Portland vocalist Jessie Marquez kicks off a four-part performance series today exploring filin, the mid-century Cuban musical style that fuses traditional bolero with American jazz and blues. The series opens Saturday with a performance and conversation, continues with talkback sessions later this month, and builds toward a full ensemble concert at the Montavilla Jazz Festival on Sept. 5. Marquez will use the events to discuss her personal connection to Cuba and the long musical relationship between Cuba and the United States.
The project, formally titled Jessie Marquez: Cuban Jazz Exchange, is co-presented by Montavilla Jazz and Milagro and features Cuban trumpeter Lorenzo Molina, drawing on Marquez's two-decade artistic partnership with Cuban musician Enrique Cárdenas, according to a Montavilla Jazz announcement. As Oregon Public Broadcasting reports, the series begins with an exploration of musical styles on Saturday, followed by talkback sessions on Aug. 19 and Aug. 23 at El Centro Milagro, before culminating in the Sept. 5 concert at Mt. Tabor Park's Caldera Amphitheater.
A Singer's Personal Ties to Havana
Marquez's connection to Cuba runs through family rather than just repertoire. She grew up eating her grandmother's Cuban cooking and first visited her father's childhood home on the island in 1996, according to her own website, marquezmusic.online. That trip preceded a career-defining recording session: her 2004 album Sana Locura was cut in Havana with members of the Afro-Cuban All Stars, and the record climbed to the top of Latin jazz and salsa charts in both the United States and Europe.
Those Havana sessions gave Marquez direct exposure to the city's veteran studio musicians and the musical traditions she's now bringing to Portland audiences. Per the same account, her ongoing relationship with Cuban musicians, including Cárdenas, has shaped two decades of her artistic output.
What Exactly Is Filin?
OPB describes filin as a style of music combining traditional Cuban bolero with American jazz and blues, and the genre's origins trace back further than most listeners might expect. The movement began in Havana's Cayo Hueso neighborhood in the late 1940s, when young Cuban musicians gathering at troubadour Tirso Díaz's home blended bolero with American vocal jazz and crooning, according to Latino Music Cafe.
Composer and guitarist José Antonio Méndez, who lived from 1927 to 1989, was one of the central figures who helped popularize bolero-filin across Cuba and Latin America during the 1940s and 1950s, the outlet notes in a separate piece on Méndez's career. The music's roots carry international recognition today: UNESCO inscribed traditional bolero, the foundational genre underlying filin, onto its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2023, according to Wikipedia.
Funding and Venue Behind the Residency
The Cuban Jazz Exchange residency was funded by Travel Portland, with additional grant support from Chamber Music America's Jazz Consortium Grant and the Oregon Arts Commission's Arts Builds Communities Program, per the Montavilla Jazz announcement. That mix of local tourism and national arts funding reflects a broader institutional investment in cross-cultural music programming in the region.
The August sessions take place at El Centro Milagro, home to Milagro, or Miracle Theatre Group, which was founded in 1985 by José González and Dañel Malán and is regarded as the premier Latine arts and culture organization in the Pacific Northwest, according to The Oregon Encyclopedia. Hosting the series there ties Marquez's project to four decades of Latine arts presentation in Portland.
Finale Lands Inside a Major Jazz Festival
The series' Sept. 5 concert at Mt. Tabor Park's Caldera Amphitheater will fold Marquez's project into a much larger event. The 13th annual Montavilla Jazz Festival runs Sept. 4 through 6, presenting 25 concerts across five East Portland venues and headlined by vocalist Lo Steele, according to the festival's own announcement.
For listeners who catch the free or pay-what-you-wish talkback sessions this month before the ticketed festival finale, the arc offers a rare chance to hear a Portland-based artist trace a genre from its 1940s Havana origins to a present-day stage in East Portland. OPB's Think Out Loud, where the story first aired, broadcasts live at noon every day and is rebroadcast at 8 p.m.
