Chris Thile a 'El Punt/Avui' i 'El Periódico'

Guillem Vidal, a El Punt/Avui, i Marta Cervera, a El Periódico, han entrevistat Chris Thile, que toca per primera vegada a Barcelona aquesta nit (209.30h, Conservatori del Liceu), en un dels concerts més sublims del festival (no exagerem) amb entrades a 12 euros (25% descompte estudiants Taller de Músics i ESMUC, 50% descompte estudiants del Conservatori del Liceu).

«Me encanta la música visceral y Bach, ante todo, era un hombre. Demasiado a menudo se le trata como si fuera un Dios, estamos acostumbrados a escucharle de una determinada manera. Yo he intentado humanizar su música. A él, como a mí, le encantaba improvisar», ha dit Thile a Cervera. «Quan fas un disc et qüestiones si el material serà prou bo; en aquest cas, amb peces de Bach tan precioses, això ho tenia resolt», recull l'entrevista de Vidal. «No vull fer bona música bluegrass o bona música clàssica; busco fer, a seques, bona música.»

Bach, bluegrass, folk, jazz, Chris Thile

© Brantley Gutierrez

Per primer any des del 2003 i després de l'apoteosi del 2012 (en què vam fer quatre pianos sols), el festival de jazz no tindrà aquest any un recital de piano sol. No. El que tenim és un recital de mandolina sola, a càrrec d'un músic, Chris Thile, MacArthur Foundation Genius i venerat per grans artistes i amb una carrera solidíssima com a membre dels Punch Brothers, que l'ha portat per exemple a ser estrella del Newport Folk Festival (àudio aquí).

Tocarà Bach, sí, objectiu del seu últim disc, les Sonates i Partites per violí sol transcrites per mandolina:

Però també mostres del bluegrass i obres pròpies, com la divertidíssima If You're Gonna Leave Me (Set Me Up With One of Your Friends):

És el que el mateix Thile anomena amb humor i una mica d'ironia un «musical sandwich club» que ja ha portat recentment a sales com el Zankel Hall de Nova York (aquí la ressenya de The New York Times) i la LSO Saint Luke's de Londres (aquí la ressenya de The Guardian).

Espereu, doncs, d'aquest concert el que en va dir un altre crític: «Després de sentir Thile en solitari, i la pura música que ell pot crear tot sol, es fa difícil desitjar una altra cosa.»

Perquè el concert de demà (final de la seva minigira europea) serà, sens dubte, únic, a càrrec d'un músic sense pors i sense etiquetes, capaç de tocar amb Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer i Stuart Duncan (vídeo aquí) o a duo amb Brad Mehldau versionant Radiohead (vídeo –de no gaire qualitat, ai las!– aquí).

I les entrades costen només 12 euros. ¿Te'l perdràs?

Una setmana amb tots els colors

Tots els colors possibles de la música reunits aquesta setmana en un programa que trobem, perdoneu la immodèstia, excepcional. Expliquem el perquè.

DILLUNS, 11. 20.30h JazzSí Club
NU-Roots

El trompetista David Pastor (¿heu sentit els seus solos a la Rumba para Bebo?) continua amb la seva apassionant Carta Blanca al JazzSí del Taller de Músics. Avui, tercera entrega en formació de trio, amb NU-Roots, amb José Luis Guart als teclats i Toni Pagès a la bateria i als loops. Per seguir amb el número tres, al concert d'avui presentaran el nou repertori del que ha de ser el tercer disc del trio.

DIMARTS, 12. 20.30h. Conservatori del Liceu
Chris Thile

Només un festival com el nostre pot convidar un mandolinista a tocar en solitari. Però és clar, benvolguts metretites, Chris Thile no és un mandolinista diguem-ne normal. Membre dels Punch Brothers (cap de cartell dels festivals de folk-rock més importants del món), Thile construeix en aquesta gira un programa subtil que barreja el seu últim disc (dedicat –¡pareu màquines!– a Bach) amb obres pròpies i versions de clàssics del bluegrass de tota la vida.

