According to their website, The National Jazz Museum in Harlem’s mission is “to preserve, promote, and present jazz by inspiring knowledge, appreciation and celebration of jazz locally, nationally, and internationally.” When we came yesterday to visit, they had a running exhibition of Bebo Valdez.

Bebo Valdez, a Cuban pianist, composer, bandleader, and arranger, was born in Cuba in 1918. He left Cuba in 1960 and eventually settled in Sweden. There he played Cuban music and Latin jazz.

His career boosted in 1994 and released CDs, films, and more. One of the more interesting things he created that caught my attention was the movie Chico y Rita. This movie is about a young piano player, Chico, and a beautiful singer, Rita. They fall in love, and perform together.It’s animated, as well, giving an interesting perspective and vision to an adult audience. What’s interesting about this story, however, is that Chico resembles Bebo himself in many ways.

Spoiler Alert:

In the movie Chico is a piano player from Cuba, like Bebo. He also leaves the music scene for decades, like Bebo, and then has a career revival once again and becomes a success.

The film might not be about Bebo’s whole life, but it definitely has some similar life events. Although it doesn’t depict his life exactly as it was, “….it evokes the era that produced him and led jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie to work with Cubans, giving birth to a new kind of jazz.” (MPR News)