It’s just a sliver of an island 90 miles southeast of Florida, but musically speaking it ranks as a superpower.
Listen closely to the pulsing rhythms of American jazz, the sweet grooves of Latin salsa, the lush melody of the Mexican son, the seductive dance beats of the rumba and cha-cha-cha, and you are hearing music indelibly linked to the cultural hothouse that is Cuba.
If you doubt that a nation so small and poor could set the tempo for so much of the rest of the world, then you haven’t been listening to Gloria Estefan, Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Arturo Sandoval, Paquito D’Rivera, Gonzalo Rubalcaba and scores more whose work would be inconceivable without its Cuban roots.
What’s more, nearly four decades after the United States placed its economic embargo on Cuba (in 1960), the island’s musical influence is growing – particularly in the U.S.
“Afro-Cuban music always has been here in the States, but now it’s being heard on every level, commercially and culturally, and by all kinds of audiences,” says Carlos Garcia, a Chicago-based impresario who has been a major player in bringing Cuban artists to the States.
“When the guys from Batacumbele (an Afro-Cuban band) played Chicago in April, they asked me, `Do you think Americans are ready for a band like us?’
“And I said, `Fourteen years ago, when you guys got together, they weren’t, but now this music is not just a Hispanic thing anymore. Now it’s a world thing, and everyone can get into this.’ “
Indeed, with artists such as Estefan, Cruz and Puente having developed America’s taste for music with a Cuban tinge, American audiences now appear ready to hear the real thing: music played by artists who grew up in Cuba and, in many instances, still live there.
“People today are more aware of the influence that Afro-Cuban music has had on all kinds of sounds,” says Chicago promoter Marguerite Horberg, who has presented singer Lazro Ros, Afrocuba, Spirits of Havana, Los Van Van and other Cuban performers.
“So as the music becomes more familiar to Americans, people are more interested in hearing the artists who originated it.”
Though the economic embargo remains intact, the U.S. State Department has been issuing visas for Cuban artists to perform here, so long as they do not get paid (though their expenses can be reimbursed). Similarly, Havana, evidently eager to garner the favorable press and positive public relations that its legendary musicians inspire, has been allowing some of its greatest stars to tour the U.S.
As a result, Americans have been hearing sounds and seeing stage spectacles barred to them for decades.
Consider a few recent developments:
– Last April, fabled Cuban percussionists Tata Guines and Changuito made their first American appearance in 35 years, launching their national tour in Chicago to critical acclaim. The performance attested to the perpetual evolution of Cuban music, with Guines, Changuito and the Batacumbele All-Stars offering an orgy of rhythms of an intricate and visceral kind rarely heard on these shores.
– In January, Los Van Van, the most successful pop band in Cuba, played its first American tour, receiving rave reviews in Chicago and New York, among other major cities. The band’s fusion of traditional Cuban rhythms with elements of rhythm and blues and rock pointed to the links that Cuba maintains to the rest of the music world, despite the American embargo.
– In August, the ensemble Afrocuba (formally known as Grupo Afrocuba de Matanzas) performed its exotic, ritualized ballet on a rare American tour, seducing audiences in Chicago and beyond with its unusual fusion of ancient religion, music, dance and folklore. Cuban artists, the performances seemed to say, take pains to merge their musical past and present.
Similarly, ensembles such as Cubanismo, Spirits of Havana and others have played the States during the past year, giving American listeners a much longed for taste of Cuban musical ferment.
Officially, the U.S. government bans its citizens from trading with Cuba.
Unofficially, however, the two countries have become increasingly active trading partners when it comes to culture, with more Cuban musicians performing in the U.S. and more Americans heading to Havana than at any time since the start of the embargo. Though there have been brief flurries of activity in the past, most notably during the administration of President Jimmy Carter in the late ’70s, the tempo gradually has been picking up since 1992, according to the State Department. It’s in the past year, however, that the historic results of the cultural exchange have been most evident.
Meanwhile, American artists such as jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove, tenor saxophonist David Sanchez and others have been playing Havana to similarly receptive audiences.
In general, “The U.S. policy is still to isolate the current regime in Cuba,” says a State Department spokeswoman. “However, we do reach out to the Cuban people. By doing so, we encourage people-to-people contacts, and that’s performing artists and other kinds of exchanges — academic, cultural, that we see as nonpolitical. . . .
“This fits in with our support of the Cuban people, which is part of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, and that calls for support for the Cuban people.”
In other words, while the Clinton administration observes the economic embargo that’s so popular with many Cuban emigres in the United States, it’s also subtly trying to nurture contact with the island, via culture.
“Actually, there are a lot of reasons for all the cultural activity between Cuba and the United States,” adds Horberg.
“For one, there recently has been more consistency from the (U.S.) State Dept. in giving visas to Cuban musicians. And Cuba’s interest in getting recognition for its indigenous artists has motivated (the government) to help these tours take place.”
The results, say those involved in the exchanges, have been striking.
“When I was traveling with Tata Guines in the U.S. for the first time in more than three decades, it was kind of like taking a kid to Disneyland for the first time,” says Garcia, who’s originally from Puerto Rico.
“Everywhere I took him, audiences went crazy. Everywhere we went, people remembered him, even after all that time away.
“One night we went to a small restaurant in Logan Square, but when we got there, they already had closed.
