Chucho Valdés will publish his memoirs where he tells "everything"

March 30, 2022

Cuban musician Chucho Valdés announced that next October his memoirs titled "What I Have Lived" will be released, in which he recalls the three most important people in his life, his parents and his grandmother, and the sad moment when he took the reins of the family because his father, the memorable Bebo Valdés, left Cuba.

"I get emotional remembering it. It was the worst day of my life. I couldn't accompany him to the airport because I was devastated and I spent more than a week without stopping crying. On the contrary, the best day of my life was when we reunited. It took 18 years until we saw each other again in a theater in New York. Some time later I moved to live in Benalmádena, by his side, and those years we recovered all the lost time. We recorded albums, went on tour, we lived…," he said to the Spanish magazine BBC, to which he also declared that he will tell "everything": "There may be those who get angry, but it is my truth of what I have lived."

On October 10th last, Chucho turned 80 years old. The same day his father Bebo Valdés was born and one of his six children. He will celebrate the anniversary at the tribute they are going to give him with a concert at the XI edition of the Festival Starlite Catalan Occidente, accompanied by Pablo Milanés, Javier Ojeda, Pancho Céspedes, among others, to perform many of his popular songs.

After expressing that the vitality he maintains at 80 years old is given by African and Spanish roots plus his love for music that "is my vitamin and my reason for living," he assured about his past that there is much he is happy about, that he doesn't remember anything to regret. "I have broken many barriers along the way, those that my own country put in my path, but I will tell you that the struggle was worth it."

When referring to his relationship with Cuba, he emphasizes that he doesn't like what is happening in his country, "but nothing will make me break the relationship with my children. There is no force in the world that can make a father abandon his children for other problems. My children are my life. I love them, as I love Cuba, even though I don't agree with what happens there, but I take refuge in art, in my music, because there are things I cannot solve alone."

Chucho Valdés is the father of six musician children, about whom he has said he has cried with emotion with all of them.

Regarding the situation he lives in relation to his family and his country of origin, he comments that it is a great frustration, and then considers that he dreams the best for Cuba: "freedom." In his reflections to ABC, the renowned pianist noted that he thought he had hope that something was going to change on the island, but "it was only a great hope."

Currently Chucho Valdés lives between Málaga and Miami and notes that he would only return to live in Cuba under different circumstances. "My history, my roots, everything in my life comes from there." However, he assures that after Cuba, where he feels best is in Spain, that there is much in common and he feels at home.

Regarding the Starlite Catalan Occidente, he felt that with the cancellation of Russian artists "you have to be very careful." He understands that it is a very delicate matter since "unjust acts can be committed." According to his view, in some cases the artist has nothing to do with politics, although in others yes, he responded in an interview to the Europa Press agency.

As to whether he has felt cancel culture because of his origins, Chucho Valdés affirmed that he "has not experienced that" because perhaps he is an artist who comes from another generation.

"I am an artist who studied in the generation of the 40s, and my career develops from the 50s onwards, and already in the 60s I was super conventional, so I am not linked to certain things," he explained to Europa Press and highlighted: "whoever was trained afterwards, it is not a reason to evaluate them because they studied in Cuba."

The Starlite Catalan Occidente festival was one of the few held in 2021 amid the pandemic. When asked whether he believes that other similar events should have been held during that summer, the musician insisted that yes they could have been done, but with safety measures."

Musicians in 2020 suffered because "there were zero concerts," he stressed and estimated that not for the economic part, "which is deeply felt," but for the artistic part, "which is more important than the economic one." He then asserted that "we, of course, have to get paid because we have to live, but it makes us happier when we are performing for the public, because that is what we have worked for our entire lives."

"From difficult things, or from bad things one has to look for the positive part. The pandemic served me, regardless of doing virtual concerts, to do that work," he said that after that first performance, after covid he went to the bathroom to cry from emotion. "It was a sensation I had never felt, I felt that what was sounding in the orchestra was what I desired."