Cristián Cuturrufo

There are two worlds that, in Chile, almost never spoke to each other. On one side, jazz: conservatoire music, New York music, the music of the smart club and the necktie. On the other, the music of the port of Coquimbo: the accordion of the local festivals, the cueca, the cumbia, the flavour of the street. Cristián Cuturrufo was the man who married them. With a trumpet, he built a bridge between those two worlds, and crossed it both ways all his life.

The port and the conservatoire

Cuturrufo was born in Coquimbo in 1972, son of the accordionist Wilson Cuturrufo, from one of the most traditional families in that port's songbook. Which is to say he grew up inside popular music, the music of the northern festivals and fondas. But he also studied classical trumpet, first at the school named after Jorge Peña Hen — the Coquimbo musician and educator executed under the dictatorship — and later at the Universidad Católica, training as a formal, academic trumpeter. The port and the conservatoire lived inside one man. And to join those two halves completely, he went to Cuba to study Afro-Cuban music, popular music, jazz. He came back with both banks connected.

The national swing

What he did with that is what makes him great. From the nineties on he became one of the leaders of Chilean jazz, and he did it his own way: he took the bebop of New York, the most sophisticated and most elite language in jazz, and gave it an unmistakably Chilean flavour. He worked in cueca, he worked in cumbia, he invented what he called "swing nacional", he crossed jazz with Latin funk. He took jazz out of its necktie and set it talking with the street, with the fonda, with the north. He proved that those two apparently hostile worlds were, underneath, the same one, and that a trumpet could play Charlie Parker and smell of the port at the same time.

The bridge made flesh

And he did not only cross that bridge on record: he crossed it in person, playing with the greats of Chilean popular music. He collaborated often with the Ángel Parra Trío — that of Ángel Parra junior, one of the four members of Los Tres — recorded swing duets with the legendary "tío" Valentín Trujillo, master of popular piano, on the album "Jazz de salón", and shared a band, Los Titulares, with Francisco Molina, drummer of Los Tres, who on saying goodbye called him a brother in arms. There was the bridge made flesh: the jazz player from Coquimbo right inside the heart of Chilean music, and welcomed there as one of their own.

Not the father, but indispensable

Many call him, affectionately and with reason, "the father of Chilean jazz". And it has to be said honestly: strictly speaking he is not, because jazz in Chile is much older than he was. The Club de Jazz de Santiago was founded in 1943 — it is considered the oldest in Latin America — almost thirty years before Cuturrufo was born. But what is true is bigger than that title. Cuturrufo was the indispensable man, the one who took jazz out of the enclave of the Santiago elite and made it belong to the whole country. A friend saw him off with exactly the right phrase: he was the one who carried Chilean jazz and rode on its wings all over the world. He was not the father, but he was the one who opened the doors and windows so that everyone could come in.

From Coquimbo, not from Santiago

And it is no small detail: he did it from Coquimbo. He had his own jazz club in the port, played all over Chile, and proved that a great of this music could come out of the north, the provinces, and not the capital. He twisted the arm of centralism, as others we have remembered in these pages did. Jazz, with him, stopped having an upper-Santiago accent.

Seven shows in one night

He was also a beloved teacher, the kind an entire community respects. Generous, always ready to play with anyone, he put together festivals and clubs, pushed young players forward. There is one night that became legend: seven performances in a single stretch, going in and out of two neighbouring jazz clubs in Bellavista, playing until dawn. That was his energy. Unmistakable, with his thick beard and his trumpet held against his body.

The plague took him

The pandemic took him. In March 2021, in the middle of lockdown, covid put him in hospital abruptly and within days it switched him off, at forty-eight. He was one of the many that plague stole, but this one left a hole in Chilean music that has still not closed. The jazz family — which in Chile is a small, tight-knit tribe — mourned him the way you mourn one of your own.

Today we remember him. His trumpet is still there, in the dozen or so albums he left, in that "swing nacional" he invented, in every young player who picked up the instrument because they saw him. If you ever heard a trumpet play jazz with the flavour of the north, with a wink of cueca tucked between the notes, you heard what Cuturrufo built. The bridge he laid between the conservatoire and the fonda is still standing, and musicians will keep crossing it for many years. El Cutu is gone, but what he joined does not come apart.

Sources

Christian Alejandro Cuturrufo Contador (Coquimbo, 27 June 1972 – Santiago, 19 March 2021) was one of Chile's most prominent jazz trumpeters and a cultural organiser. He was the son of the accordionist Wilson Cuturrufo, from a family of musicians tied to the popular festivals of the port of Coquimbo. He studied classical trumpet at the Jorge Peña Hen Experimental Music School in La Serena — named after the musician and educator executed during the dictatorship in 1973 — and at the Universidad Católica, where he was part of the Ensamble Gabrieli between 1991 and 1993; he furthered his studies in Cuba in popular, Afro-Cuban music and jazz. From the nineties he was one of the leading figures of Chilean jazz, fusing bebop with local rhythms: cueca, cumbia, the so-called "swing nacional" and Latin funk. He played in groups such as Los Titulares, alongside Francisco Molina, drummer of Los Tres, as well as Vernáculo, Motuto and Cutus-Clan, and led his own quintets and sextets; he recorded around ten albums, the last in 2019. He collaborated frequently with Chilean popular music: with the Ángel Parra Trío, led by Ángel Parra junior, a member of Los Tres, and with the pianist Valentín Trujillo, with whom he recorded "Jazz de salón" (2004) and "Villancicos" (2005). As an organiser he drove clubs and festivals and had his own club in Coquimbo. He died at 48 from complications of covid-19, after being hospitalised in critical condition in Santiago. The phrase "father of Chilean jazz" is an affectionate label: jazz in Chile predates him, and the Club de Jazz de Santiago, founded in 1943, is considered the oldest in Latin America. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Sourced from Wikipedia, MusicaPopular.cl, Memoria Chilena, La Tercera, BioBioChile, Emol and other press coverage.