I have watched these videos time and again, especially the Cuban ones with Emiliano, and Miguel Valdés has inspired me a lot. There's another one, "Capullito de Alelí" (
https://youtu.be/9KiaQdFzeg4) by Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández.
All Latin- /Afo-Cuban Jazz musicians should have studied Emiliano's work, especially the pianists, and I'm sure that at least the Cubans like Gonzalito Rubalcaba have done it.
Before the Cuban Revolution 1959, there was constant exchange between North American and Cuban musicians, and not only did Cuban music influence North American Jazz, but also Cuban musicians played North American Jazz, including Jazz harmonies. Leonardo Acosta makes a strong point about this in his book
Cubano Be, Cubano Bop, and I can hear that in the styles of the musicians who were active in the Cuban Descarga era. I have just checked out Felipe Dulzaides, who, by the way, did some awfully cheesy stuff, too. On one of these records we can hear a young José Luis Quintana playing congas!
After the revolution, the cultural exchange was shut down, except for a minimum of scarce guest performances, and this blockade was brought about by the political leaders of both Cuba and the U.S., and at the same time lamented by artists on both sides. Let me cite a statement of the Cuban Communist Party from 1977, translated by Robin Moore in his book
Music & Revolution:
"The creations of the oppressor nation are presented as objects of universal value, a standard against which the cultural products of the exploited country are measured. The latter are valued on the basis of how closely they conform to established foreign models. Those that diverge from them are deprecated and considered simple or inferior products. Dominant interests would have the oppressed country believe that the language, customs, habits, and arts of the oppressor are in every way superior to its own and that, in consequence, it will renounce its own nature, content itself with imitating, and distance itself from the forces that could contribute to its liberation. In so doing, it would not only impoverish itself but also leave itself spiritually and materially at the mercy of the enemy." [2006:23]
I'd like to leave this statement uncommented. All I want to say is that the history of the country in which I was born, has shown that any kind of cultural isolation has a destructive effect on the arts and artists, eventually exposing them to spiritual starvation.
The incorporation of Afro-Cuban folkloric elements, in which Irakere was probably the leading force, might not only have been the product of a creative artistic decision, but also the free fare ticket to perform Jazz, because Paquito, Chucho, Arturo Sandoval, Carlos Emilio Morales and Enrique Plá were all Jazz guys. They loved Be-Bop.
One stylistic and harmonic development that took place in U.S. American Jazz after 1959 was the evolution of the modal concept. Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" was released exactly in 1959, and Coltrane became its first major exponent with his own quartet, featuring McCoy Tyner on the piano. I don't know how much truth is to this, but in the 1980s I overheard that Emiliano Salvador and McCoy Tyner were pen pals. Whether it is true or not, we can definitely hear a lot of McCoy in Emiliano's playing. Emiliano died in 1992 at the age of 41.
Another remarkable Jazz band from that era was Afro-Cuba (not the folklore group from Matanzas).
I think, Paquito's autobiography could tell me more about that time, although already from 1980 on, he was no longer in Cuba.
Thomas