MELODIC BEATS PULSE FROM OPEN WINDOWS, CAFES AND RESTAURANTS in Havana, supplying background music for browsing tourists, busy market vendors and honking taxicabs.
Street-side bands shake maracas and beat bongos at every turn. Dancers take their place on every stage in the city. On otherwise empty playgrounds, youngsters practice smooth and sassy dance moves and create rhythm on tin cans.
By nightfall, music and dancing are in full swing at clubs throughout Havana. Swivel to the beat, step to the sound.
Play. Sing. Dance.
Much is made in the United States of the deprivation Cubans have experienced under Fidel Castro, the dictator who instituted socialism after the Cuban revolution in 1959.
But, culturally speaking, Cuba thrives. Musicians, painters and poets flourish artistically, despite the political censorship their government imposes, and despite the creative isolation this island nation has faced since the U.S. imposed an economic embargo in 1961.
Indeed, hardship has proved a cultural blessing for many Cubans. Children, deprived of such distractions as PlayStation games and cable TV, learn to play musical instruments and write stories, to express themselves through sculpture and dance.
And these days, as Cuba begins opening up to the outside, artists have begun expressing themselves more openly. Creatively, their work is winning greater recognition around the world. Economically, they are leading the way in Cuba’s changing economy. Castro’s relaxation of some socialist tenets, and his willingness to welcome the U.S. dollar during the 1990s, have spurred economic activity that is most evident in the way artists casually trade their wares.
“Castro has allowed modifications because they see it’s generating jobs and money – beginning with the trained musicians and artists,” says Artimus Keiffer, cultural geographer and regional Caribbean specialist at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.
The government allows artists to travel internationally, albeit on trips underwritten by foreign art agencies, to exhibit and sell their work. Some Cuban artwork sells in the thousands of dollars.
“In a socialist economy, a lot of people are paid to be musicians. It’s their job,” Keiffer says. “There are a lot of trained musicians, dancers and artists. That is one of the reasons the music scene is vibrant.”
Other Cubans are taking advantage of the entrepreneurial mood by opening paladeras, tiny home restaurants, and by offering tour-guide services on their own time.
Author Orlando Quiroga adamantly resists the idea that capitalism is creeping into Cuba, even though he sells his book to tourists for $18.
“The symbol of capitalism is money. We have free education and free health care,” says Quiroga, 70, dressed in a Ralph Lauren jacket.
The former journalist and political commentator spends his days hanging out in a tobacco factory chomping on a Montecristo No. 4 cigar and beguiling guests with his stories. His book “Arte y Mysticism de Habana” was published in English two years ago in Ireland.
“We still greatly depend on the state,” he says.
This apparently moderate pursuit of capitalism by artists could foreshadow life in Cuba after the 76-year-old Castro’s death.
How widespread this economic activity becomes depends greatly on Castro, and the United States’ willingness to sustain its embargo against Cuba.
Tradition of supporting arts
A year after the 1959 revolution, Castro showed support for culture by allowing the Centro Nacional de Escuelas de Arte (National Center of Schools of Art) to open with 41 schools, including the national Escuela de la Musica, a national folkloric school, two ballet schools, two fine arts schools and a school of modern dance.
Two years later, the Conjunto Folklorico Nacional dance group was created to revive Cuban folk tradition.
In 1976, the Ministry of Culture in Cuba opened its doors.
The arts are so deeply respected in Cuba that artists are considered the nation’s aristocracy of sorts, even though they live in a society where the average person earns $12 a month and receives a housing and food allotment.
Cuban painters, artists and musicians are also receiving international accolades. For instance, poet-writer Cintio Vitier was named the winner of Mexico’s Juan Rulfo Prize for literature in 2002. And names like Rene Portocarerro, Servando Cabrera Moreno and Wilfredo Lam might be unfamiliar to many in the U.S., but their names are known in art circles worldwide.
But artists also have chafed under a rigid Castro government during seasons of censorship. One famous example: In 1970, Paquito D’Rivera was named director of the Orquestra Cubana de Msica Moderna, but he was discouraged from playing jazz because of its “Yankee” imperialism.
To some extent, that sort of government pressure continues today. Artist Albert Chong of Boulder exhibited at Havana’s Seventh Biennial in November 2000 and represented his home country of Jamaica.
“That last event and my participation was written about in Art in America (magazine), as there was some small controversy about my installation in regard to censorship and the biennial,” says Chong, an art professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. When he traveled to Cuba in 1994, he was part of the U.S. contingent.
“I had done a kind of narrative piece in several sections, and one of them dealt with the importance of allowing people to speak freely,” he says. “We went back and forth about it, and finally, I was told that unless I took this particular section out, there was a real chance that future biennials would be canceled.
