I think its the country where I was born. Panama is a very diverse country.

Its a
palce where I have fotten to hear, since I was a kid, from Papo Lucca to Horowitz to
Louis Armstrong to caloypso to folklore music to sala to Peuerto Rican, Brazilian.
And I had a chance to play sals with my father. Then I played with some Brazilians,
Brazilian music. Then I played at the conservatory classical recitals. And I had an
incredible experience from the beginning. Thats all due to my father. Mty father
was a singer and he taught me the art of listening.

There is not so much categorizationThe radio would play Bob Marley and then
Michael Jackson would and then would play Horowitz and then would play Papo
Lucca. Its the country which is such a melting pot. We have Indians that came to
work for the canal, from India not the indigenous Indians from Panama. There are
black people that came from Peru from Portobello. I mean the slaves, preColumbian. Theres the Columbian connection. Its superbly wide. Thats what
Panama is really about, a melting pot.

The Panamanians had their own unique version of Calypso music. But the trumpet
player was a fan of Dizzy Gillespie, Gene White. And there was a piano player that
sounded like Art Tatum. There was the influence of Peruchin from Cuba who lived in
Panama for 15 years. And then Papo Lucca was really the one in context of popular
and commercial music, Salsa that was very famous. He borrowed this bebop-ish
thing in his playing, a little essence, a little tinge of that that made it unique.

Unsure of his stylistc goals he found himself gravitating toward pianist Donald
Brown.Paquito opened up another door for me because Paquito started basically
questioning me like, Lets do a Waltz from aVeneauelza. And I grew up listening to
that but I was so into Red Garland and Herbie and it was hard man. Paquito said,
Lets improvise like Mozart on stage. And I was like Oh,man,cmon! It was
important for me to go through that because it not only gave me the space to
develop a system, a flavor, a connection of all the things I was born with but also it
gave me a chance to truly understand that it is always important to keep a
connection with the essence of your culture
I think one of the things is like people make the connection with Latin music only
from the period of Machito and Dizzy Gillespie, but they forget that the Latin tinge
was already in the air from the beginning with Jelly Roll Morton, with William C.
Handy when he wrote St. Lous Blues. The music already had a latin element to
itpeople forget that W.C. Handy was in Cuba doing military service. When you
hear the early piano players from Cuba and New Orleans you see so much

connection. The idea of playing rhythms with syncopation, the fourth element in
music thats so strong, that has its ties with Latin music.
There is a lot of separation. Actually theres a stereotype in such a way, for
example, that I feel is also a part of the knowledge of getting to know whats
happening in America and addressing America as a continent. You see theres a lot
of history that has bot been really written down. Dizzay Gillespie said that once, that
the Latinos, the ones that were in the band are getting to learn this music much
better than we are getting to know where they are coming from.

Interview by Marco Pignataro- Eric Nemeyers Jazz Inside. March 2014 Volume 5,
Number 8
Glenside PA

Jazz times Publisher Billy C.orvalan, FEB 2011 Silver Spring MD

DizzyJohn Hendricks toTerence to, Paquito

Chucho jaz times, Bebos Influence can be heard not only in Chuchos playing and
writing, but in his interest in the African roots of Afro-cuban culture as well. Amon
Bebos many achievements is the batange, a rhythm he created in the 1950s
whose roots lie in the bata. A double headed drum used in Afro-Cuban religious
ceremonies. The presence of batanga in popular music foreshadowed Chuchos
work decades later. Valdes first experimented with bata drums on Jazz Bata, a
remarkable 1972 piano trio recording in which they replace the standard drum kit.

Irakeres groundbreaking use of Afr-Cuban music in a jazz-rock context had a

surprising source of inspiration. Explains Chucho Paquito and I were in Bulgaria in
1968, and saw a Bulgarian group called Opus 65, led by an extraordinary pianist,
Milcho LevievMilcho used Bulgarian folk music, which is in odd meters, and we
looked at eachother and said, We can do that with Afro-Cuban Music. People like
Mario Bauza, Machito, and Cano Pozo had already done that, but we wanted to take
it in another direction with the bata.

Blakey was an influence for me from the beginning, says Valdes. that was one of
the groups I listened to the most: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Horace
Silver . It was an influence later for the work in Irakere, especially the use of riffs. In

Cuban dance music we had the mambos, which had interesting sequences but were
not very broad harmonically. In Irakere I started to change the mambos to riffs, and
then the riffs became longer and more complex and, I think, more interesting. That
came from what Horace Silver wrote for Art Blakey- the riffs and the harmony.

As for the small-big-band sound of Irakere, The direct influence was Blood, Sweat,
and Tears, says Paquito DRivera. Cubans of our generation had a great love for the
big band sound, but thats an unmovable best. You have to have at least 18
musicians.
BY FERNANDO GONZALEZ