Flamenco by way of Cuba

For an album of classic Latin Love songs, “Lagrimas Negras” (Black Tears) sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

The collection’s nine carefully chosen standards, as familiar to Spanish-speaking listeners as Gershwin and Cole Porter compositions are in the English-speaking world, have been radically trans- formed by the unexpected pairing of two musicians living worlds and ages apart.

Cuban pianist Bebo Valdes, 85, had moved to chilly Stockholm since leaving balmy Havana 44 years ago, almost forgotten by Latin music fans for most of his exile. Meanwhile, Spanish Gypsy Diego El Cigala, 50 years his junior, was busy during the past decade making a name for himself in Madrid as one of the most captivating flamenco singers of the modern era.

When they joined forces three years ago, melding two great musical styles in magical ways, they created more than just a remarkable album. Bebo & Cigala, as the duo has been branded, have created a phenomenon.

When released last year in Spain, the album became a smash hit, spending 25 weeks in the Top 10. Transcending the niche followings of their individual genres, the album catapulted this unlikely duo into pop stardom.

Now, on the eve of the album’s June 22 release in the U.S., the work is being credited with expanding the boundaries of Latin jazz, an idiom Valdes helped pioneer in the early ‘50s with jam sessions recorded in Cuba by American producer Norman Granz.

“We are firm believers that a new golden age has dawned for Latin jazz,” says Nat Chediak, the album’s co-executive producer with Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba. “It’s no longer just Afro-Cuban and Brazilian. The doors have opened to the full gambit of Latin music.”

Last summer, with the craze for the new album in full swing in Spain, thousands of fans crowded into a vast subterranean plaza tucked into a Madrid subway station to hear the duo perform a free set. They endured sweltering heat that had turned the underground into a sauna.

Standing for over an hour with the attention of an educated jazz audience, the fans listened to the hoarse singer with the long, wild hair and the quiet, elegant pianist in conservative coat and tie.

Such devotion from fans, young and old, has surprised industry observers and the artists themselves.

“I always thought the album could have a certain success, but not to this extreme,” Valdes says by phone from the Spanish capital where he had recently returned for yet another promotional visit.

“Possibly, it’s because the music business was saturated with the same old thing, the same styles of music and the same artists. Apparently when you do something a little different, even though it may be 100 years old, it can surprise people as if it were entirely new music.”

Some say the album is just that.

“It’s a new genre, really,” says the Oscar-winning Trueba, who brought the two artists together.

“It’s a record that cannot be categorized as flamenco, nor jazz, nor Cuban. It’s not a fusion record either; it’s not a laboratory experiment. It’s an organic record. It’s a real record.”

Orchestrating things

Behind the scenes, the success of “Lagrimas Negras” is also the story of two producers who share a long friendship and a love of Latin jazz: Chediak, founder and former director of the Miami Film Festival, and Trueba, best known in the U.S. for his film “Belle epoque” (The Age of Beauty), which won an Academy Award for best foreign film in 1993.

Their musical collaboration has spawned a cottage industry, with a label, a film and a Madrid nightclub all named “Calle 54” (54th Street) for the location of the New York studios where it all started four years ago. “Calle 54” was the name of a landmark 2000 documentary and soundtrack, produced by Trueba, who filmed sessions with a multinational host of luminaries, including Cuba’s Paquito D’Rivera and the late Chico O’Farrill, Argentina’s Gato Barbieri, Spain’s Chano Dominguez, Puerto Rico’s Jerry Gonzalez and the late Tito Puente.

The sessions also featured the historic reunion of Valdes and his estranged son, pianist Chucho, who had remained in Cuba, where he became co-founder of the influential Afro-Cuban jazz group Irakere. Father and son performed a piano duet on Ernesto Lecuona’s celebrated “La Comparsa.”

But the track that would launch a sensational spinoff featured a duet between the elder Valdes and another Cuban octogenarian, famed bassist Israel “Cachao” Lopez, co-creator of the mambo. It was an instrumental version of “Lagrimas Negras,” a 1930s tune of unrequited love written by Miguel Matamoros, key exponent of the Cuban son, a seed of modern salsa.

The aching feeling of loss in the melody, a staple of flamenco expression, caught the attention of El Cigala. The singer heard the number in Spain while the documentary was being edited by Trueba, who had filmed an earlier video for the intense flamenco vocalist. On Bebo’s next trip to Madrid, Trueba introduced the artists.

Their first collaboration was on El Cigala’s 2001 flamenco album that included, at Trueba’s suggestion, the bolero standard “Amar y Vivir” by Consuelo Velasquez, composer of “Besame Mucho.” Trueba calls it a rehearsal for the album he dreamed of making.

People wept in the studio during that session, Trueba says. Later, the recording of the “Lagrimas Negras” CD had the same emotional impact, even on studio technicians. Trueba says he cried while driving home alone listening to early tapes of the sessions.

“The album has a magic that can’t be explained,” says Trueba, who co-produced the album with Javier Limon. “At times you achieve it, and other times you don’t. If there were a formula for this, records and movies would be made by banks.”

There was a strategy, however, that explains why the album casts such a bewitching spell on listeners.

“Our technique was always purity, to try to manipulate to the minimum,” Trueba says. “We wanted the music to arrive raw and virgin to the ears of whoever heard the record, so the listener would feel as if the musicians were playing and singing for them. We wanted to convey the sensation of intimacy.”

Back to basics

The album’s clean, pared-down sound is based on its simple acoustic instrumentation -- a traditional jazz trio with limited, well-chosen embellishments.

Valdes’ piano is supplemented by Javier Colina on upright bass and Israel “Pirana” Porrina on cajon, the Peruvian percussion box commonly used in flamenco. A few guest musicians make valuable contributions, such as the alto sax of Paquito D’Rivera on the title cut.

D’Rivera, an ex-Irakere member who also left Cuba, has played a small but important role in the history of the project. Trueba was originally turned on to Latin jazz years ago when he was given D’Rivera’s first U.S. release, 1981’s “Blowin,” as a gift from Chediak, who lives in Miami. The album “blew my brain,” the director says, turning to English for the psychedelic expression.

Later, D’Rivera was the first to coax Valdes out of obscurity in Sweden, leading to the pianist’s first new release in 30 years, 1995’s swinging “Bebo Rides Again” on Germany’s Messidor label, re-released this year by Pimienta/Universal.

Four years later, Trueba went to Stockholm to recruit the pianist for the Calle 54 sessions, a move that launched a full-blown Bebo Valdes revival.

Besides the duet with Cigala, Trueba and Chediak have produced three other albums for the pianist: The Grammy-winning “El Arte del Sabor” in 2000, a duet with violinist Federico Britos titled “We Could Make Such Beautiful Music Together” in 2003 and the latest, a two-CD set titled “Bebo de Cuba,” including the ambitious, orchestral “Suite Cubana.”

“Bebo in his day was the Quincy Jones of Havana,” says Chediak, author of “Diccionario de Jazz Latino.” “He wrote charts for everyone and their mother. If you wanted to be in the jukeboxes and you wanted to be cooking, you went to Bebo for a chart.”

Valdes, former bandleader at Havana’s famed Tropicana nightclub, says he arranged the songs on “Lagrimas Negras” in an old-fashioned style called danza, a seminal, courtly Cuban rhythm. It’s the way boleros used to be played in the old days, he explains, a style that has almost vanished today. And it happened to suit the special needs of Cigala’s improvisational flamenco pacing.

How does he explain his ability to work so seamlessly with the singer across styles and generations?

“Well,” Valdes shoots back quickly, “music never gets old, my friend. Never.”