Movie Reviews : Dizzy Gillespie Does ‘A Night in Havana’

There’s an unasked question hovering over Don Holland’s “A Night in Havana: Dizzy Gillespie in Cuba” (at the Nuart through Tuesday) that casts an unfortunate shadow over an otherwise infectious documentary on the great jazz trumpeter’s 1985 trip to Cuba to headline the fifth International Jazz Festival of Havana.

Gillespie himself provides the perfect opening for that question when, at the beginning of the film, he offers that he is the only member of his contingent who feels comfortable visiting Cuba in the light of so much long-held American hostility toward Castro. Why didn’t off-screen interviewer Allen Honigberg ask him why he felt this way? Why didn’t Honigberg then proceed to the heart of the matter, which would have been to ask Gillespie what he thinks about Cuba’s sorry history in regard to human rights, and those of minorities in particular. The question really is pertinent because Gillespie does bring up the oppression of blacks in America and because he is made to look naive when he remarks that in contrast to Cuba during the corrupt Batista regime, “Havana now looks so peaceful.”

You have to believe Dizzy Gillespie is too sophisticated not to know the score about the history of freedom of expression under Castro and not to take too seriously the dictator’s expansive personal welcome. Gillespie in fact emerges as an extremely shrewd, warm and wise man who enjoys an enviable harmony with himself that is reflected in his wonderfully mellow music.

He is clearly an ambassador of good will par excellence who takes great pleasure in connecting with his musical roots, explaining that the drum, which is at the heart of African music and culture, was forbidden to slaves in the United States while blacks transported to Cuba were allowed to keep theirs. The entire film depicts Gillespie enthusiastically making cross-cultural connections, bringing pleasure to thousands of Cubans with his music, famed for its innovative Afro-Cuban motifs, and discovering in a performance of the Folklorico National an exuberant preservation of African traditions.

“A Night in Havana” (Times-rated Family) concludes with Gillespie bringing his remarkable band together with that of a contingent of Cuban musicians, including pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. It is a joyous, thrilling synthesis, one that Gillespie hoped to repeat in New York only last month. But Rubalcaba and his band sadly were denied visas by the State Department.