Valdés is a doyen of Cuban piano with 83 albums and seven Grammy awards under his belt. A founder of well-known Cuban band Irakere, with his percussive piano playing, Valdés has followed the footsteps of pianist father, Bebo Valdés. The 68-year-old pianist will be in Angola with one of his many groups, Chucho Valdés and The Afro-Cuban Messengers.
Dianne Reeves, who is said to be the premier female jazz vocalist in the world today, comes to Angola riding on a crest of a successful music career. She is the only singer to have won Grammy Awards in the Best Jazz Performance category for four different albums. Known for her phrasing, the Denver-born musician has the ability to whisper a ballad into listener's ears while equally capable to swirl and hit the highest register with her voice. A long-time embracer of music of the diaspora, Reeves not only sings jazz but her roots in blues and gospel are very deep.
Sharing the stage with these great musicians are the diamond and oil-rich country's two top musicians: guitarist/vocalist Waldemar Bastos and Filipe Mukenga. Although he decided to leave his country in the early 1980s to live in Brazil and Europe, Bastos has more than any other musician been the ambassador of Angolan sounds through a style that fuses Angolan folk music, such as semba, with Brazilian, Portuguese, and even Congolese rhythms. In Europe, he linked-up with musicians from other former Portuguese colonies and developed a hybrid Lusophone-style of music.
Giving the festival a stronger Lusophone feel are two bands: a Cape Verdean singer Lura and a Mozambican quartet known as 340ml. Born in Lisbon in 1975 and an offspring of parents from Cape Verdean islands of Santiago and Santo Antäo, Lura is an active promoter of music and culture of her West African native land.
Although now based in South Africa, 340ml keeps its music rooted in the sounds that they heard when they grew up in Mozambique. Describing their music as "southern African contemporary sounds", the four band members have worked hard to fuse reggae inflections with dub, ska, Latin and Mozambican marrabenta music.
Back at the festival is Freshlyground, a band that draws heavily from different tributaries of contemporary music and is the first South African act to receive a MTV Europe music award as the best African act.
At the Luanda International Jazz Festival, Africa's senior musician, Jonas Gwangwa, will be the other South African act at the event. Gwangwa's appearance in Angola is another homecoming. Gwangwa, who is the only African artist to have been nominated twice for an Oscar, lived for a while in Angola in the 1980s when he fled his country of birth and went into exile. "I am very passionate about our traditional dance music. I know that when we were in our youth, we too were listening to American music - doing bebop, swing and all that stuff. But one thing we did not do when we were in exile was to live our own music behind," said the 72-year-old trombonist who is a founder of the ANC's cultural department and who led the organisation's Amandla Cultural Ensemble on a 10-year world tour.
Another 12 artists who will be at the festival are still to be announced.
Tickets prices are 15 200 kwanzas per day and 38 000 kwanzas for a weekend pass. Tickets will be available from 1 July from selected outlets still to be announced. Go to www.luandajazzfest.com for further info or contact Carenza Van Willingh on +27 (0)21 422 5651 or moc.akirfapse@aznerac
