December 15, 2005 - Once More With Filin

Once More With Filin -- Singer Jessie Marquez sings with Cuban style.
By Vanessa Salvia

It's a frosty weekday morning at Jessie Marquez's Eugene home. That means three big dogs barking outside, strong coffee, a crackling fire and packing while the kids are at school. But Marquez isn't just moving across town. She and her family are switching continents, relocating to Latin America in January. She's giving the move at least a year, to see how her sons, 11 and 7, handle the change, but Marquez is confident the family will adjust.

The vibrant, slender woman plans to study music and work with both popular and unknown Latin artists on new musical material. "I'm going to record, produce, work on a new album and study, the whole package," said Marquez. "I'm interested in producing other artists, too."

Last year, Marquez sang in Cuba in an island-wide bolero festival held annually. "I met lots of incredible singers and it was an incredible education," because these extremely accomplished artists were living in obscurity, she explained. "If you're not from Havana it's pretty hard, because Havana is the national hub of culture and everything. So I'd like to produce some of these people." Marquez's impending move means Eugene will lose one of its most sultry female voices, one steeped in the warm tones of classic American jazz and Cuban standards.

Marquez's relationship to Cuba traces back to her grandmother Ana Marquez, an Italian from a Spanish neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her Spanish skills earned her a job as a translator for Wrigley Company, visiting Cuba on business. Ana married a Spaniard, Antonio Marquez, and the couple moved to Havana in the late 1940s. During the 1960s, Jessie's parents were visiting relatives in the U.S. when relations chilled between the U.S. and Cuba. Unable to return to Havana, Marquez's parents moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she later spent the first few years of her life. The stories she heard from her family about Cuba nurtured her love for the island nation, and in 1996 she accompanied her father back to Havana to visit his boyhood home. It was the first of many trips to Cuba.

Making her way to Eugene after attending college on the East Coast, Marquez started a family and began singing with Eugene salsa group Caliente, Eugene-based Cuban son group Son Mela'o and others, saving every penny to fulfill her dreams of returning to Cuba and recording her own CD. In 2003 Marquez traveled to Havana to study Cuban music and dance. There, her instructor introduced her to Juan Carlos Marín, an arranger and trumpet player with Afro-Cuban All Stars. Marín heard Marquez sing one time, over the telephone, and he agreed to work with her on a CD. The result of that hasty meeting was Marquez's luscious 2004 CD Sana Locura, recorded over five intense weeks in Havana with some of Cuba's finest musicians.

Here in Eugene, Marquez is building a new repertoire based on Cuban filin, also spelled and pronounced just like the English word "feeling." Filin is Cuba's answer to the languid jazz moods of America's Billie Holiday and other lounge and swing classics. "They love the music so much that they call it 'feeling,' and it means 'feeling' just like it does in English," explained Marquez.

The talented singer chooses popular Cuban tunes for her repertoire, selects classic American jazz standards like "Night and Day" or writes her own songs, as she did twice on Sana Locura. Her voice is equally comfortable singing the slow, sensual or lively, and much of the uncluttered arranging shows off her voice to best advantage.