/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-CUBA: Tour to the End of the World

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Aug 1 2000 (IPS) - An unusual tour of several months through Cuba took singer-songwriter Jorge García to La Máquina, an isolated village on the eastern tip of the island that other musicians have completely forgotten.

“We have experienced something that has never happened before. We live at the end of the world. Nobody ever comes here,” Yordanka Romero told IPS after García’s three-hour concert of ‘trova’ music, a Cuban brand of poetic songs or ballads.

Romero, an instructor for a children’s cultural programme called ‘Fantasía,’ was one of more than 100 people at the concert, in which García was accompanied by guitarist Arsenio Díaz and fellow ‘trovador’ (troubador) Ariel Díaz.

Arsenio, a student of classical guitar, and Ariel, representative of the younger generation of Cuban trovadores, accepted García’s invitation to join him on what the three agree is a “great adventure.”

“Things like this quench our thirst for music a bit, but they ra cges like La Máquina and enetrate places like Camaguey, a city with its own deep cultural roots, García was well received by audiences ranging from 50 to more than 300 people.

“Hard to believe, with the boom in salsa music still going on, people still like songs in the ‘trova’ style – and it’s difficult to put up with a guy singing with just a guitar,” he said.

It took García a three-hour trip up mountains, on roads that nature tries to reclaim every time they are repaved, to get as close as he could to Punta de Maisí, the easternmost point on the island, 1,000 km from Havana.

The musicians made the trip on a “guagua” (bus), but the truck carrying their sound and lighting equipment had to stay behind – on flatter land – because of the condition of the roads.

Before this concert, the residents of La Máquina remember only a theatre group that crossed the mountains to reach them “a long time ago” and then there is a dance band that comes to perform at the village carnival once a year.

“From the beginning we said we wanted to go to the most difficult to get to places, where no one ever goes. But each time we arrive at a new place, we are amazed to find that it is really true – nobody ever goes there,” García commented.

That is what happened even when the famous trovador went to Baracoa, a city far from the capital that attracts thousands of foreign tourists every year because of its colonial architecture and because it was the first village founded by the Spanish colonisers on the island.

There García found out that “culture is centred on tourism and residents do not remember a trova concert performed here since one by Pablo Milanés in the early 1980s.”

Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola together founded the New Cuban Trova, a musical movement with which García has also identified since he began composing and singing his songs in 1986.

The movement attempted to create a new model of song based on the roots of the traditional trova that arose in eastern Cuba in the 19th century, embodied in the music of Sindo Garay.

Since he began, García has maintained a presence in Havana, recording the albums “Jorge García” (1991), “Más allá” (Beyond, 1996) and “Cambios” (Changes, 1999).

He also made two more records for children. One, “Vamos todas a cantar” (Let’s all Sing), is a tribute from the New Trova singers to the author of children’s songs Teresita Fernández and was a prize winner at the Cuban recording festival in May.

García performed with Silvio Rodríguez in Argentina during his 1995 tour, but the singer-songwriter opted this year to stay in Cuba to accomplish his goal of 50 concerts in his own country, most being in isolated places.

The idea won funding at the end of last year when president Fidel Castro decided to promote a policy to “massify” culture, or take culture to the masses.

The term itself created controversy and was even rejected by some intellectual circles, but the policy benefited many artist who, after a decade of economic crises, saw the possibility of national tours reappear.

Independent producers do not exist in Cuba and, save for the rare exception, the musicians are part of government-run associations that pay a salary for their concerts and co-ordinate their trips within the country, and in some cases overseas.

As far as “massifying” culture, García said “there is still much to do and organise if the arts are really going to be extended” throughout the country.

“I can’t go to La Máquina, do a concert without charging for tickets and then have the record company sell my music there at the same price as in Havana because nobody could buy it. That is not how culture is disseminated,” he explained.

“First they would have to ‘massify’ tenderness,” says García, whose repertoire includes songs about love, relationships, but also the sad stories arising from the economic crisis the island has suffered since 1990.