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Kennedy Center honoree Arturo Sandoval on defecting from Cuba and how jazz music saved his life
Kennedy Center honoree Arturo Sandoval is being recognized for his contribution to American culture through the performing arts.
The Cuban-born trumpeter said the road to this moment wasn’t easy, but it was jazz music that helped save his life.
Sandoval grew up in poverty, in a house with a dirt floor. He left school at 10 years old to work.
He said a music academy was opened and that’s when he fell in love with the trumpet, but after Cuba’s communist revolution, he could only play what the government allowed. Jazz music even landed him in an unexpected place during his mandatory military service.
“They put me in jail for 3.5 months because I was listening to the voice of an enemy,” he said. “They call it Yankee imperialism.”
As depicted in “For Love, or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story,” an HBO movie about his life starring Andy Garcia, Sandoval found a work around.
“At the end, what we want to play was jazz,” he said.
How Sandoval’s career unfolded
A prominent figure in Sandoval’s life was John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie. On the American trumpeter’s first day visiting Havana, Sandoval offered to be his chauffeur, never mentioning that he also played trumpet — until Gillespie saw for himself.
“He opened his eye like this and then he said, ‘What the heck is my driver doing with a trumpet?’ Somebody said, ‘No, Mr. Gillespie, he’s a trumpeter,'” Sandoval said of the interaction.
The movie also reenacts his first encounter with his future wife, Marianela, who is still by his side 49 years later.
For 10 years, the Cuban government allowed Sandoval to tour overseas with Gillespie. In 1990, they made a one time exception for his wife and son to meet him in London.
“The next day, I went with Mr. Gillespie to the American embassy, asking for political asylum.”
But the Cuban government found out. Sandoval said Gillespie called the White House, and just months later, he was on stage in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center Honors, paying tribute to Gillespie, the man who was not only a mentor, but helped to save his life.
“It’s an incredible blessing to become a close friend to your hero,” he said.
What the Kennedy Center honor and jazz means to Sandoval
When asked what the Kennedy Center means to him through music, Sandoval played “God Bless America.”
“I strongly believe the most important word is the word freedom.”
He said only in the United States came the freedom to write 48 albums, win nearly a dozen Grammys and Latin Grammys, earn the Presidential Medal of Freedom and start a foundation for young musicians.
“The salt and pepper and salsa and everything, of jazz, the main ingredient is improvisation. For me, jazz is synonymous of freedom,” he said.
It’s a freedom he said he didn’t have in Cuba before defecting in 1990.
“This kind of oppression, to really understand, you have to suffer in your blood.”
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Sean “Diddy” Combs will remain in New York City jail until 2025 trial after withdrawing bail appeal
NEW YORK — Sean “Diddy” Combs filed a motion Friday to dismiss his appeal for bail, meaning he will stay in jail until his trial on sex trafficking charges in May 2025.
Combs was ordered held without bail when he was first arrested back in September, but his legal team appealed the decision multiple times.
When the most recent appeal was denied in late November, the judge said, “The Court finds that the government has shown by clear and convincing evidence that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community.”
Prosecutors previously alleged that since his arrest, Combs has tried to reach out to potential victims and witnesses. They also claim he encouraged strategies to sway public opinion, such as having his children post about his birthday on social media.
Combs held at federal jail in Brooklyn
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He is accused of abusing and blackmailing multiple women with the help of associates and employees for over 15 years.
He is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the only federal jail in New York City. Over the years, the jail has held other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, rapper Ja Rule and cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried.
Combs’ trial is scheduled to begin May 5, 2025. Prosecutors have until the end of this year to turn over discovery.
If convicted of the charges, Combs could face decades in prison, experts say.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell issued an apparent warning Friday to Robert F. Kennedy, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, after The New York Times reported that one of Kennedy’s top advisers had filed petitions to revoke the approval of a polio vaccine and several other shots.
“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell said in a statement.
McConnell, a polio survivor, denounced efforts “to undermine public confidence in proven cures” like the polio vaccine.
“The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” McConnell said.
McConnell credited the “miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s love” with saving him from paralysis when he contracted the disease at two years of age, and he praised the “miracle” of “the saving power of the polio vaccine” for the millions of children who came after him.
The Times article focused in large part on the work of attorney Aaron Siri for the nonprofit Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, which petitioned the Food and Drug Administration in 2022 “demanding that the FDA suspend or withdraw approval” of Sanofi Pasteur’s inactivated polio vaccine, called IPOL.
Siri has been acting as an adviser to the transition team for Kennedy, who, if confirmed by the Senate, would oversee the FDA and the nation’s other public health agencies.
Siri called the Times article a “hit piece” that did not engage with the substance of the “legitimate” concern at the center of the petition he filed for ICAN.
“ICAN’s petition, filed in 2022, makes the reasonable request that the FDA, as required by federal law, require a proper clinical trial for IPOL prior to licensure,” Siri posted on X.
The Times report on Siri’s work sparked a renewed round of backlash against Kennedy by Democrats, too, who have criticized Trump for months over his ties with Kennedy.
As HHS secretary, Kennedy would have significant direct authority as the nation’s health secretary over how vaccines are studied, approved and recommended in the U.S. He and his FDA commissioner would also oversee how government lawyers respond to many of the legal battles Siri has launched against the agency over vaccines.
Kennedy himself has said he would not ban vaccines and has tried to distance himself from the “anti-vaccine” label, instead calling for further study of the shots. He recently resigned as chair of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that watchdog groups have found for years to be spreading misinformation over fears about vaccines.
President-elect Donald Trump has said he might be open to getting rid of some vaccines “if I think it’s dangerous,” pledging to listen to Kennedy.
“We’re going to have a big discussion. The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at things that are happening, there’s something causing it,” Trump said in an interview with Time magazine published this week, when he was asked if he’d sign off on a move by Kennedy to end childhood vaccination programs.
Extensive medical research has conclusively shown that vaccines do not cause autism.
Siri’s petition for ICAN has not progressed much at the FDA since it was filed in 2022. It is one of several legal efforts Siri has filed for groups against several shots, including a petition in 2020 over hepatitis B vaccines.
In a 2023 letter responding to the polio petition, the agency’s top vaccine official, Dr. Peter Marks, wrote that the FDA “has been unable to reach a decision on your petition because it raises issues requiring further review and analysis by agency officials.”
Siri’s petition targets IPOL, which is the only “single-antigen” polio vaccine currently recommended for use in the U.S. The vaccine was approved in the 1990s.
Many children who receive immunizations for polio often do not receive IPOL, but rather, one of several combination vaccines that blend a harmless version of the poliovirus with other recommended antigens for various vaccine-preventable diseases.
The CDC says IPOL is “mainly used as a travel vaccine for adults.” The agency says that the “body of scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports” the safety of polio vaccines.
Siri has hinted at plans for more petitions to the FDA, after Kennedy is in charge at HHS.
“It will help if there are outsiders, from the outside attacking in. For example, the FDA acts on petitions. If you want to license a product, you have to petition them. If you want a product to be withdrawn or reevaluated, you typically often have to petition them,” Siri told Del Bigtree, ICAN’s founder and a former campaign spokesperson for Kennedy, on his podcast last month.
“Somebody on the outside needs to be petitioning them,” Siri added.
contributed to this report.