The Jazz Plaza International Festival is the largest music gathering in Cuba. Every year hundreds of foreign artists attend the event, a greater number of Cuban musicians participate and, among them, there are many creators from the island who live and have a career abroad and who find in this intense week of music a reason to return to their native stages.
That is the case of Dayramir Gonzálezwho arrived in the United States in 2010 as the first Cuban to receive the Presidential Scholarship at Berklee College of Music and since then settled in New York, from where he has developed most of his career.
Before that, the pianist, composer, arranger and music producer had already won the JoJazz, an event that for decades was the quarry of Cuban jazz, and had released his first album in Cuba. Dayramir & Habana enTRANCéwinner of three Cubadisco awards.
Dayramir returned to the Jazz Plaza in 2026, as he has been doing in recent years, always with a proposal that has been an important part of the event’s program, such as his tribute concert to Juan Formell in 2020; but he has also become a collaborator of the event, causing important names of American piano such as Emett Cohen, Aaron Golberg and Christian Sand to come to the Cuban event.
This year Dayramir has offered several presentations, accompanied by different musical formats; He has given workshops in art schools, as he also usually does; and this Sunday, February 1, on the last day of the event, he will offer a great concert in the Covarrubias Room of the National Theater in tribute to Arsenio Rodríguez.
Why Arsenio Rodríguez?
The project came through an idea that José Dumet, the director of the “Arsenio Rodríguez” ensemble, gave me, and this year also marks his 115th birthday. So we wanted to make an album, a documentary and a concert that could balance what Arsenio was like in the 50s, what he lived with from a social point of view and how Dayramir sees him today.
Arlety Veunes, director: A documentary for Arsenio Rodríguez
From a musical point of view, it is important to emphasize, both for those who know and for those who do not, that Arsenio Rodríguez marked a before and after in Cuban music. He had the vision, as a social chronicler, of adding the piano to the three of the traditional septet, with Lilí Martínez; he added the tumbadoras to the bongo; To a single trumpet he added more trumpets, and thus created what is known as the ensemble sound.
In the late 40s and 50s, Sonora Matancera formed a sound movement that later, when they moved to New York, together with Tito Puente and other musicians, gave rise to the New York salsa movement. And, on the other hand, here, Chucho Valdes and Iraqere. So, all that social blackness, that social ebullition, was a wonderful symbiosis of colors and sounds, but it was Arsenio Rodríguez who was the creator of all that.
When I began to work more deeply on the experience of who Arsenio was, I thought that this was a golden opportunity for young people to better understand who was the precursor of the sound of salsa and the sound of the most contemporary Cuban music today.
Why always return to Cuba and especially to Jazz Plaza?
Every year I create four big projects that keep me awake and motivate me, because one’s career, if it is not taken care of in a very conscious and careful way, can be abandoned.
The need to look for money, the need to survive, often leads you to have jobs as a teacher that consume many hours, and you have to do it to secure that little money. But, at the same time, we must remember that one is an artist and that soul cannot be lost. I take care of it by doing at least three or four big projects a year, and I always reserve one of those for my Habana Jazz Plaza, with my people, with my Cubans, with mine.
It’s like a moral commitment, a spiritual connection, because I always worked very hard and consciously to be an artist who had a voice in his own country.
Like every artist, one dreams of traveling the world, succeeding in New York, Paris, being welcomed in international spaces, but the spiritual joy I feel upon arriving in my country and being recognized by young people, playing for my neighbors and seeing that all generations of Cubans give me and my art a space is wonderful.
It’s about being me again and not forgetting who I am, wherever I am. Sometimes jobs force you to stay away longer than you would like; So, this Jazz Festival is the perfect meeting to reconnect with the essence of Dayramir.
And although you are blessed to be able to live in a different society, in New York, which is so musically rich, it is still not your thing. That’s why I always say that New York is a place of work and that Havana is my home.
A part of your programs in Cuba is dedicated to music students. Are you looking to practice teaching on the island like you do in the United States?
I always had the vision that all that opportunity I had—I was selected among so many young people who, like me, have the same talent—was a commitment: if I was absorbing all that amount of jazz from the first level, with Bobby McFerrin, with Joe Lovano, with Danilo Pérez, receiving the specific colors of how a song sounds. big bandall that wonderful spirituality that was given to me, I had the duty to return it to the young people who did not have that opportunity.
The educational part for me is also a very important element, because whoever teaches reinforces what they know and is also a way of sharing with young people how to organize the study process. Music can be quite demanding in terms of the time and dedication it requires. If you don’t have an ecosystem to help you stay focused, it’s very easy to get off track.
