Chediak Comeback

"I hadn't done anything for over a year since I left the festival and I was very happy to know that there was still an audience there for a worthwhile venture," muses Chediak. "My formula has always been a mixed crowd. Whenever I can mix it up I know I've got it cooking. I've never played to a strictly Latino audience or to an Anglo audience. Whenever there's a mix it feels right.

"Everything I've done has always been thanks to the audience," he adds. "Not always to the city, county, and state but to the people themselves. The Miami audience has always been there for me, and I think it's because I've never talked down to them. And I have a feeling that when people have failed at different endeavors, it's because they condescended to the public. This audience may not be people in the mainstream, they may not be the Miami we read about or see in the media. But they're there. And they were here for me for eighteen years at the festival. And they were here for me in Nocturne. They've never failed me whenever I've raised the ante. And I can't even get on first base without them."

Chediak, who calls himself "a frustrated musician and frustrated filmmaker," discovered Cuban music through colleagues of his father, who had been the attorney for Panart Records in Havana. Acknowledging his own lackluster attempts at filmmaking in college, he opened a cinematheque in the Seventies and went on to co-found the film festival, bowing out after it was acquired by Florida International University, whose officials wanted to explore 'new approaches to programming.'"

"Nobody's rushing to me with offers to back me, saying 'What would you like to do?'" Chediak acknowledges. "Now I'm just happy to try different things in music the way I used to in film. I'm not working for anybody. I'm doing this on my own, and I'm not depending on anybody's whims. It's at the point where [Fernando and I] are basically doing the albums we want to hear.

"We're riding the crest of the wave in terms of emotion," the producer adds, his bearded grin once again opening into a contented chuckle. "And it's quite lovely."