“Then I told them I had Tata Guines in the car with me, and they opened the doors and wouldn’t let us out. We sat for an hour-and-a-half drinking black Cuban coffee and smoking Cuban cigars.
“I can’t speak for anyone else about the embargo,” continues Garcia, “but I’ll say this–everybody has been playing ball, and everybody will continue to play ball as long as nobody is getting too upset.”
Sour notes from protesters
But the increasing tempo of cultural contact between the two nations has gotten many people upset.
A couple of weeks ago, when American trumpeter Hargrove and his Afro-Cuban band Crisol was scheduled to perform in Houston, the performers didn’t know until the last minute whether they would be allowed to take the stage: A local group of anti-Castro activists had been lobbying to prevent the concert from taking place.
“And this is basically an American band with four Cubans as guests,” says Larry Clothier, Hargrove’s manager (Crisol plays July 5 during the Jazz at Ravinia festival).
“But they said there are plenty of Latin musicians in Texas who could have had these jobs, instead of musicians who, in their words, `support Fidel.’ “
The Hargrove concert went on as planned “because we wouldn’t be intimidated,” adds Clothier, but not everyone has been so fortunate. Last July, a nightclub in Miami was firebombed after promoters announced that Cuban singer Rosita Fornes would be performing there.
“My colleagues in Miami tell me they’re really sorry that they’re not able to present some of the Cuban artists there that we can present here in Chicago,” says promoter Garcia, referring to a city where anti-Castro sentiments run particularly deep.
Yet just eight years ago the City of Chicago dropped plans to present Orquestra Aragon, an internationally known Cuban band that had been booked to play the Viva Chicago Festival in Grant Park, following local protests.
“There are still a lot of people who have a bad taste about the Cuban government, and I respect that,” says Garcia.
“A lot of those people used to be doctors and lawyers and architects, and when they came to the United States (after the revolution that put Castro in power), they became peasants. They’ve had to struggle and they want no part of Castro’s Cuba here.”
Yet musical exchange between the two countries dates at least to the first half of this century, when Cuban stars such as Chano Pozo and Mario Bauzo ventured to New York to collaborate with American artists such as Dizzy Gillespie and Cab Calloway. Furthermore, the musical dialogue was a two-way street.
“The American musicians used to get a flight in the early afternoon, they landed in Havana, they went to the Tropicana to perform, and they had a flight waiting for them to return,” says Rubalcaba.
“It was fantastic,” remembers veteran Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes. “My father was the piano player and bandleader of the Tropicana orchestra, and when I was a child, I would sit with him in the rehearsals, and that’s where I got my love of jazz music.
“I would hear Roy Haynes, Nat `King’ Cole, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Cab Calloway–all the American stars came to play in Havana,” where Valdes still lives.
From this interchange came an extremely seductive music that merged elements of American jazz with Cuban dance. The Afro-Cuban idiom that Gillespie nurtured in his partnerships with percussionists Pozo and Bauza, the mambo dance music that Cuban bassist Cachao invented and exported to the States (with the help of bandleaders such as Perez Prado and Xavier Cugat, who popularized the music here), the pop permutations of Cuban musical traditions that these days often goes by the generic name “salsa” all owed to the marriage of Cuban and American musical languages.
Why did the two musical cultures prove so potent a mix? Essentially because each has common roots in the music of West African slaves who were brought to Cuba and to the U.S. The music may have evolved differently in each place, but the underlying rhythms, call-and-response patterns, melodic structures and improvisatory tendencies were essentially the same.
Impressive collaborations
For the better part of four decades, however, the door between the two countries has been bolted shut.
Now, Cuban and American artists are re-establishing contact. The results are impressive.
Hargrove’s new recording with Crisol, “Habana” (Verve), is by far the best of his career, exploring intricate polyrhythms, exotic instrumentation and Cuban-tinged song forms with considerable assurance. Though it had to be recorded in Europe (since its collaborators include Cuban nationals), it represents one of the newest and best documents yet attesting to the enduring musical relationship between two politically feuding nations.
More to the point, such a project would have been inconceivable just a couple of years ago.
“It all came about as a result of me going to play the Havana Jazz Festival in Cuba last year,” says Hargrove.
“While I was there, I had a great musical exchange with Los Van Van and Irakere and other local bands.
“That’s where I learned about the clave rhythm, the timbale rhythm, the cow-bell rhythm, and all of these things, each very unique, which go together to create the groove.
“I already had been listening to (records of) Dizzy’s collaboration with Chano Pozo, and I’d always had an underlying interest in this style, but it wasn’t until I put my foot on Cuban soil that I could really understand what it was all about.”
Hargrove received no pay to play in Cuba, just as Valdes, Changuito and his other Cuban sidemen receive no pay to tour the States with him today.
But, in some ways, the new musical ground they’re exploring together transcends commerce.
“We’re making history here,” says Garcia.
“We’re not making money, you can’t get corporations to sponsor these concerts, but you can’t look at this in terms of dollars.
“The important thing is that music is going to be the thing that’s going to knock down these barriers between Cuba and the States.
“When you see Tata Guines playing on an American stage and people in the audience are screaming for him as if he had been a household name, that’s when you know music is opening up people’s eyes.
“The two governments must know that, or I don’t think all of this would be happening.”