An ecosystem means having an instrument, having parents who ensure that that child has the peace and space to study. It means having a music conservatory, with the necessary elements for that flower to grow. An ecosystem also implies having access – like us, who are privileged – to culture without it breaking your pocket. So, our privilege as Cubans is that we have an ecosystem ready so that that talented child can continue walking.
To this we must add that a balance is needed, because, for the most part, our educators are not necessarily stage artists. They are very good educators, but they have not lived the experience of being artists on stage. For this reason, it is also important to share with the young person that, when you sit down to play, you have to take the stage with abundance: you arrive, you make eye contact with your audience, who comes to see you and receive you; You receive it, you take your instrument and all that space is yours, and you are going to play with mastery and preparation. When you finish playing, you wait for that audience to applaud you, because you gave your all, and you receive that applause with great humility, but also with pride, because blessings are received. You thank the audience for coming and return.
Remember—I always tell students this—that you have to be musically ready, because you are only as good as your last concert. Depending on how you take care of your music, it will take care of you.
In recent years you have been acting as a kind of mediator who encourages visits to the American Artists Festival. Why take on that task?
I am lucky to listen to many geniuses around the world who have a very strong voice, and I want my Cubans to also have the opportunity to listen to the talent of Christian Sands, Aaron Goldberg or Emmet Cohen.
It is a golden opportunity to bring them to Havana and share those harmonic colors, those composers and those pianists who already have a voice and an art recognized around the world.
You have a very extensive academic training and, at the same time, that pedagogical bond that you maintain to this day. Do you consider that in music the school or the street is more important?
You have to have a balance between the two. Having school is important. I say that you have to have 60% school, because training gives you thinking, organization, vocabulary, careful phrasing, different types of touches; For any instrumentalist, the conservatory gives you that.
But the street gives you the ability to make decisions when what you plan doesn’t go the way you want. There you have to use it: harmonically you were doing a solo, you made a mistake and found another way. The street teaches you that, if you are playing with three tumbadoras and you are missing one, then you do it another way. It also gives you the structure of the dance, because there is no way you can play Cuban music if, as a creator, composer, arranger, orchestrator or conductor, you don’t know or feel those sounds.
How did you visualize being a Cuban artist when you were in Cuba and how do you visualize, understand and defend it today being a Cuban artist outside the country?
When you are inside Cuba, you dream. My vision was always to be a leader within Havana. Now, unfortunately, neither La Zorra y el Cuervo nor the Jazz Café in Paseo exist. They were the two most important places at the pinnacle of jazz in Cuba. We all grew up there and, at that time, many foreigners came, and one had that dream of playing from Cuba and wondered what music he would make so that the foreign listener could hear the best from here.
Now that I experience it from the outside, I feel like I have an even greater responsibility, because I am like a conscious ambassador of Cuban music. I have assumed it that way.
Being an ambassador depends on how one defines one’s homeland, because we all have our own Cuba, with all that that entails. But when you ask me what I think about Cuba, I focus on everything beautiful that the country still has.
From the people, who continue to be wonderful, their food, their music, their schools, their resilience, their ability to prevail over what we have and what we don’t, and to create more with what we have.
Your country is what represents you in Paris, in New York. You are a Cuban pianist, you are Cuban. And that Cubanness also implies that, when they ask you about your Cuba, about your love for it, it is like talking about your mother. Our Cuba is us, our identity is what defines us. So, if that defines you, you have to continue promoting it.
What do you wish for the future of Cuban music?
Today it is in very good health from a creative point of view: there are still many very original projects. The only thing we need is for the world to continue opening up so that our music is on platforms supported by major record labels.
The only thing missing from this wonderful catalog of so much talent is to have a platform and to be heard in a more commercial way. That is why I am committed to bringing American musicians to Cuba every year, so that they can experience first-hand what Cuban music is like and how young people are playing today.
What has been the hardest thing about being a Cuban artist outside of Cuba?
The hardest thing for me has been not to be influenced by so many people who tell you: “Stay here, forget about it, speak badly about Cuba.” The most difficult thing has been to maintain that level of cultural and social commitment with myself: I chose to be a Cuban who visits the island, who drinks from it firsthand, not a Cuban who dissociates. We are not criticizing those who uproot themselves from the country, but since I chose to be a voice within Cuba and someone who has strength in his own country, the most difficult thing has been to defend my position honestly.
No one can criticize you for being honest with yourself, for defending your own voice and what Cuba represents to me, what my music teachers represent, my native Cerro.
You cannot be afraid to say that everyone has their own experience with Cuba. I had that of a different Cuba. I was privileged. I am a privileged black man. I had a talent that had an ecosystem in which it could flourish, and somehow I always had the vision that Cuba and I are one, wherever I am.
