Francisco Emilio Flynn Rodríguez

From childhood he began playing piano without knowing a single musical note, guided by his prodigious ear. As a young man, he already played piano in a typical Cuban orchestra, learning music through the Braille system, under the tutelage of doctor Julio Azanza.

He was born in La Habana, and from then on his eyes suffered serious damage, as his birth was assisted with forceps. Just five years later his mother died and his father emigrated to the USA, leaving the boy in the care of his aunts and uncles.

At 13 years old, he won an amateur competition and began his professional career as a pianist in a danzón orchestra, the traditional guajiro (peasant) rhythm, the immediate precedent in the halls of mambo and cha-cha-cha. By then, Frank had become completely blind.

He met Martha, his wife and mother of his son Jess Andrés, at the gatherings that took place with the young people of the Feeling; when she saw him she fell completely in love with him. They dated for five years despite the opposition of Martha's father for reasons of race, as she was Black and Emilio was white. This relationship bore fruit and they married on May 30, 1954.

In the mid-feverish 1940s, Frank, after completing his studies at the Cuban Association for Blind Musicians, created his own orchestra, Loquibambia. Flynn was by then a primordial creator of the filin genre, a hybrid and imaginative mixture between American jazz and Cuban bolero. But times were difficult for musicians, and Frank had to survive back then by selling cigars in the streets.

Integrated into the ranks of the Cuban Jazz Club, he offered his art free of charge in improvised jam sessions that soon received the most authentic name of descargas.

He studied ceaselessly, and classical music was one of his greatest attractions. While exploring the possibilities of Latin jazz, he investigated the half-academic, half-popular scores of Lecuona through the Braille method. And he made attempts with works by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven... and George Gershwin.

Frank Emilio played in different places in his early years such as: "El Mandarín", "La Zorra y el Cuervo", "El restaurante 1830", the "Hotel Deauville", which he inaugurated, and other places, such as the "Hotel Nacional", the "Hotel Cohíba", Club "Imágenes".

In the last years of his life, Flynn began to receive the belated recognition that his trajectory deserved. In February 1998 he performed in Nueva York, in a wide program that included giants of the Latin scene, such as Tito Puente, Orlando Cachao López and José Changuito Quintana, from Van Van, also present at that historic gathering, pianist Chucho Valdés, summed up the opinion of many others, by saying: "Frank Emilio is a pianist who has influenced all subsequent generations, and who should continue to do so in future ones. He was a kind of Thelonious Monk of Cuban jazz".

And the great Marsalis corroborated: "God must exist when this man plays, because some notes only he can reach". Frank Emilio Flynn, Cuban pianist, died on August 24, 2001 in La Habana (Cuba) at the age of 80.