Bebo and Chucho Valdes in Madrid in 2008, celebrating their birthdays. (Pierre-Phillippe Marcou / AFP/Getty Images)

Both were born in Cuba on Oct. 9 — Bebo Valdés in 1918, and his son Chucho Valdés in 1941. Both are extraordinary, renowned jazz pianists who have played major roles in developing their island’s rich musical traditions. Chucho learned to play from his father, starting at age 3 when he began to pick out the music Bebo — a bandleader and arranger who was one of the architects of Cuba’s golden age of music in the 1940s and ’50s — played at home.

All those factors would seem to make Bebo and Chucho Valdes’ recording of Juntos para siempre (Together Forever), an album of piano duets recently released in the United States, a natural, even inevitable union.

”It was a very emotional thing,” Chucho says from his home in Havana. “Doing this record was unique. We were enjoying the music, and at the same time we were enjoying each other.

“A lot of times people say that when we play together it’s like one piano, or one pianist who plays with four hands. We laugh a lot, because sometimes he’ll make jokes to me, playing. He’ll change something, and I know where it comes from, so I’ll answer with my own jokes. We laugh so much as we’re playing.”

But getting to the point where father and son could enjoy each other in the musical language they share at such an intimate level has taken more than 40 years. When Bebo left Cuba in 1960, the teenage Chucho was the only member of the family who did not accompany him to the airport. Father and son did not see each other for 18 years. Bebo settled in Sweden and started a new family, while Chucho became famous as the leader of Irakere, a jazz-fusion group key to pushing Cuban music into a new era, which became celebrated worldwide.

Although Bebo came to hear Irakere perform at Carnegie Hall in 1978, the two didn’t play together until 1994, for one song on Bebo’s comeback album Bebo Rides Again, produced by famed exile saxophonist and former Irakere member Paquito D’Rivera.

Since then Bebo and Chucho have grown gradually closer: playing together on D’Rivera’s Cuba Jazz, 90 Miles From Cuba in 1995; and in the Latin jazz film Calle 54 in 2000. Juntos was recorded in Madrid in June, 2007, and released in October, 2008 in celebration of Bebo’s 90th birthday, which also saw father and son touring Spain together.

That the two men have reunited is due to the powerful ties of family and music. ”Blood is thicker than politics,” says Nat Chediak, who produced Juntos for his Calle 54 label. It’s the eighth album he’s done with Bebo since 2000, an output that includes the world music hit “Lagrimas Negras” (with flamenco singer Diego El Cigala) and which has reinvigorated Bebo’s career.

“It’s pure chemistry — they’re father and son. The beautiful thing about it is that they’ve been able to triumph over the adversity of Cuban exile, of being torn asunder by the separation.”

Their reunion is an achievement Bebo and Chucho take great pleasure in.

‘They’re each others’ biggest fans,” says Chediak, who was also associate producer of the Calle 54 film. “There’s always the air of two people who are immensely enjoying each others’ company. I always have the feeling they’re making up for lost time.”

Chucho says it was distance, not family or political differences, that separated them. ”We were really never far away as father and son, we were separated by distance, by being in different countries,” he says. “My father married and had another family in Sweden, and that made my mother, who stayed in Cuba, a little sad, and made us all a little sad. But that had nothing to do with not loving him anymore.”

Father and son are alike in many ways: both toweringly tall, with arms that span the keyboard, musically erudite and adventurous, and with a taste for the ladies (Bebo has seven children, and Chucho, who is now married to an Argentine woman, has eight). ”They’re like two drops of water, exactly alike,” Chediak says. “They’re both very mischievous and very reserved at the same time.”

Chucho idolized his father, who was his first teacher and who formed him as a musician. ”He was my hero,” says Chucho. “I wanted to be like him. He was very very very demanding with me. And for this I’m very grateful to him.”

But the time Chucho spent apart from his father allowed him to become his own artist. ”It was difficult to play the same instrument as a person who is so original, creative and great,” he says. “The hard part was to find myself, my own personality without leaving his influence behind.”

Now Chucho holds his own with his father — although he still acknowledges his influence. Most of the songs on Juntos were recorded in the first take, except for a few times when Chucho’s performance was more flamboyant than Bebo’s — when Chediak says Chucho would propose another try in which he’d tone down to match his father. ”At the time of Calle 54, Chucho expressed the wish to be close to his father and get as much as he could from him,” Chediak says. “He has been able to do that, and it shows in his playing.”

These days the two communicate frequently by phone and e-mail, and see each other whenever they can. Chucho is hopeful that Bebo will be up to another father-son tour. ”Whenever he wants to, I’m ready,” Chucho says. “Because for me it’s really the best thing that could have happened.”

– Jordan Levin