MUSIC: Cuban Artists to Attend Latin Grammy Awards

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Aug 24 2001 (IPS) - The Cuban artists invited to the Latin Grammys will attend the ceremony no matter where it takes place, said local officials.

“The applications for visas were presented last week,” said the director of international relations at the Cuban Institute of Music, Tomás Misas, who denied that the recent change of venue from Miami to Los Angeles had influenced the artists’ decision to attend the Sep 11 second annual Latin Grammy award ceremony.

The Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (LARAS), which produces the awards show, announced Tuesday that the ceremony would be relocated to Los Angeles in order to preserve the integrity and dignity of the event.

Radical Cuban exile groups were reportedly organising demonstrations outside the American Airlines Arena in Miami, where the ceremony was to be held, to protest the participation of Cuban nationals.

LARAS president Michael Greene spoke of the potential danger to performers and spectators.

Misas, meanwhile, said the protests were just “one more demonstration of the intolerance of the extreme right, which deprives the rest of the Latino and Anglosaxon community from enjoying the best of the music made in Cuba.”

Miami will suffer an estimated 40 million dollars in lost business because of the decision to relocate the ceremony.

Misas said the Cuban artists invited to this year’s awards would attend, as would executives of Cuba’s recording companies, Producciones Unicornio and Bis Music.

The list of Cuban nominees to this year’s awards includes Celina González and Omara Portuondo, Chucho Valdés, Isaac Delgado and Lázaro Ross.

González, with her album “50 años… como una reina”, and Portuondo, with “Buena Vista Social Club Presents Omara Portuondo” will compete for the “best traditional tropical album.”

The first annual Latin Grammy show was held last year in Los Angeles. The stated goal of the awards is “to recognise excellence and create a greater public awareness of the cultural diversity and contributions of Latin recording artists.”

Septuagenarian singer Ibrahim Ferrer, the only Cuban musician to win an award last year, won the prize for “best new artist.” Other nominees last year were singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés, one of the founders of Cuba’s Nueva Trova movement, Los Van Van, and composer/arranger José María Vitier.

LARAS, which was founded in 1997 by the U.S. National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, brings together Hispanic musicians, producers and technical professionals behind the shared aim of “improving the quality of life and the cultural condition for Latin music and its makers.”

Among the organisation’s members are 56 musicians and songwriters from Cuba. Voting member of LARAS are vocalists, conductors, songwriters, composers, instrumentalists, producers and technical professionals with creative or technical credits on six commercially released tracks.

The Latin Grammys have helped nationally produced Cuban music widen the narrow toehold gained in the competitive U.S. market thanks to the success of the Buena Vista Social Club, which won the National Recording Academy’s Grammy for the best Tropical Latin Performance in 1997.

A number of elderly Cuban musicians like Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Elíades Ochoa and Portuondo, appeared on that album and in the film directed by Germany’s Wim Wenders, which was nominated last year for the Oscar for best documentary.

“Whoever makes it in the United States, makes it in the rest of the international music market,” said Julio Ballester, director of the Cuban recording studio Estudios de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales.

In an interview with the Cuban state-run press, Ballester said that “the success of the Buena Vista Social Club opened up new possibilities for our music to penetrate that complex and difficult market.”