No, he’s not running for office but with our help he can be polled as the best jazz artist in clarinet and jazz musician of the year In Downbeat and Jazz Times magaizines.
From J.B Spins:
You should, as with any ballot, vote your conscious, but I would offer a suggestion: vote for Paquito D’Rivera for clarinet and jazz musician of the year. D’Rivera is an excellent musician, who defected from Cuba in 1980 to pursue musical free expression in America. D’Rivera is popular with his fellow musicians, as evidenced this year by his performances at the NEA Jazz Masters jam session, and with Toots Thielemans and friends during the harmonica player’s Carnegie Hall tribute concert.
D’Rivera’s preferred reed is the clarinet, and he usually makes the readers polls in that category, but below Don Byron. A legitimately talented clarinetist, Byron has been a perennial winner, but when his work broaches politics, it is with tunes like “Shelby Steele Would Be Mowing Your Lawn” and “The Importance of Being SHARPTON” on Music for Six Musicians.
It’s time to get behind D’Rivera, a musician’s musician and a plain-spoken critic of Castro’s criminal reign of terror in his native Cuba. D’Rivera’s My Sax Life (review coming soon) is an entertaining and insightful musical memoir, which dramatically portrays the reality of post-revolution Cuba.
Paquito has gone on record many a time criticizing the castro regime and has even taken on che lovers like Carlos Santana publicly. If you happen to be a a bookstore or somewhere where Dwonbeat is sold, the August 2006 has reply card ballots, I urge to you pick up one or two and cast your vote for Paquito.
Now that you mentioned Paquito, saw him this morning in Telemundo. Apparently he is having a show at the Jackie Gleason called Paquito presenda a las hermanas miranda – two old ladies with more sazon than all of us put together.
For those of you living in miami, I’d recommend you go see the show.
After Paquito defected in Madrid in 1980, dando “tremendo palo,” the Castro regime took reprisal by keeping his young son as a hostage for ten years. Paquito’s son wife and son were subjected to actos de repudio by street mobs who trashed their house. Paquito spent the next decade frantically knocking on all doors, including the U.N., until enough pressure was brought to allow his son to leave for exile. He has my highest respect and admiration.