“I had to think about it for a long time, because I didn’t want to give in. At the same time, I didn’t want to be the person responsible for the government closing down the opportunity for artists to have their work shown.”
In the end, Chong removed the offending segment.
Nevertheless, artists in Cuba say cultural influences run deep and strong.
Inside the country, galleries, art museums and community cultural centers abound. A popular national ballet was established in 1948 by the famous Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso. The company is well-respected in South America and Europe.
Cuba also has an independent film community and a vibrant annual film festival. In 1994, filmmaker Tomas Gutierrez Alea made “Fresa y Chocolat,” a film about tolerance that depicts the hardship a macho, homophobic Communist Party member faces when he befriends a homosexual.
One year later, a new wave of Cuban salsa debuted at the Cuban Jazz Festival and the first Cuban Rap Festival also took place.
40 years of struggle
Though the arts community has stepped into the limelight, it has not always been easy. For the better part of 40 years, artists have struggled to travel and sell their creations.
Musicians sang to themselves and other Cubans because of a shortage of modern recording equipment. Many musicians of the now-famous Buena Vista Social Club were elderly and had nearly given up on their music before U.S. producer Ry Cooder showed up and recorded it.
All Cubans are allowed to travel if they can pay for it, and if the government approves their applications. The peso, which has no value outside of Cuba, makes it almost impossible for Cubans to travel on their own. Consequently, artists depend on international organizations.
Artist Reinaldo Lopez says sponsoring organizations frequently underwrite his travels to exhibits, galleries and openings outside Cuba.
A tall, imposing figure who celebrates his Afro-Cuban roots, Lopez takes a multidisciplinary approach to art, working in several media, including line drawings, watercolor, oil, acrylic, tiles and ceramics. One of his murals is in the Hotel Neptuno-Triton in Havana. Lopez’s work has been shown and purchased by collectors in Spain, France, Mexico, England, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and Africa.
In spite of the difficulties, many artists refuse to permanently leave Cuba, even though some have been invited by other governments to stay and live.
Cuba is not perfect, the artists say, but it is home. It is where their fathers lived and died.
Painter Aguedo Jesus Alonso Labrador has lived and worked in France, Belgium and Spain.
“I never wanted my sons to grow up in exile,” he says. “I believe people should stay in their countries and work to make life better. When you take away your country, you give up your roots.”
Alonso has painted since he was 7. For the past 30 years, he has been a professor of painting, first at the school of Pinales Rio and then at San Alejandro, the oldest art school in Cuba.
“I have always felt very close to social problems related to the human condition,” he says. “Not just in Cuba, but internationally. Initially, in the ’60s my work related to sensual objects, in the European tradition, but it has become more focused on issues related to the way we live.”
Heritage, family run deep
Award-winning photographer Raul Corrales, perhaps one of the few remaining Cubans who actually knew Ernest Hemingway, was inspired before the revolution by Life, Look and Redbook magazines.
Corrales, known throughout the country as Castro’s personal photographer, chronicled Castro’s rise to power and his administration.
A loyal citizen under El Presidente, Corrales will not criticize the United States directly, nor does he have a quarrel with the American people. He says Cuba is misunderstood.
“I know we have problems, but the heritage we have from our fathers, we cannot throw away,” Corrales says. “We would be more happy if it weren’t for people who don’t want us to be happy. We are not racists – and I remember a time when black Cubans couldn’t work in banks, telephone companies, 10-cent stores or other fancy places, and being a black woman in Cuba was a double problem. Castro changed that.”
So the artists stay and pave the way for other Cuban artists and entrepreneurs. It’s important to believe in the homeland, says artist Lazaro Moruea, who lives in central Havana in a neighborhood called Cayo Hueso, or Key West.
Moruea began his career as a painter and ended up as a musician. The change was partly because of his father’s influence.
“Although my father was a doctor, he used to play jazz, especially the drums,” he says. “When we were little, he used to tell us funny stories and sing with us. I realized the heritage we had in music and began to pursue it.”
Moruea signed with a rock group called Los Dadas, then did a recording with Paquito Rivera, which led to meetings with Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz at the Havana Libre Hotel. Moruea also sang with Van Van, a popular performing group. He has since moved on to composing and arranging. He is especially enamored of Delta Blues, which he plays with a spirited abandon.
In 1999, Moruea went to Miami to buy a new harmonica.
“People there told me I should stay,” he says. “But I came back because here I have my family, my ancestry, my history. I think I could live anywhere all around the world, because every country has its own story of happiness, sadness, wonderful things and cruel things.
“But I promise you that if I would leave Cuba, I would die of great loneliness.”
