La Valdés - Ay! Mama Inés, Llegó la Valdés (2021)

Janet Valdés is a self-taught Cuban singer and songwriter who dazzled everyone in 2005 when she won the performance award for the young jazz musician contest, Jojazz. As part of the Yasek Manzano group and under the tutelage of Bobby Carcassés, she has ventured into genres such as jazz, Afro-Cuban music and world music. He has shared the stage, collaborated or recorded with Bobby Carcassés, Hernán López-Nussa, Orlando Sánchez, Jesús Fuentes, Beatriz Márquez, Pablo Menéndez y Mezcla, Michel Herrera and Joven Jazz, Bellita y su Jazztumbatá, Pancho Amat, Jorge Chicoy, Alejandro Vargas, among other important Cuban musicians. She currently directs her own project, La Valdés, which focuses her work on mixing jazz, Cuban music, and in which she excels as a soloist and lead voice.

With a record background under the musical production of Yasek Manzano (Para que vuelvas, Colibrí), ¡Ay! Mamá Inés (EGREM, 2020) stands out as a product of musical consolidation in which her singing skills stand out for her vocal power and ability to unfold and, at the same time, for maintaining the root essence of the classics that she interprets. As she herself has commented, this production «[…] more than a tribute to the great composers and interpreters of Cuban music — which it is — is for me an immersion in the musical ocean of the past, and how the echoes of this ocean They have influenced and shaped me, it has been a way of finding my voice, crossed by the intense archetypes of our national soul ».

In this way, we find here anthological themes by Eliseo Grenet, Moisés Simons, Benny Moré, Adolfo Guzmán, Juan Arrondo, Margarita Lecuona, Fernando Mulens or Roberto Raena, who made notable voices like those of Benny Moré himself, Rita Montaner, La Lupe, Celeste Mendoza or Snowball. It is impossible to listen to Janet and not imagine behind her singing the carefree performance of Benny, the mischievous grace of Montaner or the sweet musicality of Bola. Such is her attachment and her respect for her tradition, which leads her to drink from her waters and to renew it from a contemporary sound.

With musical direction and arrangements by Alejandro Meroño, this is an album where jazz — especially rhythm and blues —, pop rock, filin and Afro-Cuban music are mixed. In addition to Meroño himself at the piano —with a formidable performance—, a luxury cast, which at times looks like a jazz band from the 30s and 40s of the last century, musically accompanies: Roberto Álvarez on double bass, Ruy Adrián López-Nussa on drums, Edgar Martínez on percussion and miscellaneous, Yasel Muñoz on flute, Mayquel González on trumpet, Emir Santa Cruz and Yuniet Lombida on saxophones, and Heikel Fabián Trimiño on trombone. With the recording, mixing and mastering of Giraldo García, the product is completed by the excellent photography by May Reguera and the design by Nelson Ponce, these items that stand out for the careful visual work and that jungle vision, conjunction between nature and woman, that travel all the disc packaging. The record notes are in charge of Frank Padrón.