In 1960, as Cuba's political fabric was being torn apart, 19-year-old Chucho Valdés watched his father Bebo Valdés, director of the Tropicana Club Orchestra and Orquesta Sabor de Cuba, leave the island for an exile that would silence him on the world recording stage for more than 30 years. This episode follows how the teenager left behind in Havana did not merely carry his father's tradition but dismantled and rebuilt it, leading his first recorded sessions at 22 in January 1964 with players like Paquito D'Rivera, Carlos Emilio Morales, and Guillermo Barreto, then co-founding the state-sponsored Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna in 1967, backing singers like Elena Burke and Omara Portuondo.

In 1973 he and his inner circle formed Irakere, a musical laboratory fusing songo rhythms and batá drums with Afro-Cuban jazz, and won a Grammy in 1980  ...