VALLEY WEEKEND : CENTERPIECE : Opening Doors With Jazz : Cuban Pianist Chucho Valdes to Play at CSUN During Rare U.S. Visit

Music may be the universal language, but that doesn’t keep it from getting stopped at some borders.

When pianist Jesus (Chucho) Valdes and his 11-piece band, Irakere, electrified American audiences at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1978, they were the first Cuban group to play in the United States since the Cuban revolution. In 1979 when they won a Grammy in the Latin music category, they weren’t allowed back into the United States to pick it up.

Such is life for Cuban musicians in the seemingly endless era of the embargo. Recordings have to be made in studios in Europe or Asia and released through deals with foreign labels. Royalty money can’t go back to Cuba--at least not directly. And live performances in the United States are few and far between.

Valdes performs his West Coast debut at 8 tonight at the Cal State Northridge Performing Arts Center. The organizers of Valdes’ visit, inspired by his virtuosic skill and musical range, waded through reams of letters, requests and triplicate government forms to get him a rare visa to visit from Cuba. And that visa, by the way, is educational. So this is not a concert. It’s a cultural exchange.

Close enough. It’s Americans’ first chance since 1987--when Irakere played at the Chicago Jazz Festival--to see the pianist who Blue Note records president Bruce Lundvall called, “Art Tatum, but with an Afro-Cuban accent.”

Valdes has lived his entire 54 years at the center of Cuba’s jazz scene. The son of famed composer-arranger-pianist Bebo Valdes, by age 3 he was plucking out melodies on his first toy, the family piano. At 8, he started studying classical music at the Conservatory of Music in Havana, then switched to private instructors at 16, about the time he started his first jazz trio.

By 1967, the trio was a quintet. All the members had been recruited to play for the Cuban Modern Music Orchestra--a big band group established by Cuba’s minister of culture. Jazz was popular musically, but because of its association with American culture, it wasn’t popular politically. So they played jazz, they just didn’t call it jazz.

The same linguistic limitations followed the formation of Irakere six years later, as saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera recalled. “We had trouble forming the band. That was such a struggle. It was a pain in the neck. They said it was a pro-jazz band, and we had to deny that. We had to deny jazz,” said D’Rivera. “Because jazz is a four-letter word. Jazz means freedom.”

Breaking from the Modern Music Orchestra to form Irakere was a bold move. Valdes explained through a translator that they chose the name Irakere--a word for jungle in the Yoruban dialect of west Nigeria--as “a way of identifying ourselves with our Afro-Cuban roots in Nigeria.”

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It wasn’t long before Irakere was a source of Cuban national pride. Lundvall, who was then president of Columbia Records, remembered being escorted to an outdoor Irakere concert by Cuba’s minister of culture in the mid-1970s. “It was so shocking. It was such a great fusion of jazz and Afro-Cuban music,” said Lundvall. “I said, ‘We have to find a way to sign them.’ And eventually we did.”

But it required a lot of finessing. For the band to play in the United States, any money it earned had to go into a special account for Cuban musicians’ touring expenses. Not a dime could go back to Cuba. “You can license a product from Cuba but you can not sign an artist for services,” Lundvall explained. “And you’re not allowed to give an artist an American dollar. . . . It’s called trading with the enemy. It’s an outdated concept, but that’s what it is.”

When Irakere arrived at Carnegie Hall for the 1978 Newport Jazz Festival, it was as a last-minute addition to a bill that included pianists Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner--two of Valdes’ musical influences. Like the rest of the band, he was thrilled to share the stage with Stan Getz and Maynard Ferguson, who joined them in a jam session. They had no idea that this was the beginning of a wave of international success, a wave they would ride to a Grammy in 1979 and a Grammy nomination in 1980.

The wave ended shortly after D’Rivera defected while in Spain on a concert tour. The group rebuilt and hit another peak in the late 1980s, Valdes said. And then in 1990, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval defected in Rome while on tour with Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations’ band. Again, the band rebuilt without its virtuoso trumpet player.

Sandoval and D’Rivera, who both now reside in the United States, were founding members of Irakere. But Valdes said the group was able to continue “for the same reason that the groups of Duke Ellington and Count Basie were able to go through so many personnel changes and still remain together--because the people who didn’t leave those groups were Basie and Ellington. I’m the one who can’t leave.”

Right now the band is going through another shift, Valdes said. “We’re taking on new African elements--things that are being played now, specifically South African rhythms and Zulu rhythms and also music from the Congo.”

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The pianist also has been concentrating on solo work, and his 1992 release “Solo Piano” on the Blue Note label was well received by critics. The outspoken D’Rivera says this is where his friend’s true talents lie.

“I don’t think he’s great band leader. I think he’s great pianist. I’m of the opinion that he should be doing solo piano or trios, because he’s handicapped by playing with a full band,” D’Rivera said.

Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, cited Valdes ability to attract virtuoso musicians as his greatest strength. But even without Irakere, Greene is looking forward to his Northridge performance. It will be the first time he’s seen Valdes since 1990--when he and Lundvall hand-delivered two boxes of Grammy statuettes to Havana more than a decade after Irakere won them.

Greene also hopes that such shows can start to bridge the gap between Cuba and the United States so that American audiences will be able to enjoy Cuban performers, such as Gonzalo Rubalcaba or Ernan Lopez Nussa. And coming up behind them, says Valdes, is a generation of pianists with astonishing skill, thanks to conservatories that now accept--and embrace--jazz.

“These are young 15-year-old kids who play classical piano concerts and then they turn around and play like Kenny Kirkland or McCoy Tyner,” he said.

For his part, Valdes has been taking in all the American performances he can during his six-week stay arranged by Cubajazz, a San Francisco-based group that promotes and presents Afro-Cuban music. True to his educational visa, he’s also has been teaching master classes at music schools around New York and San Francisco.

After his Northridge show, he will return to the Bay Area for two more “cultural exchanges” at the Great American Music Hall on Nov. 16 and 17. Then, he will return to Havana. Which is too bad, as far as D’Rivera is concerned.

“The Cubans in Miami say all the good musicians left [Cuba] and there are no more left,” said D’Rivera with a laugh. “And the ones on the island say all the good ones are there, and none of them left.”

The truth, as always, is somewhere in between.

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DETAILS

* WHO: Cuban jazz pianist Jesus (Chucho) Valdes.

* WHERE: Cal State Northridge Performing Arts Center.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday.

* HOW MUCH: Tickets are $20.

* CALL: Ticketmaster at (213) 480-3232 or CSUN (818) 885-3943.