'Jazz Batá 2', Cuban composer, pianist and bandleader Chucho Valdés' first album for Mack Avenue Records, marks a new peak of creativity for the artist, even as it revisits the small-group concept of his 1972 album 'Jazz Batá'.
That album upon release was originally considered experimental at the time, but the trio project - featuring no drum set and two virtuosi who would subsequently be charter members of Irakere: Carlos del Puerto (bass) and Oscar Valdés (batâ: the sacred, hourglass shaped drums of the Yoruba religion in Cuba) - would now be considered contemporary.
Recorded in two and a half days at John Lee's studio in New Jersey, 'Jazz Batá 2' is both rhythmic and lyrical at once. The six-hand complexity of the batá repertoire - the deep classical music of West Africa - permeates Valdés' piano solos throughout the album. "I applied to my solos the different rhythms of the batá," he says. "The piano is of course a harmonic instrument, but it's percussive too, and you can play percussion with it."
It's an exceptionally tight band. All of the three supporting musicians - Yaroldy Abreu Robles, Dreiser Durruthy Bombalé, and Yelsy Heredia - are from the Guantánamo region and have deep roots in Cuban musical culture as well as being conservatory-trained. Yaroldy, who plays a wide variety of drums - congas, batá, bongó, orchestral percussion - has been working with Valdés for twenty years. "He always knows what I'm going to want to do," says Valdés.
