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Bobby Carcasses
Bobby Carcassés
New Album "De La Habana a Nueva York" 9 songs...featuring Dafnis Prieto: drums, Yosvany Terry: saxophone & chekere, Osmany Paredes: piano, Yunior Terry: bass, Marvin Diz: percussion, special guest Andrea Bratchfeld: flute.
Whereas in the past he has been popularly known as the perfect “Showman” and Entertainer, Bobby is now considered the ultimate Guru of Afrocuban Jazz, offering inspiration to the up and coming generation of new Cuban Jazz musicians as many of the Best new talents have started their careers playing with Bobby’s band.
He was born on August 29th 1938 in Kingston Jamaica, where his Cuban grandfather worked as a Diplomat. Upon moving to Villa Clara in Cuba at the age of four, Bobby grew up surrounded by Cuban rhytms, listening to Benny Moré, Conjunto Casino & Roberto Faz. He also acquired a Love for an eclectic spectrum of music from the Opera Star Enrico Carusso and Mexico’s enigmatic Jorge Negrete to the Jazz Supremos Sarah Vaugahn, Buddy Rich and Stan Getz.
By the 1950’s he was envolved with some of the best vocals quartets in Cuba and whilst playing for many years at The Tropicana the very center of Cuban Jazz at the time, he began to experiment with Bebop and Scat vocals. In the 60’s he traveled to Europe, spending a year in Paris where he played with the Legendary Kenny Clarke and Bud Powell.
When he returned to Cuba he worked in the Teatro Musical where he met trhee of the Futurs founders of the Legendary “Irakere” : Chucho Valdes, Carlos Emilio Morales and Paquito D’ Rivera.
Over the next ten years He played in the best night clubs in Havana as well as acting in Cuban cinema, Tv and essentially starting to form his own Jazz group.
In 1980 he organized the first Jazz Plaza Festival in Havana, envolving the Great Stars of Jazz such as Dizzy Gillespie, Ronnie Scott, Charlie Haden, Airto Moreira, Tania Maria, Steve Coleman and many others. Year after his own group was the focal point in these Festivals. he traveled to Canada,
England, France and the USA where he performed with Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Patato Valdés and many other Greats from the Latin Jazz scene.
If Jazz Timbero (1998 Tumi Music UK) was both a projection of Bobby’s musical personality and a complex historical record of the different elements of Cuban music combined along the way with Jazz, Blues and World music. The power of Bobby’s dynamic personality shows in his versatility.
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Bobby Carcasses Brings His Afrojazz to The Jazz Gallery, NYC
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by Tomas Pena
Bobby Carcasses Jazz Gallery New York, New York March 11, 2010
Afro-Cuban Jazz guru Bobby Carcasses made a rare New York appearance at New York's Jazz Gallery, an international cultural center and performance space located in downtown Manhattan. The elder statesman is celebrating 50 years in the music business and visited the Big Apple as part of a promotional tour for his most recent recording, De La Habana a Nueva York (Vero ...
read moreSeamlessly Wedding Cuban Rhythm to American Jazz
![Seamlessly Wedding Cuban Rhythm to American Jazz](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/fbe0f507d15cf8478ee3e3df75b6423d.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
Bobby Carcasses is a singer, trumpeter, pianist, conguero and connector in Cuban jazz. As a bandleader, big-band sideman and a founder of the first jazz festival in Cuba, in 1980, he's spent his career attending to the equal relationship between the guaguanco-rumba-guaracha spectrum and the swing-jazz-blues spectrum. That relationship might sound natural, but it's also a cause he's fighting for. As might be expected in a Communist country where musicians have been government employees, Cuba for a long time had ...
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He Opened Door to Jazz in Cuba
![He Opened Door to Jazz in Cuba](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/fbe0f507d15cf8478ee3e3df75b6423d.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
With his dark blue velvet suit and carefully groomed white hair, Bobby Carcasses does not look like a rebel, but like a man who is happiest at the center of an old-fashioned cultural salon. On a sunny afternoon last week, he seemed right at home in CubaOcho, the plush Little Havana gallery and lounge, talking softly about the infinite dimensions of art. But to generations of Cuban jazz musicians, Bobby Carcasses, 71, is a hero, the man who made their ...
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“Many years ago, against all hope and without any official support whatsoever, Bobby Carcasses and I started the first Cuban Jazz festival at La Casa de la Cultura in (What was left of) Havana. Carcasses is the one to be credited as the man with the idea, and I just followed his contagious enthusiasm. I still remember that Leonardo Acosta presented a show entitled “Bop and Modalismo” with the great Emiliano Salvador playing the piano.
“A person I so deeply admired as an artist as much as a “Cuban Being”.
“As an entertainer, as well as a unique plastic artist, I think my old friend Bobby Carcasses deserves to receive in the USA the recognition.