Word: jazzing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...early as the age of seven, D'Rivera went on to become a founding member of the Cuban super band, Irakere. Founded in the early 1970s, Irakere (whose name is a Yoruba meaning forest), an II-piece aggregation that drew on Afro-Cuban religion and folklore as well as jazz, rock and even classical music, was typical of the eclectic approach many Cuban bands took following the revolution...
Irakere fused many diverse musical ideas together in an exuberant, exciting whole. The band, with its four percussionists, brought many instruments into jazz, such as the Congolese maquta and the Abakua bonko-enchemiya, which had never before been seen outside Africa or Afro-Cuban religions...
...before the deal could come to fruition, D'Rivera defected in Spain during an Irakere tour. And although it was bad news for American fans of Irakere, it was good news for jazz and the saxophone...
...Rivera soon moved to New York, where his mother and sister, who had left Cuba in the '60s, waited. Columbia Records also waited, and signed D'Rivera to a contract. Since then, D'Rivera has made two studio albums and a live album, playing with American jazz musicians he had heard in Cuba as well as two musicians, drummer Ignacio Berroa and conguero Daniel Ponce, who had defected to the United States in a mass exodus to Florida some years earlier and had played with Paquito in Cuba...
...Brussels in the Rain" is a jazz ballad that switches to medium-tempo bossa nova toward the end, and Paquito, who couldn't chill out if he tried, swings with case. "Brussels" is a good example of the creators' different personalities; Although the tune is a slow jazz ballad, Paquito is still able to incorporate complicated eighth-note phrasings with an Afro-Latin emphasis, while Thielemans relies on direct but well-embellished lines to get his point across. If Toots is a Valium, then Paquito is aguardiente...