Missing Chucho

 
I've been reminiscing about some of the concert-going experiences of my slightly younger days. Tonight I'm focusing on a concert by the famed Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdés, in Houston's Hermann Park Miller Theater in the late Nineties or early Naughties... a concert I awaited in the audience, a concert that never took place, due to the interference of... the government of Cuba, right? No, because it was cut off, after promotion and with an audience awaiting, by... The Almighty U.S. State Department. That's right. Thanks presumably to Hell's denizen Sen. Jesse Helms, several hundred of us were deprived of the opportunity to hear Valdés. And that is what Helms accomplished for me in his lifetime: he "protected" me from Chucho Valdés.

Chucho has been to the U.S. many times since then, and I am happy to note he is still living and performing, a spring chicken at just a shade under 70 years old. For unrelated reasons, I will not be able to see him... concert-going is not an option for me these days... but it gives me joy to know he's out there and occasionally visiting us.

Jesse Helms is fucking dead, of course... may he be damned to the part of Hell so deep there's no music there, the racist bastard.

Enough about Helms. I'm going to return to listening to recordings... that's what I have available... of Chucho Valdés. One could do worse things with an evening!