Despite of what many people could think he is named Jesús only as a name, because his birth date does not coincide at all with the Messiah’s. His parents could have named him Enmanuel, however with that name it could have been impossible to do justice to his majesty.

The legend says that at the age of five and without any musical training he was capable of playing the piano some complicated melodies. He lived at that moment in Alquízar, a town from Havana, near Luís Marquetti, the same professor that between a lesson and another was able to make a bolero of those that touch the souls.

Like father like son, would say some. It was the least you could hope for with such a father, but Jesús Dionisio, as it appears in his baptismal certificate, was predestinate to be a musician and furthermore pianist, as his father.

Being an adolescent he used to visit Radio Progreso studios, alternating with his father in the orchestra of the latter; however his name begins to be known by the great audience since the sixties.

Under the commands of master Federico Smith he developed his skills of stand musician in the Orchestra of the Havana Musical Theater, but his passion for the Jazz overflowed every Saturday afternoon, the meetings at the Cuban Jazz Club which at that time had the headquarters at Ambassador’s Room in Havana Libre Hotel or at Parisien Cabaret of the National Hotel, and finally it was established at the Gardens of 1830 Club, on the outskirt of Vedado.

In 1965, when important changes begin to take place within the Cuban song, Chucho gets enrolled in the creation of his first musical group: Chucho Valdés y su combo with Amado Borcelá, (Guapachá) as signer.

At that moment his potentialities, not only as musician but also as renovator, were already evident. But the experience lasts short time, because Guapachá dies suddenly and Chucho goes back to the bookrest of an orchestra, this time the Cuban Orchestra of Modern Music, a whole constellation of stars, conducted by Armando Romeu.

But the Jazz, always the jazz, will be in his life as a constant that develops parallel; thus we get to 1969 where his name surpasses the Cuban frames

Experimentation should continue and Chucho bets to the fusion of Afro-Cuban elements with jazz, so it will begin Irakere’s era, or what is the same his legend.

Irakere, besides it is his personal dream, is the turning point of his musical carrier. Ever since he will mark the new tendencies within the Cuban and universal music and will finish the period of the latin jazz that Mario Bauzá began in the forties in the United States, that was defined by Chano Pozo next to Dizzie Gillespie when he made the genre to return to his African roots.

The truth is that Irakere is Chucho Valdés and Chucho Valdés is Irakere; they are part of the same human and musical body. Through that education passed all the best talented musicians generated in Cuba during the seventies, eighties and nineties.

But Chucho should go beyond the jazz and the experiments, therefore he returns to piano as unique and universal element and one day in the loneliness of the concert room he played again Rashmaninov and Beethoven, but with his own style, in Chucho’s way as someone said once.

Listening to Chucho is to cross from one side to another the five continents, it is also venturing to challenge tendencies and schools, but above all things it is to get inside Cuba and those exuberant mastery that is hidden behind the man that once dreamed to be a great basket player the day his hands failed.


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See more about jazz: Jazz in Cuba