Alfredo Rodríguez Jr. joins a Cuban and a Cameroonian: a dangerous jazz trio

December 18, 2019

Alfredo Rodríguez's debut in Argentina alongside his countryman Pedrito Martínez and Cameroonian Richard Bona, which took place on December 9th at the Vorterix Theater in Buenos Aires, can be summed up like this: naturalness, courage, ease; all of it sounding great. Two hours of electrifying energy that were really three, because before that they held a master class just a few meters away, at the Berlina Vorterix beer bar, located in the Colegiales area.

The place is set up for things like this to happen—where while you're drinking a mug of dark beer, Pedrito Martínez flips a chair and demonstrates how he manages to draw ancestral sounds from the wood that was a tree before becoming a chair. "It's incredibly hard," he laments. Rodríguez's piano is added, Bona's bass, but… wait, the concert comes later! Before that, the audience present had listened to the Cubans, who spoke more and explained what this project was about.

Playing together was a brilliant recent idea, so recent that on the poster at the theater's front columns you could read that, instead of Pedrito Martínez, another instrumentalist, barely identified as TPQ would be the accompanist. TPQ actually means The Pocket Queen and it's about young Taylor Gordon, a talented nineteen-year-old girl born in New Orleans who is already a jazz star playing drums. In the end, for some reason I don't know, Gordon didn't make it to Buenos Aires and we discovered Martínez in her place.

Pedrito Martínez is a 46-year-old percussionist who has spent the last 22 years in New York. He was part of the Yerba Buena band, has participated in several jazz festivals, and appeared in that famous documentary by Fernando Trueba from 2000, Calle 54, alongside masters of Cuban music living in exile such as Cachao, Paquito D´Rivera, or Bebo Valdés.

For some time, Pedrito used to perform frequently on stages in Japan, but the United States and, especially, New York has been the city to which he owes the highest levels of a career that began in the Havana neighborhood of Cayo Hueso. There, at sacred ceremonies, he learned to communicate through the batá drum, to find the rhythm of the streets in congas, after which he assisted popular musicians, his teachers. In that environment he understood the rigor that comes with devoting oneself to music.

In 2012 Martínez and Alfredo Rodríguez worked together for the first time in a presentation of the album Sounds Of Space, the first material Rodríguez recorded with Mack Avenue Records after establishing himself at age 22 in Los Angeles. His fascination with jazz and the praise of the brilliant producer Quincy Jones, who has been his mentor since meeting him in 2006 during the Montreux Jazz Festival, took him to that country.

By then, Rodríguez was just a new jewel of Cuban jazz, leader of a generation of extremely talented musicians like Gastón Joya or Ernesto Vega, and son of one of the most popular singers of the eighties in Cuba: Alfredito Rodríguez. He had been seen with him on Cuban television and, taking advantage of a tour through Mexico, the young pianist, today a recognized 34-year-old musician and Grammy-nominated in 2015 for his arrangement of Guantanamera, decided to make the leap by crossing the U.S. border to advance his career.

Just as he has achieved goals he never even dreamed of, Alfredo Rodríguez lives one of the main challenges that every emigrant faces: continuing from another place the culture of the country where you were born, a culture that has given you the recognition by which you are distinguished. Something similar has happened to Martínez. "That's why sometimes I throw in a shout or drop a phrase in a song; it's what I am," he says, and adds: "I learned onomatopoetically. There are many phantom movements that cannot be expressed in a score. In music, the facts are what count."

For his part, Rodríguez is convinced that there is a Cuban culture inside and another outside the island. Things continue to happen there that those far away miss, but meanwhile those outside are incorporating elements from a world that those who don't leave their environment don't know. It's the dilemma and the test for the artist to sustain himself. "I left because I needed to experience something different, I needed to make mistakes in a different way. Everything I was hearing sounded very similar. Music changes. The words I speak today are not the same words I spoke ten years ago."

All this knowledge, that need to continue cultivating oneself in other worlds, to "humbly mix what I have learned, because we all have something to give," just as Rodríguez puts it, can be felt when they come together on stage, when they perform, for example, Yo volveré, an emotional song that belongs to the album Duologue, the work of the two that came to market this year.

"Basically we made the album over the phone. Alfredito would send me melodies and I would respond to him. I also couldn't play the drums in my apartment, so I would send him many of the sounds with my voice," Pedrito points out.

On Duologue you can find eleven songs, originals and versions of classics like the famous Punto cubano, by Celina González and Reutilio Domínguez, or Thriller that elevated Michael Jackson to the pantheon of pop music. Quincy Jones suggested they include it on their album, and after all, Thriller is still the song that gives its name to one of the best-selling albums in history, whose producer was precisely Jones.

In 2013, Pedrito Martínez released his first solo work: The Pedrito Martínez Group. "I made all the instruments. It sounded really bad because I recorded it with two microphones, but my essence is there," he says. A year later, on his side Rodríguez released The Invasion Parade, followed in 2016 by Tocororo, an incredible album for which he had the collaboration of artists like the twins Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz, Ibeyi; Ibrahim Maalouf, or Richard Bona himself, who though silent during the master class demonstrated on stage that he is a musician of incredible virtuosity.

Richard Bona is 52 years old and began to shine in the Parisian jazz circles of the nineties. He had arrived after leaving Cameroon at age 22 following his father's death. The decade ended for him in New York, the city where he had been established since 1995.

His discreet, meek personality doesn't change when with the electric bass he interprets his own creations or those of others; then the spirit of music takes over his body and that is what predominates. He demonstrated it in melodies of his own authorship and in versions of classics like Alfonsina y el mar or Ay, Mamá Inés; the latter can be heard on the album Tocororo.

Perfect contrast that of these three: electrifying and playful manner of Alfredo Rodríguez, force of street rage behind the drums in Martínez, freshness of cool breeze in Bona's style. Bona, Martínez, and Rodríguez achieve a perfect blend of rhythms whose foundation lies in the continent from which we come down to the blue-eyed: Africa, how much we owe you!