OSCAR
VALDÉS
EVOLUTION AND INNOVATION
“My
work has always been to find the rhythmic melodies of Afro-Cuban
instruments and integrate them into the jazz. That created a new
form of making Cuban music…” Oscar Valdés Campos
Recognised
officially by the Cuban government as a cultural institution,
Oscar Valdés Campos has contributed significantly to Cuban
music for the last 30 years, firstly as founding member of Cuban
supergroup Irakere and now as director of DIAKARA, the most innovative
Afro-Cuban ensemble to come out of the island in the last decade.
Cristina Dio recently met the legendary maestro in Havana where
there was time to visit his neighbourhood and discuss the scene
then and now…
Valdés grew up in the completely folkloric-conscious neighbourhood
that he still lives in today. His first contact with music was
within the socio-religious context of rituals and fiestas. His
entire family were musicians and his father Oscar Valdés
Sr was also a percussionist.
Valdés: “The music teachers in this
neighbourhood were dedicated to playing fiestas Yoruba and fiestas
Abakua …all that had to do with Afro-Cuban folkloric music.
My first percussion classes were these…as well as the fabrication
of the instruments. We were taught that a musician who can’t
make his own instruments is not a good musician. I learnt to make
everything.”
Before he became a teenager he had mastered most of Cuba’s
percussion instruments and was recognised as a prodigy.
“When I came to know my father he didn’t know that
I was a percussionist. I went to see him one day at a cabaret
where he was playing. I went to ask for him and was told to wait.
There were some bata drums on the floor. I was 11years old. I
saw them and started drumming. My father saw me and suggested
I study music.”
Valdés Sr invited his son to the club where he worked
to start studying with the other musicians and after one year
of practicing in their orchestra, Valdés Jr had dominated
the guiro, timbales and tumbadoras and begun his artistic life.
He was recruited into the television orchestra and received technical
tuition on kitdrum, timpanis and all symphonic percussion but
always maintained his folkloric connection with the bata and hand
drums. From 1956 to 1959 when Valdés was around 18 years
old, around the time of the revolution, he also played kit drum
in Beny More’s band.
“After the revolution there was a large social change. I
spent two years in ejercito (military service) forming the military
bands until 1961, when I returned to the radio and TV orchestra
until 1967. The revolution was a very positive thing for the music.
If not for it we wouldn’t have Irakere. After the revolution
we could dedicate ourselves to our music. You could be with other
musicians.”
In 1967 the Orquesta Moderna was formed and Valdés
was selected along with the best players of the period (from other
orchestras) to form an elite national orchestra. This included
the legendary pianist Chucho Valdés. It was around 1971
when a small group of them decided to break off and form Irakere.
”One day after a performance sitting on the steps of the
Teatro Amado Roldan, we, being the youngest members of the orchestra,
felt an in quietude, and asked ‘why don’t we form
our own band and play the music we want to play’? We can
integrate the Afro-Cuban sounds that were important to us into
a new music. That was my work always…” Valdés
recalls. “In 1973 Irakere made its first recording to great
success and in 1978 we won the 1st Grammy (to ever be won by a
Latin group). It was historical what we achieved and I feel very
happy that I was part of that project.”
The
success of Irakere is well documented and Chucho Valdés
continues to use the name to tour with, but differences in musical
directions caused the two major forces of the group to go their
separate ways. For Valdés it was a purely artistic decision
to leave the group.
Valdés: “After I left Irakere, the
band dissolved. Chucho had other ideas. We are friends –
we maintain a relationship. There is no problem or separation.
It is a question of musical projects. An artist is someone who
is always doing something new. Chucho also wanted to do other
things. Because we both had new ideas for other things, we had
to separate. Chucho wanted to focus on his quartet and I wanted
to delve deeper into the folkloric traditions. Artistically, I
am always concerned with doing new work. My job in Irakere was
to integrate the Afro-Cuban folkloric into the jazz. My work has
always been to find the rhythmic and melodies of Afro-Cuban instruments
and integrate into the jazz. That created a new form of making
jazz. In the Encyclopaedia of Music – un gran aporte al
jazz (a huge contribution to jazz): Irakere – the first
Latin Group to win a Grammy. For a musical artist a Grammy is
their Oscar. You feel like you’ve done something you feel
super-super…”
This desire to delve deeper into Cuba’s afro-folkloric roots
led to a new conception of the jazz ensemble.
Valdés: “After Irakere broke up
I spent a year off, trying new ideas, preparing arrangements and
musicians … a year of inventions, “pruebas”,
without working, just researching and listening. I worked with
my kids – one is a great kit drummer, the other a bassist.”
While he considers that he is creating a unique Cuban sound,
and fashioning a new music, others in the Cuban music scene don’t
share his view. At this point, I asked Oscar how he considered
the current state of Cuban music. I had interviewed other prominent
musicians who feared they were experiencing a dead period.
