed--as soloists--such jazz artists as Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips and Howard McGhee.

Woody Herman recorded “Bijou�--subtitled “Rhumba a la Jazz�--in 1945. Gillespie’s own Afro-Cuban styled orchestra, organized in 1947, featured Pozo in a series of rhythmically powerful compositions--among them, Pozo’s “Manteca,� “Afro-Cuban Suite� and “Guarachi Guaro,� and composer George Russell’s “Cubana Be/Cubana Bop.� Kenton, similarly fascinated by Cuban rhythms, added Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida and bongo drummer Jack Costanzo to his ensemble and recorded “Machito,� “Peanut Vendor� and “Cuban Episode.�

Somewhat diluted Latin rhythms moved into mainstream pop (although they had always been present, to some extent, in the work of performers such as Carmen Miranda and Xavier Cugat). Mambo, the cha cha cha and the meringue became dance staples. More importantly, for jazz, Latinrhythms were cropping up in small bop groups (Parker’s “My Little Suede Shoes� and Bud Powell’s “Un Poco Loco� are good examples) and in the music of bands led by, among others, George Shearing, Cal Tjader, Sonny Rollins (playing Caribbean rhythms) and Herbie Mann.

The Latin jazz definitions expanded dramatically in the late ‘50s with the appearance of Brazilian rhythms, in general, and the bossa nova, specifically. And there were other manifestations, as well, over the following decades: the Miles Davis-Gil Evans exploration of flamenco in “Sketches of Spain�; the prominence of Latin percussionists such as Airto Moreira in Weather Report, Return to Forever, Davis’ electric bands and dozens of others; the Argentine-rhythm jazz of tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri; the arrival of a new generation of Cuban jazz musicians--Sandoval, D’Rivera, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Chucho Valdez and Irakere in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Today, Latin jazz, in its multiplicity of forms, is everywhere. Tito Puente, Ray Baretto, Eddie Palmieri, Poncho Sanchez, Pete Escovedo, Jerry Gonzalez and the Ft. Apache Band are only a few of the better known names. Among the younger artists, Rubalcaba, Hilton Ruiz, Dave Valentin, Danilo Perez and Michel Camilo are some of the younger performers breaking through to the wider audience.

By 1949, the year Sandoval was born, the Afro-Cuban connection had been well established. But he grew up studying classical trumpet, unaware of jazz until he heard his first Gillespie number.

“Dizzy was the very first jazz musician I ever heard in my life, on a record of Dizzy and Charlie Parker,� he recalls. “I was 17 years old, and when somebody played the record for me, it turned my brain upside down. I said, ‘What is that?’ And I’m still working on finding out.�

At the time, Sandoval was already a superb trumpeter, on the verge of achieving the remarkable technical virtuosity and high-note skills that are the hallmarks of his mature style. But it was his first-person meeting with Gillespie in 1977 that set him on the path that would eventually lead him to defect from his native country.

D’Rivera, a year and a half older than Sandoval and his playing companion in both the Orquesta Cubana de Musica and Irakere, had a similar epiphany when he heard a pre-bebop musician.

“I was very young,� he says, “when my father played for me, on a little hi-fi LP record player, the record of the Benny Goodman 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall. He said, ‘This is swing.’ He didn’t call it jazz. And I was amazed. I’m still in love with that record, even today.�

Sandoval and D’Rivera both left Cuba in difficult circumstances. D’Rivera defected to the U.S. Embassy in Spain while on tour with Irakere in 1981.

“It was a very dramatic decision,� he said. “But all my life I dreamed to be a jazz musician--not just in the United States, but in New York. It was hard to leave my country, and I had to wait nine years for my son to join me. But sometimes you have to pay for what you want, and I knew that I wanted the chance--which I got--to play with musicians like Dizzy, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard and so many others.�

Sandoval’s path to international fame was similarly trying.

“I left in 1990,� he recalled, “and it was hard. You have to escape from your own land, and you know that you cannot go back.�

And Sandoval’s life has been exacerbated with U.S. citizenship problems reportedly related to his membership in the Communist Party when he was in Cuba.

“It’s interesting,� he said, “that I now have this problem with immigration. Because in Cuba they hate me. And this problem gives the [Cuban] press the opportunity to say, ‘Look, he went there to the imperialists, and look now at how they treat him, like a dog.’ �

The musical journeys of Sandoval and D’Rivera may have led them in slightly differing directions--Sandoval toward an immersion in Afro-Cuban bebop, D’Rivera to an eclectic, south of the border form of jazz--but they nonetheless stand as important symbols of the growing importance of Latin jazz around the world.

“The genre is getting a tremendous amount of attention,� said Garcia, who occasionally performs on percussion with Cachao, and who is working on compositions for his own projected album. “There was an article in Forbes magazine saying it’s catching fire in London. And I think it’s on the upswing, in terms of people getting exposed to it and attracted to it--and with good reason. It’s great music.�

D’Rivera concurs, adding another proviso.

“I think it’s an economic factor, too. There are millions of Latin Americans in this country, and they are people who consume music and records. Every day, there are more and more people of Latin American origins moving into the upper levels of society, into positions in industry. And that means they become an important factor in the economy. So maybe it’s time to recognize that their interests are going to affect the marketplace.�

Almario sees that growing segment of the population having an important impact on music in Los Angeles, as well. And he believes that the Latin Jazz Institute is a logical vehicle for the preservation, education and encouragement of a culture directly associated with the Latin community.

“We have some very good Latin jazz bands around town,� he said. “The Estrada Brothers, Rudy Regalado, Poncho Sanchez, Bobby Matos, Susie Hansen. And we have great Brazilian musicians, salsa musicians and musicians from the islands.

“But there aren’t enough places for them to play, and there still isn’t enough recognition of how good and how important this music really is. We have great Latin jazz in Los Angeles. So now, my invitation to the community is this: Listen to it, appreciate it, and, above all, support it. It’s the music of the 21st century.�

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* The Los Angeles International Latin Jazz Festival, with Arturo Sandoval, Cachao y su Orquesta, the Caribbean Jazz Project and Herb Alpert & the Passion Dance Band, Greek Theatre, 2700 N. Vermont Ave. Saturday, 5 p.m. $15-$47.50. (213) 480-3232.