DIMECRES, 13. 20.30h. Conservatori del Liceu
Miguel Zenón Quartet

Des del seu debut al festival ja fa uns quants anys, no hem deixat mai de seguir la carrera d'aquest inquiet saxofonista porto-riqueny, una de les referències del saxo avui en dia. I torna a Barcelona amb el seu quartet, una màquina meravellosa de fer jazz contemporani sense etiquetes i molt lluny dels tòpics d'allò que molts anomenen (sense gaire sentit) latin jazz.

DIMECRES, 13. 21.00h. Luz de Gas
Martirio

L'esperit de Chavela Vargas (una altra indomable) s'ha reencarnat en la veu de Martirio, que al costat del seu fill, Raúl Rodríguez, ha bastit un homenatge impressionant a una de les veus que van marcar la música popular del segle XX, i que més d'un ha comparat, per la seva força i la seva emoció, a Billie Holiday. Martirio i Raúl Rodríguez han respost al desafiament amb una obra, ras i curt, mestra: De un mundo raro (Cantes por Chavela).

DIJOUS, 14. 21.00h. Luz de Gas
Kroke

Música que fa plorar, música que fa riure; música que fa ballar, música que fa pensar. Tot alhora poden tocar els Kroke, de vegades fins i tot dins d'una mateixa cançó. Descoberts per Steven Spielberg quan rodava Schindler's List, aquest trio de Cracòvia són avui la referència més exquisida de la música klezmer, on les fronteres es desdibuixen sense cap mena de problema.

DIJOUS, 14. 21.00h. Palau de la Música Catalana
ACS: Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington & Esperanza Spalding

El bon màrqueting ens hauria de fer ressaltar la novetat: un trio només de dones. Molt bé. Ja ho hem dit. Afegim-hi ara que aquestes tres dones de tres generacions diferents han estat sempre tres caràcters ben importants en la història recent del jazz. Arriben a Barcelona en la part final d'una gira que les ha portat als grans auditoris europeus sota la invocació d'un repertori original però també farcit d'homenatges a un altre gran del jazz, Wayne Shorter.

DIVENDRES, 15. 20.30h. Harlem Jazz Club
Leslie Helpert
Tribute to Billie Holiday

Les Veus de Barcelona que des de fa anys ocupen els divendres a la nit al Harlem tenen aquesta setmana com a protagonista Leslie Helpert, que proposa un homenatge a una de les veus més singulars de la història del jazz, Billie Holiday, a qui –per cert– acabem de citar una mica més amunt quan parlàvem de l'homenatge a Chavela Vargas de Martirio i Raúl Rodríguez. Lluny dels focus mediàtics, les Veus de Barcelona són una de les cireretes indiscutibles del nostre festival.

DIVENDRES, 15. 21.00h. BARTS
Jack DeJohnette Group amb Don Byron

Bateria del trio de jazz més influent de les últimes dècades al costat de Keith Jarrett i Gary Peacock i posseïdor d'un currículum espectacular (sí, Miles Davis i tants altres), Jack DeJohnette ens porta al Paral·lel el seu projecte més personal, un trio que compta com a convidat especialíssim Don Byron. Segons les cròniques que el mateix DeJohnette està escrivint dels seus concerts, el grup (amb George Colligan al piano i Jerome Harris al baix) està tocant millor que mai i en una fase d'especial creativitat.

DISSABTE, 16. 20.30h. Conservatori del Liceu
Christian McBride Trio

És, ras i curt, el contrabaixista més influent de la seva generació, la referència indiscutible. Christian McBride torna al festival (per on recentment ha passat al costat d'artistes com Chick Corea i Pat Metheny) per presentar el seu nou trio, una màquina de precisió, swing i elegància, al costat de dos músics de les noves generacions a qui cal seguir: Christian Sands al piano i Ulysses Owen Jr. a la bateria.

