Jazz Plaza Festival. A nameless party

"At the end of 1978 I received a call from the fellow Barbara Castillo (Baby), who served as head of activities at the House of Culture in Plaza. She wanted me to take some jazz shows weekly. I accepted and I gave myself the task of implementing a lesson learned in my time of Musical Theater of Havana: Alfonso Arau, our director and complete artist, had taught me to always hold the show imposing myself to any impediment (lack of publicity, audio, instruments, musicians, etc.). These shows were held in the small theater of the Casa. And almost everyone who was worthy and shone in the Havana music scene and the island in general went there. "

"Indeed, the first festival, in February 14, 1980, dedicated to Valentine's Day, was a total success. Two years later, with the presence of Tania Maria, Brazilian pianist and singer based in New York, the festival had more recognition and international character. Laco Deczy, Czech saxophonist; Richie Cole, from United States, Jane Bunnett, from Canada, and Ronney Scott, from England, were the first foreigners to participate. Later, Dizzy Gillespie himself, Leon Thomas. Charlie Haden and other great figures gave a transcendental character to the festival, which, with ups and downs and against all odds, has remained intact despite these gales ".

The above is part of a text published by the showman Bobby Carcasses with the title "Historia del nacimiento de los Jazz Plaza", ("History of the birth of the Jazz Plaza") compilation in which from his founder condition of this important event in the music world in Cuba narrates the beginning of this contest , that thirty-four years after its inception has been essential in the fact that enables the successive emergence to the local scene of several emerging generations of artists who make today an evolved Cuban music to contemporary, from well modern timbre concepts and chordal complex structures, uncommon in our environment until the decade of the eighties.

Pucho Lopez, Ernán Lopez Nussa, Gabriel Hernandez, Osmani Sánchez, Miguel Nunez, Orlando Sánchez, Reynaldo Melian, Omar Hernández, Oscarito Valdés, Oriente Lopez and Gonzalo Rubalcaba were some who impregnated the refreshing breath to the Cuban soundscape. To this should be added that these events have enabled the fruitful exchange between jazz musicians of Cuba and personalities who have contributed to the Jazz Plaza --- literally for their love to music and the pleasure of sharing with the Cubans, because they do not get any economic remuneration ---, like the Brazilian Airto Moreira and Tania Maria, Canadians Bunnet Jane and Larry Cramer, European Ronnie Scott, Tete Montoliu, Andy Sheppard, Jim Mullens, Sophia Domancich, Chano Domínguez and Jorge Pardo, and a long list of US among which we would include Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Carmen McRae, Charlie Haden, Roy Hargrove, Jack De Jonette, Ramsey Lewis, Steve Turre, Terence Blanchard, Nicholas Payton, Kenny Barron and Ronnie Matthews. Such payroll shows that through its history and despite its limited resources and certain organizational problems --- --- we must say, the modest Havana festival has hosted many of the most important in the field of jazz international of the recent decades.

But the marriage between jazz and music from Cuba is not so young. Leonardo Acosta and Danilo Orozco have amply demonstrated the participation of Cuban musicians in the city of New Orleans during the beginning of jazz. Such symbiosis is logical that occured, if we think that jazz is an expression of a clear process of hybridization between African and European, rhythmic and melodic, all trends that also occur in Cuban music, in which the improvisation has always played a leading role.

For the readers to have an idea, it should be noted that the first flute solo recorded in the history of American jazz was recorded in 1929 by a Cuban who had settled in New York, Alberto Socarrás, with the workpiece Have You Ever Felt That Way ?, by Clarence Williams. In the thirties, Socarrás conducted an orchestra in which the then young Dizzy Gillespie learned to play the maracas and discovered the principle of the keys. Following this story, one of the first songs that mixed Latin and jazz ingredients, now valued as a classic of Latin jazz or Afro-Cuban jazz --- later renamed  cubop by Dizzy Gillespie --- was a composition by Mario Bauza performed in 1943 by Machito Orchestra and was entitled Tanga. No wonder John Storm Roberts, in his book The Latin Tinge, has written: "Alberto Socarrás in the thirties and Machito in the forties in were among the most experimental musicians of the era, and both were Cubans."

In the late forties, with the bebop movement a close relationship between musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Chano Pozo, Machito and Mario Bauza is generated. Thus, the Cuban component begins to be an important part of the evolution of jazz. There is abundant literature that attests to the fact that 1948 onwards, with the meeting Gillespie-Pozo and early afrocuban jazz boom and after the success of the piece called Manteca --- --- by Chano Pozo, begins a diasporic process of Cuban musicians who will settle to the United States to the demand that occurs at the time of percussionists born on this side of the world.

