Cuban Trombone Master’s Album Signals a Dawning Detente

Miami likes its politics noisy and boisterous, like last year’s battle over the planned arrival of musicians from Cuba for the Latin Grammy ceremonies. Threatened protests by anti-Castro exiles, you’ll recall, drove the ill-fated show out of South Florida with hurricane force.

But when it comes to compromise, in music as in politics, even hardliners must be discreet.

Consider the recently released album by Generoso Jimenez, the renowned Cuban trombonist and arranger famous for helping create the 1950s big-band sound of Afro Cuban icon Beny More.

On the surface, “Generoso Que Bueno Toca Usted” appears to be just another album a la Buena Vista Social Club, with pictures of a frail-looking “Tojo,” as the 84-year-old Jimenez is known, playing a scruffy relic of a piano. Recorded in Havana, the album features new compositions from Jimenez in his classic style, performed by a collection of 27 musicians listed on the back of the informative CD booklet.

The album’s political bombshell lies silently within those credits.

Among the names, fifth and sixth on the list, are Arturo Sandoval and Paquito d’Rivera, two of the most famous Cuban exile musicians. The liner notes don’t say how or why these two U.S.-based artists, both veterans of Cuba’s legendary group Irakere, turned up on a record made in Havana. Especially one recorded at the Abdala Studios of Silvio Rodriguez, an acclaimed singer-songwriter who’s reviled by critics as an apologist of the Castro regime.

Surely there’s no way they would have gone there. In Cuban circles, a homecoming by these two would have been as newsworthy as Henry Kissinger’s secret Paris meetings with the Viet Cong.

This is not the first time Cuban nationals and exiles have collaborated on an album, but such projects are rare and have usually involved recordings made in the U.S. with guests from the island. D’Rivera, for example, was musical director on 1996’s “Cuba Jazz,” which was almost an Irakere reunion as it featured several former members, including founder Chucho Valdes. That album was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley for Ralph Mercado’s TropiJazz label.

But the new Jimenez project poses a stickier problem, because many exiles have long advocated boycotting anything coming out of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Sandoval’s participation is particularly surprising, considering the political hard line he reasserted recently in an interview published in La Opinion. The jazz trumpeter, who defected in 1990, vowed he would never “enter into any kind of arrangement with anything which represents the government of Cuba, nor would I ever play with an artist who represents the government of Cuba.”

In a written response Friday, Sandoval said he was unaware that the album was to be recorded in Cuba when he was approached by the German label Termidor. According to Sandoval, the German label pitched the project as a tribute to Jimenez, whom he considers an old friend and a victim of the Cuban regime.

“He doesn’t represent the Cuban government, he never has, never will and the Cuban government has never cared about him,” wrote Sandoval, who since his exile had not previously recorded with an artist from Cuba. “I was always in my heart participating in a tribute to Generoso, who is a hell of a musician that deserves ALL my respect. He has been left in the dark with out any help at all, isolated in his country by the Cuban government who has never recorded him.”

Juan Pablo Torres, a fellow Miami-based exile who produced the CD, said he first discussed the new album with the retired Jimenez during a family visit to Cuba. Though he declined to contradict Sandoval directly, the producer says that he invited his fellow exiles to join the project and that everybody involved knew it was being recorded in Cuba. In fact, the album was designed from the start to include songs written by Jimenez from Havana as tributes to his three exiled colleagues: Torres, Sandoval and D’Rivera.

“It’s obvious where it was recorded, because that’s where Generoso lives,” said Torres, who worked with Sandoval in Cuba as members of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, the precursor of Irakere.

Whatever Sandoval knew, he now fully endorses the project.

“I don’t regret anything I did, and for him, I would do it again,” the trumpeter said of Generoso in his message.

It’s true that Jimenez has not made an album in Cuba as a bandleader for more than 30 years. But after More’s death in 1963, the trombonist led his own band for two years, and he made his debut recording in 1965, six years into the revolution. That album, “El Trombon Majadero,” was recently re-released in the U.S.

On the new record, Sandoval recorded his trumpet parts at his home studio in Miami, working from arrangements sent from Havana by Jimenez. D’Rivera overdubbed his sax solos in New York.

Politics was never an issue in the record, said Torres, because Jimenez is such a legendary figure.

“Everybody wanted to be a part of this one, because Generoso is the father of the Latin trombone,” says Torres, who also plays the instrument. “All of us who got together for this record became of one mind, when it came time to make music.”

Even that lofty sentiment can have explosive consequences in the supercharged Cuban political environment. Last year, Manolin, a top star of the musical style known as timba, defected to Miami after allegedly running afoul of Cuban cultural authorities. His offense: recording a song that extended an olive branch to Cubans in Miami.

On the flip side, peer pressure to toe the anti-communist line has compelled exiled musicians to avoid any association with their Cuba-based counterparts, considered lackeys of the Castro regime by simply staying and working there.

Celia Cruz refused to be photographed with Bamboleo when the popular Havana band and its female lead singers visited the Queen of Salsa in New York during filming of the video for Wyclef Jean’s version of “Guantanamera.”

And Cachao, the famed exiled bassist, missed a chance to appear on 1999’s “Caravana Cubana” album because he refused to play on any cut that featured invited artists from the island, according to producer Alan Geik. Geik and others see the Generoso CD as a subtle sign of a “wilting away” of these old Cold War animosities.

“It’s sort of like a gradual slide toward what we all know is happening anyway,” Geik says. “There’s sort of a segue into acceptance. It doesn’t happen overnight. Things just get more and more forgiving and, sooner or later, people just forget what the issue was.”

A full and open cultural exchange would be a powerful boost for Cuban music. The Afro Cuban event of the century would be a Havana homecoming concert by Cruz, though that’s not likely to happen soon. For his part, producer Torres says he’s working on new projects that feature collaborations across the Florida Straits, including a new album to be titled “Juntos Otra Vez,” (Together Again). “I always try to let music represent the most heavenly side of human nature,” says Torres, who communicates with his trombone mentor in Havana by phone and e-mail. “I think this is a beautiful project, from here to there and there to here. And may it reverberate to the benefit of everybody.”