MUSIC-USA: Roy Hargrove’s Crisol Updates Cuba’s Jazz Groove

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Sep 9 1997 (IPS) - Ever since the 1959 revolution in Cuba, the 90 miles of water separating the Caribbean island and the southern tip of Florida have seemed like the longest distance in the world. Now jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove is trying to bridge that gap – the U.S. embargo on Cuba notwithstanding.

U.S. jazz musicians often worked in tandem with Cuban mambo experts in the past, most notably when trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie collaborated with percussionist Chano Pozo and bandleader ‘Machito’ in the 1950s to forge a trend called ‘Afro-Cubop’. But that was a different era, when U.S. tourists freely visited the Cuba of dictator Fulgencio Batista, with its strong ties with the Mafia.

President John F. Kennedy imposed the embargo on Cuba in 1962, three years after Fidel Castro came to power, and American tourists and musicians became a rareity in the nightclubs of Havana.

Hargrove, one of the brightest young trumpeters around, visited Cuba in February 1996, when he stayed at Havana’s Hotel Riviera in an attempt to become better acquainted with Gillespie’s Afro- Cubop style. He met up with such famed Cuban musicians as Chucho Valdes, pianist and founder of the hard-driving ‘Grupo Irakere’, and Jose Luis ‘Changuito’ Quintana, percussionist for the experimental dance group ‘Los Van Van’. It was there that Hargrove hatched the idea of playing with Cuban musicians in a group.

US-Cuban relations being what they are, that group took a long time to be formed, with Hargrove striking up friendships with Cuban conga player Miguel ‘Anga’ Diaz in Switzerland last summer, playing with Valdes in New York that fall and slowly developing his own Latin-influenced sound.

Finally, it all came together at the Umbria Winter Jazz Festival in Orvieto, Italy, in December, when Hargrove first presented ‘Crisol’ – or ‘melting pot’ – a band combining 10 US, Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians.

Crisol’s first forays into Latin jazz have now been preserved in Hargrove’s latest album, ‘Habana’ (on Verve), and, true to its name, the band can cook up a storm. Powered by percussionists Changuito and Anga and drummer Horacio ‘El Negro’ Hernandez, the group has a fierce backbeat with which few U.S. bands could compete. Combined with Valdes’s witty, lively piano playing and compositional skills, Crisol comes alive on such charging, up- tempo songs as ‘Mr Bruce’ and ‘Mambo for Roy’.

At the same time, Crisol’s Latin-jazz sound is familiar enough to New Yorkers, featuring such prominent modern jazz horn players as Puerto-Rican born saxophonist David Sanchez, trombonist Frank Lacy and saxophonist Gary Bartz. Many of the songs on ‘Habana’ – especially Hargrove’s own compositions, ‘Dream Traveler’, ‘Ballad for the Children’ and ‘The Mountains’ – are mellow, minor-key pieces with sensitive ensemble playing and a smooth rhythmic backdrop. On songs like those, Crisol’s sound seems like a better- played version of the “light jazz” music that proliferates on U.S. radio and in elevators.

At other times, however, when Valdes and the rhythm section – which also includes Puerto Rican bassist John Benitez – come to the fore, the group is fiery and hard-driving. Crisol’s more propulsive sound suits Hargrove well: at a performance at the United Nations last year with Anga and Hernandez, the trumpeter shook off the restraint sometimes heard on his records to play passionate, lyrical bursts reminiscent of Gillespie’s style. On the ‘Habana’ album, Hargrove also pays tribute to the often under- appreciated trumpeter Kenny Dorham, playing wonderful new versions of his songs ‘Una Mas’ and ‘Afrodisia’.

Crisol may be a promising group, but one wonders how easy it will be for its members to meet. Changuito, Valdez, Anga and Hernandez all live in Cuba and play for different groups – Hernandez ofen works with noted pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba – and are unlikely to find a comfortable environment in the United States, where Cuban-Americans only tend to welcome anti-Castro defectors (like former Irakere saxophonist Paquito d’Rivera). Hargrove himself is part of a U.S. jazz mainstream that has often been blamed for treating Latin jazz as a less “serious” genre.

As a result, whether Crisol represents the first major mixing of U.S. and Cuban jazz stars in decades, or simply an intriguing one-time project, remains an open question. But for now, at least, a new jazz hybrid is crossing the tense 90-mile border that separates Havana from the tip of the United States, and it should make listeners drop their differences and dance.