"Bebo," a documentary 10 years after the death of the Cuban musician

February 24, 2023

The documentary about Bebo Valdés, co-produced by ArtesMiami and Miami businesswoman Aida Levitan, will premiere on March 7 at the Miami International Film Festival.

Cuban pianist, composer, and arranger Bebo Valdés (1918-2013), winner of nine Grammy and Latin Grammy awards after nearly 30 years in anonymity, will return to the big screen thanks to the documentary Bebo, by Ricardo Bacallao.

Bebo "had a very hard time" in exile, but never lost his "stoic" discipline and self-respect, his filmmaker told EFE.

The documentary, co-produced by ArtesMiami and Miami businesswoman Aida Levitan, will premiere on March 7 at the Miami International Film Festival with the presence of Bacallao, who, like the musician from Quivicán, is Afro-Cuban and an exile.

Bebo premieres almost in coincidence with the tenth anniversary of the pianist's death, on March 22 of this year. It contains unpublished images of the pianist, a figure of great importance for Cuban music and jazz who left his country in 1960 in opposition to Castroism and never returned.

The material, according to the Spanish agency's report, brings together testimony from three of the pianist's children and as many grandchildren, from the friends he made in Sweden, where he lived since 1963, such as Catholic deacon Pancho Chin A Loi, who left music for faith, and the famous saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, who put Valdés back on the music scene.

Bacallao, based in "cold lands" like Bebo, as he lives in Berlin, made a first version of the documentary in 2020, to which he later incorporated new materials, such as recordings of the only television interview he was given in Sweden.

It was broadcast in 2005, when Bebo had already achieved international success especially thanks to the album Lágrimas negras with flamenco singer Diego El Cigala.

Journalist Stina Dabrowski, well known in Sweden, proposed the interview with Bebo to the channel where she worked and they told her it wasn't of interest, but she insisted and they told her that if she paid for the production, they would air it and that's how it was made, says the filmmaker, who had access to the recorded material that never aired.

"Bebo did everything in Sweden, from cleaning floors to playing in a piano bar," notes the filmmaker, who has set out to ensure that in the Scandinavian country they finally recognize the artistic value of that tall Cuban with large hands who fell in love with Swedish woman Rose Marie Pehrson, with whom he had two children, Raymond and

But Bacallao's great "mission" is, according to what he told Ana Mengotti, "to document the Cuban exile, the Cuban diaspora, that is, that community scattered around the world."

"I'm sure there are many people whom no one knows were tremendous in their field. That person can pass away and no one documents it," emphasizes the filmmaker, who has already finished another documentary, this one about six Cuban women who have succeeded in different artistic fields in the U.S.

The first time Bacallao learned about Bebo Valdés was through the film Calle 54, by Spaniard Fernando Trueba, around 2000 or 2001, and the idea for the documentary came after he was commissioned in 2019 to film a concert by Emilio Valdés in tribute to his grandfather Bebo in New Jersey.

Emilio, son of jazzman Chucho Valdés, one of the sons Bebo left in Cuba when he went into exile, speaks about his grandfather before Bacallao's camera, as do his Swedish sons, one of them a trained pianist and another a psychiatrist.

"The life of Bebo Valdés was one of resistance, let's say," notes the filmmaker.

When Paquito D'Rivera called him, whose father had been very close to him, Valdés was retired although he practiced piano every day and had not recorded in 34 years.

"He was dismissed, quite forgotten, but he never stopped playing," says Bacallao, who also traced the work Valdés did as an arranger in Sweden for an orchestra that played Cuban music and had María Llerena as a singer.

Fernando Trueba fulfills his "duty" to re-edit Bebo Valdés: "It was purity"

"He had respect for himself, that's the most important thing, and a level of stoic discipline. He knew his place," asserts Bacallao about Dionisio Ramón Emilio Valdés Amaro, the name under which Bebo Valdés was registered.

Filmmaker of shorts such as Mondongo Cubano and The Maji-Maji Readings and feature films such as The Uncle's Request, Bacallao says that Bebo is his tribute to a "great musician" for his "dedication and integrity," but also a metaphor for the "fragmented Cuban family scattered around the world," this interview summarizes.