DIUMENGE, 17. 20.00h. Luz de Gas
Luciana Souza amb Romero Lubambo

Ella i una guitarra. Però ella és Luciana Souza, i ell Romero Lubambo (que ens va visitar a l'inici del festival com a membre del grup de Dianne Reeves). Tanquem la setmana amb una de les veus més exquisides de la música actual, la brasilera Luciana Souza, que fa anys ens va deixar estupecactes amb un recital d'impacte. Veu i guitarra, repertori brasiler i estàndards del jazz. Una veu meravellosa al servei d'unes cançons immortals. Una manera perfecta d'acabar una setmana espectacular.

I a més a més…

GRAN HOTEL HAVANA
Divendres, 15. 19.30h
Cocktail & Swing amb Benjamín León, Albert Romaní i Artur Regada.

Diumenge, 17. 11.30
Jazz en Família amb Joan Chamorro i la Sant Andreu Jazz Band, xocolata i xurros inclosos abans de començar. Al programa d'aquesta sessió, Young Cats.

'Rumba para Bebo': ndimbu and sinsu

© Manuel Naranjo

By Ned Sublette

I was present at the Rumba Para Bebo memorial fiesta / ceremony / concert in Barcelona October 29th, and will be producing a one-hour radio special featuring portions of it for Afropop Worldwide, to air in December, exact date TBA. 

Bebo Valdés passed on March 22 of this year at the age of 94. Teenage buddies with Cachao, he was one of the handful of original Cuban mambo kings. He sat next to Antonio María Romeu on the piano bench as a child. He played four hands with Lecuona. Nat "King" Cole insisted that he be the pianist on Cole's Havana recordings. He taught Chucho Valdés music. I'm not going to try to sketch that whole arc right now. To keep it short: he left Cuba in 1960 and spent the intervening decades in obscurity, but he had a stellar last act. His life was the subject of the 2008 biographical documentary Old Man Bebo. After appearing in the 2000 music performance film Calle 54 and recording a major hit Cuban / flamenco crossover album, Lágrimas Negras (2003), with singer Diego El Cigala, along with a number of other fine records made for Nat Chediak and Fernando Trueba's label Calle 54, he became an international star during his final decade of life, and nowhere more than in Barcelona. His last work was the soundtrack for Trueba, Javier Mariscal, and Tono Errando's 2010 animated feature Chico and Rita, which begins with his perfect interpretation of José White's "La Bella Cubana." 

He said on various occasions that "El día que yo me muera, no quiero lloradera. Graban un disco con mi música más bailable, se compran ron y chocolate, y a bailar" –he didn't want weeping when he died, but he wanted people to drink rum and eat chocolate, listen to his music and dance. Joan Anton Cararach, a close friend of Bebo's whom he referred to as his manager, carried his wish out, programming the Rumba Para Bebo as part of the 45th annual Voll-Damm Festival Internacional de Jazz in Barcelona, which he is the artistic director. 

Sure enough, there were chocolates and complimentary shots of Ron Varadero in the lobby.  The house was sold out –1,450 people. There were no chairs on the main floor. 

© Lorenzo Duaso

The performers all came to the concert knowing what numbers they were going to play, but the sound check was the only rehearsal for the constantly shifting onstage lineup, directed by and centrally featuring Chucho Valdés with his Afro-Cuban Messengers (CV on piano; Gastón Joya on bass; Yaroldi Abreu on congas, Dreiser Durruthy on batá, and Rodney Barreto on drumset). Chucho has toured with several different editions of a piano-bass-drums-congas quartet in the post-Irakere phase of his career, but now that he's expanded the instrumentation to a quintet by adding a batalero, it's achieved a new richness and balance. Their 2013 album Border-Free might be my favorite album of 2013 (though there have been a lot of good records coming in), and the concert version of it they presented in Town Hall in June was one of the best concerts I've seen during this strong musical year in New York. 

