(EFE).- After a tour of Europe, the United Arab Emirates, part of the United States and Puerto Rico, the pianist Chucho Valdés and the singer Albita Rodríguez arrive in Miami to demonstrate at the concert Masters of Our Root that the guajira and Afro-Cuban jazz “mix perfectly”.
“Everything comes from Cuba, from Afro-Cuban music, from what they call Afro-Cubanjazz, from country music, which also has many roots in Spanish and African music. It’s a mixture of things, but everything is very Cuban,” said this Wednesday in an interview with EFE Mutt Valdes.
The pianist, composer and arranger, son of the legendary Bebo Valdés (1918-2013) and considered by critics “the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz” for 60 years, says that “he needed a female voice” and he thought of Albite.
Masters of Our Roots (Maestros de nuestras raíces), which will take place on September 22, covers the great successes of both, from “Bacalao con pan”, one of the first of Mutt with his band Irakere, to “Qué manera de quererte”, for which Albita is most remembered, but it is more than just a concert because it will be recorded on a record.
“I no longer only sing country music,” points out Albita, for whom the tenth or spinel, the meter that identifies Guajira music, is its “natural habitat”, as she told EFE in an interview in 2019 on the occasion of the departure from his album “Acoustic”.
Now Albita says she feels “in the air, like in a dream” when Mutt he breaks down his notes on the piano in front of audiences so diverse that some even do not know the Spanish language.
“Chucho and I have grown up betting on Cuban music in different ways, but with the same roots. So the experience of singing in front of people who don’t speak the language always surprises me,” says Albita.
“ Mutt he goes in and out of different styles with ease, with a mastery, with a virtuosity that makes it very easy for this to be, as he says, a single piece of music,” said the Cuban, who in 1993 crossed the southern US border with her band , after a success in Colombia ( Parranda, lute and son) that opened the doors of the world to him.
“ Mutt and I have grown up betting on Cuban music in different ways, but with the same roots. So I’m always surprised by the experience of singing in front of people who don’t speak the language, and seeing how they ask for another (song),” says Albita.
“How they like it when you sing the solo or when they do tumbaos combined with jazz, moments in which one is reaffirmed,” she adds, looking at Muttthe winner of two Grammys and an Emmy.
Daughter of a couple of “repentistas” (improvisers), Martín and Minerva (Mima and Pipo), a couple that had a very famous controversy, Albita anticipates that the album Masters of Our Root it will also bring “new things”.
“There are new songs, there is one dedicated to Caridad del Cobre (patron saint of Cuba) which is music of Mutt and my lyrics, and we also have a song by maestro Jorge Luis Piloto that is very beautiful”, highlighted Albita.
The album is scheduled to be released at the end of this year “but it still takes a little while because there is a lack of mastering,” Albita said.
Now Albita says she feels “in the air, like in a dream”, when Chucho breaks down his notes on the piano in front of such diverse audiences
Winner of seven Grammy Awards and five Latin Grammys, Muttat 81 years old, says he is full of projects and does not rule out any with Arturo Sandoval, the famous trumpeter who founded the band Irakere with him in 1973.
In July 2022 he published the album I Missed You Too! together with Paquito D’Rivera to “make up for lost time” with another great instrumentalist from the origins of the famous Afro-Cuban jazz band.
“For me Sandoval and Paquito are one of the two greatest things I have known in the history of music. What I feel for both is respect, because for me, on planet Earth, musicians like them can be counted on these fingers. Look how many fingers there are”, commented Mutt.
“There will be surprises because the greats have to unite,” Chucho limited himself to saying about a reunion with Sandoval.
Masters of Our Root it will go on stage at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium as a one-off concert and is being promoted as “historic.”
It will feature the Royal Quartet, from Muttreinforced with “a slightly bigger band” to show off the metals, both artists announced.
“We have done it in many places, but that it is in our city where there are so many Cubans throughout the north, south, east and west, then it is clear…”, Albita settled.
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