As Christendom celebrates resurrection, allow me a few moments of commemoration for the lives of three extraordinary men (Chinua Achebe, Bebo Valdes and Syl Dopson) who by now are undoubtedly in the foremost ranks of the heavenly host, two of whom might well be accompanying the celestial choir all now.
"Grandfather of (modern) African literature" Chinua Achebe, who once astutely observed that "Everything is grist to the mill of an artist," was largely responsible for displacing prevailing Eurocentric notions of Africa, current since Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, with his 1958 debut novel Things Fall Apart, which chronicled the clash between British colonialism and traditional Igbo culture.
From the same missionary-educated generation as compatriot Wole Soyinka and the Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Achebe effected a shift in perception similar to that achieved by CLR James in his groundbreaking Black Jacobins, which established modern Caribbean historiography. Achebe's objective was similar–a return of sovereignty by revealing the inside stories; as he remarked: "I would be quite satisfied if my novels did no more than teach (African) readers that their past was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans, acting on God's behalf, delivered them."
Beyond his initial anti-colonialism and subsequent critiques of corruption once Nigeria became independent, Achebe brought Africa to the world, as editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series. While academe still struggles to sift between such labels as Commonwealth, postcolonial or postmodern, Achebe will always hold his own in the widest category–world literature.
His vision of literature was transformative: "Imaginative literature...does not enslave, it liberates the mind of man. Its truth is not like the canons of orthodoxy or the irrationality of prejudice and superstition. It begins as an adventure in self-discovery and ends in wisdom and humane conscience."
The second of the triumvirate we're honouring–Ramon Emelio Dionisio Valdes Amara, El Caballon (Big Horse) to his friends and Bebo Valdes to the rest of the world (or Chico to those who saw the animated film Chico y Rita) was a man, who at 94, had lived two lives by the time his piano finally fell silent last week.
Grandson of a slave, Bebo was born in the village of Quivican, close to Havana, where he would study European classical along with Cuban popular and traditional music. While still a conservatory student he was already adept at boogie woogie, absorbing the influence of such early American jazz pianists as Fats Waller and Art Tatum.
While many have credited Bebo's son Chucho for introducing the sacred bata drums of Santeria into Afro-Cuban jazz, it was actually Bebo who fused Yoruban sacred tradition and dance music to produce the batanga–yet another Cuban dance craze.
Among the many vocalists Bebo accompanied and arranged for before leaving Cuba were Beny More, still revered as the greatest Cuban singer of all time, and Nat "King" Cole, to whom Bebo taught Spanish, for his album Cole Espagnol.
Following the revolution of 1959, Bebo might well have become a lynchpin in the development of Latin Jazz, when Chano Pozo's invitation to come join him was stalled by US Immigration. Had he remained in Cuba he too might have become a Buena Vista star in the 1990s, but love intervened whilst he was touring Europe with the Ernesto Lecuona Boys in 1963.
In Sweden he met and fell permanently for 18-year-old Rose Marie Pehrson. Abandoning his Cuban family and forced to choose between his career and his new family, Bebo slipped into relative obscurity for the next 30 years. He played in hotel bars and cruise ships to small audiences more attuned to salsa than the Cuban jazz it derives from.
While Ry Cooder was assembling the band of retirees who would make history as the Buena Vista Social Club, another Cuban exile, virtuoso saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, recalled Bebo for a collaboration, Bebo Rides Again, which launched him on his long overdue Grammy-winning second life. Debuting in the States in 1996 aged 78, Bebo began collecting Grammys (for El Arte de Sabor 2002) and the Cuban/flamenco crossover album with Diego El Cigala 2003, plus two more for Bebo de Cuba in 2006. Reunited with his son Chucho for the Latin jazz documentary Calle 54 in 2000, father and son recorded Juntos Para Siempre together in 2008.
Like the long-lived El Caballon, stalwart of the Trini music scene Syl Dopson shared his time between family and music. While posthumous acknowledgement comes second best, it's shameful not to recognise Syl's contribution to our patrimony. So better late than never–here's to Syl, where yuh Chaconia?
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