Afro-Cuban Salsa legend Bebo Valdes, dead at 94

[alistair.blankley]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2013/03/22/175080694/bebo-vald-s-giant-of-cuban-music-is-dead

Sad news for every jazz fan.  He left us lots of wonderful music, and he also left us Chucho.

If you like Latin jazz, seek out Calle 54, a more joyful, less pretentious and tedious celebration of the type of music Ry Cooder helped bring us in Buena Vista Social Club. In addition to Bebo & Chucho (father and son playing together for the first time in 40 years, since Bebo left Cuba in 1960), you will see breathtaking, scintillating performances and fascinating interviews with Gato Barbieri, Paquito D'Rivera, Eliane Elias, Tito Puente and many other legends of jazz from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Latin America and Spain.

[irsm]

Yeah, and not long ago, we also lost the great bass player, Cachao.  But Cuba keeps producing wonderful musicians, generation after generation.  Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Dafnis Prieto, Arturo Sandoval, Changuito, Paquito d'Riviera, and many more.  Ry Cooder barely scratched the surface, but was responsible for introducing the music to a broader audience, kind of like what Paul Simon did for African music.

Irsm

[alistair.blankley]

Yeah, and not long ago, we also lost the great bass player, Cachao.  But Cuba keeps producing wonderful musicians, generation after generation.  Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Dafnis Prieto, Arturo Sandoval, Changuito, Paquito d'Riviera, and many more.  Ry Cooder barely scratched the surface, but was responsible for introducing the music to a broader audience, kind of like what Paul Simon did for African music.

Irsm

I hadn't heard about Cachao. Sad.

I realized after posting that my comment was a little hard on Cooder's film, it is a wonderful document and did a great service in exposing the music to a wider audience and capturing the story of artists who otherwise would have been forgotten. But it did make me fidget at times, and at others it was a bit twee.  I just found Calle 54 to be so much more intimate and emotionally engaging. If I watched them again side by side, I might not feel the same.