The outstanding Cuban jazz player Chucho Valdés will not be in the most important jazz festival on the island, the International Jazz Plaza Festival 2013 event in which he was expected to be honored along his late father Bebo Valdes, who died on March 22 this year.
The organizers announced at a press conference that the festival, which will take place from December 19 through the 22 in various stages of Havana, will be dedicated to Big Figures of Cuban Jazz, which would pay tribute to a long list of exceptional musicians in just four days.
Given the logical question of whether some action specifically dedicated to the life and work of Bebo, Gloria Ochoa, vice president of the Cuban Institute of Music is contemplated, replied that they had thought rather to remember all those who in one way or another have had to do with the greatness of the genre on the island by exquisite concerts that converge more established artists and new Cuban generations, along with several foreign participants.
Previously the D’Cuba Jazz website had announced that the 29 International Jazz Plaza Festivals, according to sources from the organizing committee, would be dedicated to Bebo and Chucho, and that the inauguration would be a concert that the son would offer his deceased father.
However, in an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE on November 7, Chucho said he would not attend the event, but he did not specify the reasons for his decision.
Nearly nine months after the death of Bebo Valdés, Cuba has taken no concrete initiative to pay tribute to the work of the notorious pianist and composer who left the island in the 60s.
With 94 when he died, on more than one occasion he publicly stated his disagreement with the internal politics of his home country, so that his music was banned in the Greater Antilles, decision that Chucho described as frustrating and fought against it.
In recent months the founder of the legendary band Irakere has offered a series of concerts around the world promoting his latest album Border-free in which he reverenced the figure of his father, especially in the song titled Bebo .
The Jazz Plaza 2013 is maintained, no doubt as a festival of the highest level, but the expectations created by the participation of Chucho and the expected and necessary tribute to Bebo, that will no longer be, has undermined its brightness, then as a pending debt with the musical history of the country by the Cuban cultural authorities.
