Latin Beat Magazine

While a trip to Cuba's colonial capital of Havana might be out of range for most music lovers, this Northwest singer can get them there faster, cheaper and with far less red tape.

Jessie Marquez has sung in clubs, cabarets, theaters, street parties, and on television and radio throughout the music-loving nation of Cuba. In her sultry vocals Cuban audiences recognize the mix of North American harmonies and Latin emotion that embodies the acoustic genre they call filin.

Playing on the English word "feeling," Cubans have aptly named this emotional genre. An offshoot of bolero, filin draws from American jazz, Brazilian bossa nova, and the Cuban people's familiarity with the many shades of love and longing.

At home in Eugene,Oregon Marquez is accompanied by jazz guitarist, Mike Denny, and his ensemble. The group has cultivated a devoted following with their smoky, intimate interpretation of filin through the music of composers such as José Antonio Mendez, Marta Valdés, and Pablo Milanes.

Marquez, whose father was raised in Havana by an Italian mother and Spanish father, grew up eating her grandmother's Cuban cooking and hearing stories about the family's days in Cuba. Marquez first visited her father's homeland in 1996. Right away, she says, "there was something very familiar about it --the way people spoke, their gestures, their attitudes. I felt at home there."

In 2003, Juan Carlos Marín, David Alfaro and Julito Padrón, members of the Afro-Cuban Allstars, heard her sing in Havana and offered to arrange and record her first CD. In a home studio, between power outages, they recorded "Sana Locura," which reached the top of salsa and Latin jazz charts in Europe and the United States. Marquez appeared on Cuban television and radio and was invited by the Cuban culture department, UNEAC, to perform in the country's annual bolero festival (2005 and 2006). Marquez subsequently spent 8 months in Cuba, performing with some of the country's most respected artists, such as Rey Montesinos, Musical Director of the Cuban National Television Orchestra, and Beatríz Márquez (no relation), one of Cuba's most renowned singers.

"Jessie Marquez has become la reina of Cuban music in the Pacific Northwest."
-- Latina Style, National Magazine for the Contemporary Hispanic Woman

"[This] American diva with Cuban roots went to Havana and won over some of Cuba's most prominent musicians with her singing and her interpretations of Cuban classics. The resulting collaboration is a musical gem- nostalgic and fresh." --Latin Beat Magazine

"Far from the hotbeds of Latin music, singer and composer Jessie Márquez has
carved out a niche for herself in the Northwest. She returned to Cuba to record
an album of tropical Latin classics and originals with some of Havana's top musicians, and adapted effortlessly to the Cuban style with a commanding
vocal presence, highlighted by a sincere, evocative delivery with a sensuous edge." --Hispanic Magazine

"An undiscovered treasure."
--Tomas Algarin, Executive Producer, Jazz 91.9 FM WCLK - Atlanta