Marcelo Cordova - Latidos (2023)

I met Marcelo in the early 90's in the port of Valparaiso., I was struck by the fact that being a young music student, he was equally interested in modern jazz, jazz fusion, classical music, but also in popular dance music.

At that time my dear friend Amadito Valdés ("The golden sticks" of the then still non-existent Buena Vista Social Club) visited me in Chile, so we quickly put together a band to accompany him and it was Marcelo who was in charge of giving flavor to that spontaneous project on bass. I still remember Amadito's astonished face when he told me "where did you get this guy from? How well he plays; I would take him with me to Havana for a week so that he could catch some of the “mañitas”( Tips) and street tricks of the established bass players in Cuba".

A short time later I took Marcelo to the jazz club in Santiago, the capital of Chile, where he was heard by the renowned and now deceased Chilean drummer Lucho Córdova; curiously Lucho told me exactly the same thing as Amadito "? where did you get this guy from?

Such was the astonishment of both teachers to find a young musician who not only played his instrument very well, because Marcelo went beyond that, he expressed himself very freely and expertly in the language of different musical genres.

I was able to confirm this once again a few years later, when I met Marcelo playing double bass with a gypsy jazz group in a certain bar in the 19th arrondissement in Paris. The manouches are very jealous of their music, it is a somewhat closed circle, well, there was Marcelo "swinging" as one of the family.

Marcelo never stopped being interested in the music of his country, the proof is that when he returned from his French journey, he continued experimenting, achieving very interesting fusions; all his knowledge and musical experiences have served him to achieve a sound that today we can call "contemporary Chilean jazz". Marcelo's music is the meeting point between diverse musical influences, the backbone being Chilean, as he perceives it.

"Latidos" is a celebration, the songs on this album reflect the different emotional states through which its creator went through since he was told he was going to be a father, until the birth of his daughter Amelia. Family joy shared through music.

Marcelo is a man of few words, but undoubtedly his way of expressing emotions through music has been captured very well in this work, such a fundamental event in the life of a man. Congratulations Marcelo. Raúl Gutiérrez VillanuevaXalapa, VeracruzMay 2022