[Dixielandjazz] Jazz for kids in Cuba.

[Stephen G Barbone]

Here's how Marsalis does jazz for kids. Even to the N.O. style parade.  
(see last 5 or 6 paragraphs)

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

In Havana, Jam Sessions With a Master Trumpeter
NY TIMES - By VICTORIA BURNETT - October 11, 2010

HAVANA — Wynton Marsalis pulled a young Cuban trumpeter aside as he  
left the Mella Theater here on Wednesday after a Jazz at Lincoln  
Center Orchestra concert. The band was here for a residency that ended  
over the weekend, and Mr. Marsalis had seen 17-year-old Kalí Rodríguez  
play a few nights earlier at an official reception for the American  
musicians.

“He told me, ‘You have something special,’ ” recalled Mr. Rodríguez,  
who has been studying music for seven years at the Amadeo Roldán  
Conservatory in Havana.

Mr. Marsalis led Mr. Rodríguez to the empty theater and gave him a  
late-night lesson, playing blues on the piano while Mr. Rodríguez  
played his trumpet. The master trumpeter gave his pupil tips on  
musical phrasing and some encouragement as well, Mr. Rodríguez said.

“He told me, ‘You’re serious about what you do, and I like what you  
do,’ ” added Mr. Rodríguez, who said he was so overwhelmed by Mr.  
Marsalis’s attention that he broke down in tears midway through the  
class. “I felt like my soul was bursting out of my body. I mean, if  
Wynton Marsalis says you’re good at the trumpet, then that’s a big  
deal.”

Not everyone, though, was awed by the famous American players who  
descended on Havana for a whirlwind series of encounters that took  
them from dark rumba joints to thescruffy, vibrant conservatories  
where Cuba’s young talent is schooled. Dayrón Rodríguez, no relation  
to the trumpeter, a 12-year-old bongo fiend, didn’t flinch when he was  
invited to jam onstage with the Lincoln Center band and 13 other Cuban  
musicians for the rousing Saturday finale of the group’s residency.  
Mr. Rodríguez, the trumpeter, also played in the concert.

“It’s not the first time I’ve played with great musicians,” said  
Dayrón, who noted that he had sat in with Yaroldy Abreu Robles, a  
family friend and percussionist for Chucho Valdés’s Afro-Cuban  
Messengers.

A grinning Dayrón skipped onto the stage on Saturday night. Along with  
his bongos he brought a copy of a CD on which he had played, flashing  
it to band members whenever he got the chance.

The Lincoln Center players came to spread the word of American jazz to  
Cuban music lovers, and they found an eager audience. Cuban musicians  
are hungry for all the information they can get. Relatively few  
foreign bands visit Cuba, and the island’s Internet reach is low. (In  
a recent government survey less than 3 percent of Cubans said they had  
been online in the past year.)

Several of the teenage students who jammed with the Lincoln Center  
players last week said they had never used the Internet and did not  
have access to a computer or own an MP3 player. They relied on people  
who traveled overseas to share music with them, they said.

Many members of the Lincoln Center group said they were impressed by  
the young musicians who performed at workshops, sat in on rehearsals  
and filled the hotel lobby at night to pepper them with questions. “I  
love their talent, their attitude, their seriousness and their  
culture,” said Carlos Henriquez, the Lincoln Center bass player.  
“Their dedication is unbelievable. We don’t get that in the States.”

There was much talk of bridges last week: the one between Cuba and the  
United States, and the one between Afro-Cuban music and American jazz.

Jazz at Lincoln Center came trundling over that bridge on Oct. 2 to  
jam with Cuban stars and teenage students, to give a workshop for  
children and to perform four concerts with a lineup of Cuban players  
that included Chucho Valdés; Eliade Terry, known as Don Pancho, the  
country’s foremost chekeré player; Bobby Carcassés; and Orlando Valle,  
known as Maraca.

“The bridge was built when Chano Pozo and Dizzy started doing their  
thing — even before that,” said Mr. Henriquez, referring to the  
historic collaboration in the late 1940s between that Cuban  
percussionist and Dizzy Gillespie. “What we’ve done this week is  
repave the bridge.”

This was possible partly because American officials are interpreting  
travel restrictions less rigidly under President Obama than they did  
under George W. Bush. They are letting more Cuban artists visit  
America, and vice versa.

Now that the bridge is in use again, the musicians wondered how to  
keep the traffic flowing. Mr. Valdés, the veteran pianist and co- 
artistic director of the residency, said the next step would be to get  
American musicians to come to Havana’s jazz festival in December. The  
festival has flagged in recent years, as it became difficult for the  
Americans to attend after President Bush tightened travel restrictions  
in 2003.

“Let anyone come who wants to come,” Mr. Valdés said during a  
rehearsal break last week. “I would open the door really wide.”

Mr. Valdés also wants to see more Cubans and Americans participating  
in exchange programs. “Imagine if we could get Americans coming here  
to study Afro-Cuban rhythms, coming and going without any kind of  
problem, without politics getting in the way,” he said. “That would be  
my dream.”

For about 200 years Afro-Cuban rhythms nourished the American music  
from which jazz emerged, as commerce and people flowed freely between  
Havana and New Orleans. But that rich trade was essentially shut down  
when the United States severed diplomatic and commercial ties with  
Cuba and its Communist leader, Fidel Castro, in the early 1960s.

The two cities may be cut off from each other, but the spirit of New  
Orleans was present in Havana during the Lincoln Center residency. “I  
see many things here that are exactly like New Orleans: the  
architecture, the feeling of the people, the climate, the community,”  
said Mr. Marsalis, a native of New Orleans.

He pointed to the shared African roots of the roll call, in which New  
Orleans musicians call the names of deceased players, and the Yoruba  
blessing sung in Cuban rumba; and to the influence the Cuban habanera  
rhythm had on ragtime. “Cuban music is in the roots of our music. This  
is an opportunity to reconnect, to deepen our communality” he said.

So it was fitting that the penultimate event of the residency should  
include a New Orleans-style parade. On Saturday the players treated  
1,500 music students from five schools around Havana to a workshop at  
the Mella Theater, dissecting the “three pillars” of jazz — swing,  
blues and improvisation — and bringing students onstage to play with  
them.

At the end the audience danced and clapped as the Americans played  
blues and paraded through the auditorium, trailing a line of Cuban  
trumpeters, violinists, clarinetists and saxophonists.

And then the band marched out of the theater, through the stage door  
and into the warm Havana afternoon, still tooting their horns, dancers  
twirling handkerchiefs behind them. A crowd waved and cheered as the  
musicians headed to their bus.

Then the sound of brass trailed off, and the players were gone.