Cuban pianist Bebo Valdes dies in Sweden

23 March AFP

One of Cuba's best-known pianists and composers, Bebo Valdes, died Friday at the age of 94 in Sweden where he had lived for more than 40 years, a friend of the family said.

"He died this evening in hospital, his two sons were with him," a close friend and neighbour who was with him when he passed away, Heri Ekelund, told AFP. Valdes began his career in Havana's nightclubs in the 1940s. Influenced by American jazz, Cuban melodies and African rhythms, he became the main pianist and arranger for the house orchestra of Havana's famed Tropicana night club in 1948, attracting Cuba's top singers and orchestras. He was active as a bandleader, arranger and composer throughout the 1950s. But a year after Fidel Castro's revolutionary government took over Cuba in 1959, Valdes defected to Mexico, leaving a wife and five children behind.

He eventually settled in Stockholm in 1963, where he married a Swedish woman and started a new family.

In Stockholm, he worked as a lounge pianist in hotels and bars to support himself, content just to tinkle the ivories.

"If you are a musician, and you do one thing, you should enjoy what you do," he told US National Public Radio in a 2006 interview.