I will not attempt to describe the entire concert, which included pieces Bebo composed and others he was associated with or simply loved. Participants included vocalist Mayra Caridad Valdés, who is Bebo's daughter and Chucho's sister; Jerry González (from whose milestone 1998 album Rumba Para Monk the concert took its name) and David Pastor on trumpet; tenor player Eladio Reinón; clarinetist Doan Manfugás; Bebo's duo partner, bassist Javier Colina; pianists Omar Sosa (who has since begun a US tour with his sextet Omar Sosa Afri-Lectric; he's in San Rafael, California tonight), Lázara Cachao (daughter of Cachaíto), Javier Massó "Caramelo," Mauricio Vallina (playing Lecuona and Cervantes) and Paloma Manfugás; and a troupe of ten indefatigable dancers. 

Importantly for our story today, the concert also featured a Cuban group based in Barcelona called Malongo, led by Lázaro Montalvo, collaborating with Omar Sosa.  It was set up like a rumba group, with three cajones and a coro de clave, but half of the members, said Omar, were "not professional musicians, they're religion people. They do this in ceremony." They did only one number, but it was an extended number based on palo monte tradition (from the Kongo religion of Cuba) -- "a piece to honor the ancestors, for Bebo," said Omar. It ended with them singing the name "Bebo Valdés" as a coro. It gave me goosebumps, and not only me.  

© Lorenzo Duaso

Let me see if I can analyze this in Kongo terms.

In Kongo thought, there are two worlds, the living and the dead, which are in constant contact with each other. There are spirits called simbi, which are present everywhere. Messages pass between the worlds in the form of sinsu and ndimbu, both of which words show up in a Kikongo dictionary as "signal," but which have complementary meanings in Kongo thought.  I won't pretend to explain them, but when I interviewed Bárbaro Martínez Ruiz in July 2012 in Mbanza-Kongo, he put it like this:

Everything around us is full of sinsu and ndimbu. It’s the way [the Bakongo] understand communication…

In the religious domain… when you have to articulate a desire and you have to call upon ancestors, you have to call upon the simbi. Simbi is the kind of vitality that is everywhere… you have to go into the realm of religion when you want to have an exchange with simbi. That exchange needs to happen through the formalized language – language as a mechanism that allows you to exchange what you want, and the simbi receive what you want and answer you back…

The way to communicate to simbi is to write down on a piece of paper what you want…and at that very moment when you write it down on a piece of paper, it’s ndimbu… But the moment that simbi receives that request, he cannot write you back… the only way the simbi can articulate what they want you to know is not through ndimbu, because they are not capable of writing ndimbu. It has to be through sinsu, because sinsu is the one that has to be an abstraction that can only come to you through thinking or through dreams [emphasis added].

© Lorenzo Duaso

I believe I saw this principle in operation in Barcelona Tuesday night. The message was received. For the finale, the whole cast assembled on stage, maybe 45 musicians, prominently featuring the aforementioned Malongo, who fit beautifully with the virtuosic percussion of the Afro Cuban Messengers. Plus all the dancers and some audience members. 

They did a new tune that Chucho brought, called "Rumba Para Bebo," during which the most extraordinary thing happened.  After a certain point, with the whole cast joining in, a stage jammed full of high-quality musicians making a fat sound and dancers pushing the movement, Chucho was no longer directing it.  No one was. I don't know how apparent it will be in the audio and video recordings, but what I felt in the room was that the music had taken charge of the hall and they couldn't stop. The music was playing the musicians. It went on and on, breaking down and building back up, gathering energy the whole time as they sang a typical rumba-style coro: vamos, con permiso, vamos . . . The only reason it stopped was that Cararach was advised by his production manager that the situation was becoming dangerous, because the stage floor might not be able to take the intensity of so many people dancing on it, so he reluctantly had Chucho cut the music off.  

The next afternoon Chucho explained to me how he composed the final number. "I dreamed he [Bebo] was singing me a song," he said. Bebo and Chucho had the same birthday, October 9 (1918 and 1941, respectively), and this year was Chucho's first birthday since Bebo passed. He woke up that morning with a tune in his head. "Bebo gave me the melody," he told me. Chucho wrote it down, and titled it "Rumba Para Bebo."

It was a tune his father had dictated to him from the other side, on their mutual birthday.

You can't get more sinsu than that.  

© Lorenzo Duaso