Thus the prodigious North American racing figures of our homeland as Candido Camero, Chano Pozo, Mongo Santamaria, Armando Peraza, Julito Collazo, Oreste Vilató, Carlos Patato Valdes, Francisco Aguabella and Marcelino Valdés starts. All of them were bearer of a singular way to run percussion they had acquired in Cuba and that carried with them to move to settle in the United States. Along with this list of drummers, also move to that country other Cuban jazz musicians such as Chico O'Farrill, Chombo Silva and Gustavo Mas, just to allude to some names.

After the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 and the breakdown of relations between the United States and Cuba, the cessation of natural musical exchange between the two countries occurs. It is not until 1977 that Dizzy Gillespie and a group of US jazz musicians traveled to Havana and an exchanged between musicians of our two countries takes place, a first approach of tremendous importance that contributed that during March 2, 3 and 4, 1979, under the auspices of CBS Records and thanks to brief diplomatic thaw step of President Carter, happened what is known as Havana Jam, in the theater Carlos Marx, occasion in which so renowned people like Weather Report, true pillar of jazz rock visited Cuba.

When the history of Jazz Plaza began in 1980, the vast majority of local exponents of jazz could not devote full time to the event, but they earned their livelihood in popular music groups, a situation that has changed with the passage of time. In 1983 the festival acquired international category, with the participation of foreign jazz musicians. In the nineties, and in tune with what was happening in other events of the same kind, especially in Europe, the main Cuban dance music groups begin to participate in the festival, whose payroll included not few jazz musicians. In 1998, the event was no longer annual and it was celebrated on a biennial basis, which fortunately was brief. Under the influence of Jazz Plaza, for some time the contest was selected to deliver the Iberjazz Award, sponsored by the Spanish institutions SGAE and the Author Foundation. But the party of Cuban jazz is not dedicated exclusively to music: with concerts and shows the symposia and Salon Foto Jazz  are developed, founded by the artist of lens Elio Ojeda.

In this brief story it should be noted that however long the program of Jazz Plaza is --- has lasted a week --- or more locations are added --- between the primary and secondary --- musicians and fans are never completely satisfied, because what they want is a systematic programming of gender and not just a specific journey. In that way, we have tried to keep alive the jazz flame the full year, through the creation of nightclubs where exponents of the genre are presented. In correspondence with such longing, in the second half of the eighties the Maxim Rock in Havana arose as a Jazz club that had in the figure of Bobby Carcasses its sponsor and host. Unfortunately, the project died and it was not until the second half of the nineties that the initiative is resumed, this time in a place named La Zorra y el Cuervo (The Fox and the Crow), located in the most central area of the Cuban capital. Then there have been other places: the Jazz Café, one under the name of Irakere Club and sponsored by Chucho Valdés, but failed, some of short duration in provinces like Las Tunas and Holguin, one in Santiago de Cuba --- still in force- - as well as clubs in the style of the Havana neighborhood of Santa Amalia, the Cuban Jazz Club in its second season and others less known, but with enthusiastic attendees.

It is important to say that in the international participation in the Jazz Plaza the lines of diplomatic policy of American US governments towards Cuba have always influenced. From 1992 to 2003, and especially after 1996, the application by the US authorities of a more open approach with regard to travels between the two nations, enabled a significant musical exchange US to Cuba and vice versa, which it was seen in a special way in a genre like jazz. In late 2003 the government of George W. Bush ended the opening; contacts have been restored with the Obama administration.

The History of Jazz Plaza, an event that as Lezama verb would say --- --- is a nameless party, corroborates an idea expressed by Leonardo Acosta in his essay "Interinfluencias y confluencias entre las músicas de Cuba y los Estados Unidos" ("Interinfluence and similarities between the music of Cuba and the United States",  when he says: "The presence of Cuban touch virtually in every genre of popular music of the United States, as John Storm Roberts noted, and jazz and its variants in Cuban popular music, at least from danzon to nowadays, historically creates a territory aside, of mutual fertilization, which has been able to withstand more than forty years of rupture and isolation between the two countries and conflict in some areas. The resumption, although in a quite modest extent, of certain types of bilateral exchange in this area, makes perceive the music, and especially the Afro-Latin jazz, as a privileged meeting place between two cultures, which is saying something. "