Valdés: “What do people understand
by new? Old music can be new. Calling music from another era,
like the Buena Vista Social Club, in that moment it is called
upon, can be new. There is always something new happening. Electro-
acoustic music…music being put through computers, that is
all happening now. It isn’t popular but that doesn’t
mean it isn’t happening. The Cuban musician is never left
behind. Right now in the strongest point of the revolution, we
will find some way of getting that songbook sent to us from Miami,
of the music you hear on the radio. (Miami radio is readily available
in Havana). But what is new? What if I recall this music one day,
because it occurs to me and I make it popular? That is new music.
So, maybe if I hear music that is less mature – a younger
musician of say 25 years won’t have the same experience
as I do. I’ve got the past and present to refer to.”
And how does he feel the revolution has affected musicians
today?
Valdés: “We aren’t exempt
from the experience of living in this country. If you are a doctor,
you feel it from a doctor’s point of view. If you’re
a musician you have to feel that oppression also and live within
that system. It affects the work and things you need like it affects
everyone else. You can’t blame our system and if you don’t
want to feel it don’t live here. But you will just be in
another system. That’s the reality. It is a problem of the
era. You are a part of a society that has problems and you have
to feel it as an artist. How many times have I been invited to
the USA? I can’t go because they won’t let me go."
From my experience working with musicians in Cuba I found
that there were more excellent musicians in Cuba than you could
poke a stick at and even the musicians themselves have a saying
that “look under any rock in Cuba and you’ll find
a musician there”… yet with so many good artists,
there isn’t enough work supplied by the system to sustain
them.
Valdés’ view: “Why isn’t there
more work? Because there aren’t more venues to work in.
Because there isn’t any tourism. There are also a high number
of incredible musicians because there is tremendous opportunity
to study. Here, nobody is denied an education if they want it.
Our institutions have no limits. Your evolution is not limited
therefore there are lots of great musicians. That’s why
one has to realise that is the reality of life. The system we
live in creates that situation.”
I agree with him, then as a sort of consolation he offers
the flip side.
“In Cuba, despite all the problems there are, the system
still maintains an incredible amount of cultural activities.”
He shows us around his private studio, full of relics, testaments
to a panoramic career of grand significance to Cuban musical history.
The timbale set he used for the last 23 years, a tall hand drum,
one of the oldest ritual drums in Cuba, inherited from a master
percussionist and given as a gift to Irakere to be used on the
song “The Black Mass”. A black and white photo of
Irakere on the ever of their first tour...
There is a large bata drum pulled apart for religious practice.
He explains that once a drum has been consecrated it can never
be used again for any other purpose but religious.
Valdés: “These drums are completely
natural. The tools used to make the bata, wooden hammers, and
bone to tighten the skin (all come from nature). It is hard work
but ritualistic. The technique we use now is exactly the same
as it ever was.”
The tall drums in the studio are used solely for Abakua, a men’s
only cult that Oscar has been connected with since birth.
“The people say the religion (Abakua) is macho... it is
a men’s only practice. You can see how from these drums
(he indicates the tall, tapering drums) comes the tumbadora (the
conga shaped drum). You can see the similarity in the shape and
how it evolved. In the Oriente (the eastern side of the island)
they called it Bookoo (buku). The origins are in Nigeria. The
bata drums come from Africa. All of our religions, the folkloric
base comes from Africa... the Congo, Nigeria. An African religion
has nourished all of Brazil and all of Latin America. In Cuba
we have maintained the religion the way it reached Cuba. It is
taken well care of here, respected and work goes into maintaining
it. We have students and continue to learn about that tradition,
in both cultural (artistic) and ritual (less artistic) forms.
The bata are the most ritual of drums. The most commonly used
instruments for popular music are the tumbadora (conga), bongos,
mi mas goza (his favourite), and maracas, all derived
from the sacred drums of Abakua. The music evolved from a union
of the Spanish with the African. The African began to search for
timbres and ways to work with the Spanish guitar and that fusion
gave rise to the rhythms of the Caribbean. By tradition, from
our studies we know that everything came from Africa. Black drums
and black music. La clave Cubana was developed by an African searching
for a rhythmic form from which to structure the music. The clave
came exactly from the Abakua drums rhythmic structure (he claps
a 2/3 and a 3/2 clave) ritmatica - la clave Abakua – is
the base for guaguanco - it exists in the Abakua rhythms.”
In Valdés' group DIAKARA, these Afro-Cuban instruments
are used not for their ritual elements but with contemporary music
techniques to create new Cuban sounds. The group are forging a
new way for Afro-Cuban jazz and popular music by building on the
work of Irakere and producing music never before heard anywhere
in the world. I ask Valdés what he thinks is the state
of culture today, in a country at its worst moment economically.
Valdés: “In think Cuba has never
had as much culture as it does today, at this moment, for the
level of education and the possibilities available to the Cuban.
In my day to reach a certain grade was a privilege, and for the
black person even more so. In our new social system, education
is practically obligatory. There is no reason for a child not
to go to school. With higher education comes a higher level of
culture, a condition that spawns more culture.
There has been a total evolution in education and culture. We
have a system of life – that system is strangled by a blockade.
I see in Cuban music an incredible development. I see all manifestation
of music here – we are able and are on a level to create
any type of music. “
