Playing Favorites in a Paean to Latin Jazz Greats

Editor’s note: The documentary “Calle 54,” which reopened Friday in Los Angeles (it had a one-week Academy run late last year), is Spanish director Fernando Trueba’s love letter to Latin jazz. Here Trueba writes about his longtime relationship with the music and the musical greats who play it.

I think that the only reason why I make films is because I am not able to write novels, paint or make music. By making films, one has the feeling of doing a little bit of all of that. Latin jazz has helped me live my life, and “Calle 54” is my way of paying a debt. I have always thought that the principal goal of art is nothing other than helping people live, and I have tried, with this film, to transmit the joy that this music has, as well as the passion that I feel for it.

My first real contact with Latin jazz took place at the beginning of the ‘80s, when I listened to Paquito D’Rivera’s first American album, “Blowin’.” Before that, I had listened to some Latin albums from Dizzy Gillespie, the magisterial “Jazz/Samba” from Stan Getz with Charlie Byrd, and the best of a series of albums from Gato Barbieri from the ‘70s. But “Blowin’ ” was a revelation for me.

The exaltation that this music stirred in me made me suddenly become an unconditional fan of Paquito. And by listening to Paquito, I began a journey of discovery into a whole new world, current and past, musicians who fed what has become a great passion for me--Latin jazz.

In 1995, when I was filming the last scene of “Two Much,” I decided to include a group of musicians playing live. With Michel Carrillo, who wrote the film’s soundtrack, there was Paquito, Cachao, Mike Mossman, Guarionex Aquino and Cliff Almond. The experience was so heady, so electrifying, for everyone there--from the crew to the actors to the extras and even to the people who were walking by--that from that moment on, I began to think about the idea of devoting a film to that music. At the beginning, it seemed impossible to me, a dream.

In December 1999, with a film crew of two people--a cameraman and a sound engineer--we headed to Stockholm to begin my 10th film and one of the most unusual and pleasurable experiences of my life. In a modest apartment in Haninge, on the outskirts of the Swedish capital, we had to meet Bebo Valdes, a living legend in Cuban music who for many years has been forgotten. Thus the adventure of “Calle 54” began, although at that time we gave it the generic working title of “Latin Jazz.”

For three days, Bebo, with an infinite and thorough memory, shared with us the story of his life, Cuban music and Afro-Cuban jazz as if they were branches of the same tree. He received us in the warmest way, even though the weather was 18 degrees below zero, and we left in love with this human being. We were already in love with his music.

After Christmas, we flew to Havana to meet with Bebo’s son, Chucho Valdes, the greatest figure in Cuban music performing today and one of the most respected jazzmen in the world. The memories were repeated, between piano improvisations, visits to palaces, and walks in the Malecon and in old Havana. At the legendary Tropicana nightclub, Chucho reminisced about the first time he entered this historic temple of Cuban music holding the hand of his father, who was then the club’s musical director.

Our next stop was Puerto Rico. In the hills of Trujillo Alto we met with Jerry Gonzalez, a Nuyorican (a Puerto Rican born in New York). Jerry seemed happy in his wild territory, his “Jurassic Park,” as he calls it. However, it did not seem to us that Jerry was in his element, so far from the asphalt of his native Bronx.

And finally we arrived in New York City. The city was snowed in and experiencing the toughest cold wave in the last decade, aggravated by a wind that cut your skin. We visited Tito Puente’s restaurant in City Island (off the Bronx), where Tito talked to us about his life and proudly showed us the murals dedicated to the greats of Latin music. We went with Chico O’Farrill to Birdland, the club where he plays and leads his big band every Sunday.

When we returned to Spain, there was still one more visit we had to make. Chano Dominguez welcomed us at his house in Puerto de Santa Maria to tell us how music has been traveling back and forth from one continent to the other, mixing styles and rhythms.

After this episode, the most important thing was left--the Music. We set ourselves up at Sony Studios at 54th Street--the “Calle 54” of the title--in Manhattan. The team had grown a little bit--now we were 70 people, six Panavision cameras of 35 millimeters and the most sophisticated technology to record live sound. And, during two weeks, every day, Jose Luis Lopez Linares reinvented the stage with a different light.

A diverse group of Spanish, French, North American, Cuban, Russian and Senegalese people completely forgot their respective nationalities under the bewitchment of a music in which roots do not mean frontiers, in which the crossing of races is the supreme value. Perhaps this is the most beautiful lesson that can be extracted from this music after being savored by the senses and the heart.

In my world, one of the basic rules of friendship is to share. A friend is a person who introduces you to books, films, music, other friends. The objective of “Calle 54” is none other than to share a musical feast with anybody who is open to sharing this experience.

I have tried to avoid didacticism; I think the music speaks for itself. And in the musical selection I have been rigorously subjective. There will be some people who will ask themselves, why is this there instead of that. Setting aside commercial, critical, musical and historical criteria, I limited myself to following one of the few rules that really matter to me: to film that which I love.