Cuba is Music

I normally try to avoid answering questions about "favorites," like "Where's your favorite place to dive?" or "What's your favorite of all your photographs?" Too many apples, too many tangerines, not to mention all the varieties of lettuce. But when a friend asked me the other day what was my favorite thing about my visit to Cuba, I quickly answered, "The music."

That was easy. Music in Cuba is more than just the seductive sound and rhythms of Africa and the Caribbean. Music, the musicians, and the way it pervades street life in every Havana neighborhood, every town and even the rest stops on the main highways represent the cultural history of Cuba as well as its current state of mind and very likely its destiny.

Bongo Man, Trinidad de Cuba

The first thing about Cuban music is that it's ubiquitous. You can't step out on the street without hearing it. As you walk down Obispo Street into or out of Vieja Havana, you pass through a gauntlet of bands, some outside on the street, others in open-air bars where tourists sip Cuba Libres and dance.

In hotel patios and lobbies, the music might be a son band playing Cuba Jazz or a piano man misting the air with old standards.

There is always a hat or a guitar case nearby for tips, but during breaks one of the musicians will circulate among the crowd with a basket of CDs, which cost 10 pesos (about $11). I brought home half a dozen. The bands all perform better live than in studio, so I'm glad I also used a digital recorder to capture some of them, along with the ambient sounds of the street and customers placing drink orders.

Drummer for Baragua

It's almost like having Muzak all over the city, but with live bands and good sounds. And it's not just in Havana. The historic (499 years old) colonial city of Trinidad on the south coast is renowned for its music scene. My favorite band of all that I heard was a group called Baragua, which played in a small bar called Esquerra, just off the Plaza Mayor. 

As a photographer, one of my goals was to capture the Cuban people to the extent I could. In doing so, and especially in studying my photos since I returned, I was struck by the sense of pride and dignity in every face, even an old man digging coins from the mud in Havana Harbor. 

That sense of worth comes through even more clearly in my photos of musicians. Certainly part of that comes from having the gift of music and the ability to put that gift to use and to be appreciated for it.

Which would seem to be difficult to impossible in what most Americans perceive the Cuban communist system to be. This is one of those paradoxes I wrote about last time. 

From the American materialistic point of view, Cubans should be among the unhappiest people in the world. Virtually everyone works for the government, and paychecks range in the neighborhood of $25 to $40 a month. Seriously. Now, in addition to that, health care is free and high quality. Education, at all levels, is also free and high quality. Food is not free but is heavily subsidized, as is housing. Still, Cubans will tell you, the pay and subsidized food and housing are not enough to live on. 

The Old Man and the Guitar, Cojimar

In recent years, as Cuba has recognized that its most promising international trade opportunity is in tourism, the socialist government has relaxed its rules on private businesses. Individuals are now allowed, and even encouraged, to operate private shops, restaurants and other enterprises. Policies , i.e., taxes, discourage people from getting very rich from these enterprises, with the aim of preventing the kind of gross economic inequality that occurs in some capitalist countries. But that has not prevented plenty of people getting quite enterprising there.

Music is one of those enterprises. One of the common criticisms of socialist societies is that there is no incentive for people to work hard, to innovate, to start new businesses, and Cubans acknowledge that reality. On the other hand, income equality means there is also no incentive to pursue a career path that is going to make you unhappy or to exploit other people just because you can make more money.

 

I believe that is one reason music is heard all over Cuba. To be a successful musician you don't have to get a break with a major record label and get your music played on the right radio stations. You can pick up your guitar and learn a few songs and play for visitors near the sea wall in Cojimar, the colorful town that helped inspire Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea." 

Or put together a band and play on the streets, sell a few CDs, and supplement your meager government check. Think garage bands playing outside the garage. With an audience. And the satisfaction that comes from doing what you really love.

Los Mambisos, Obispo St., Havana

I'm not saying Cuba has actually created the worker's paradise dreamed of by the Bolsheviks a century ago. Many aspects of the socialist experiment have clearly failed, and reform is taking place slowly. But as it does, one hopes that Cuba can keep what is good and healthy. In some ways they have already shown they can, by retaining those aspects of Cuban culture that earlier generations of Communist revolutionaries in other countries destroyed just because they were there before. 

Cuba is clearly a land on the verge of something big and new. It's anybody's guess just what that is right now. But whatever it is, it will have a great sound track.

Cuba, Our Nearest and Most Distant Neighbor

The flight was less than an hour, from Miami, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, the capital of the nation we Americans probably know less about than any other. But in the lively streets of Havana I felt like I had traveled across decades and light years from home.

Cuban flag flies over Havana''s opera house

In case you've forgotten, Cuban revolutionaries overthrew a dictator named Batista 54 years ago and established a socialist government with support from the Soviet Union. America responded by imposing an embargo on trade with Cuba in hopes of destroying the regime economically. For a while some of our allies respected the embargo, but eventually saw that it was having no real impact and reopened trade with the Caribbean nation. 

For the adventurous American traveler, this all meant that American citizens were effectively the only people on the planet who could not legally visit our southern neighbor. One of the saddest consequences of the embargo is that we Americans have become woefully ignorant of the nation that lies a mere 90 miles from Key West.

So last fall when a friend asked if I'd like to go to Cuba, legally, I jumped at the chance. I wanted to see Cuba first-hand and perhaps understand this nation that has successfully thumbed its nose at us for more than half a century. 

Whether one can truly comprehend a place in an 8-day guided tour is questionable, but it's better than reading anything about it in American newspapers over the past half century. And it's better even than relying on the accounts of others who have been there. Once I was committed to this trip, I read everything I could find and talked to as many people as I could who have visited Cuba in recent years. And everything I heard and read contradicted everything else I heard and read, so I abandoned all expectations and went just to experience it for myself in mid-January. 

And now, over several blog posts and through my photographs, I will tell you about my experience and my impressions, fully aware that even those on the same tour with me may well contradict everything I say about it. So, if you're interested, I encourage you to go see for yourself.

Which you can now do, legally. The U.S. government is currently licensing tour operators to put together educational "People to People" visits for various affinity groups. There is a partial list of such groups at http://www.lawg.org/storage/documents/people2people.pdf. They range from college alumni groups to the Audubon Society to Witness for Peace. The group I went with was organized by a photographer with an emphasis on photographing Cuba, though not all 12 of us were serious photographers.

We spent eight days in Cuba, mostly in and around Havana, but with a day trip to Viñales in Pinar del Rio Province in western Cuba, and a two-night excursion to the 400-year old town of Trinidad on the south central coast, with stops in the port city of Cienfuegos on the way.

For the photographer, Cuba is a land rich with opportunities, stories, color, personality and history. The contradictions in the accounts of those who have been there merely reflect the contradictions and paradoxes that make up Cuba today and make it so fascinating. 

Cuba is a country where the average salary for government workers -- and virtually everyone works for the government -- is $25 a month, but there is little evidence of poverty, oppression or unhappiness. It is a nation with few natural resources of its own, but with the ingenuity to keep 60-year-old American cars running and gleaming and the ability to adopt widespread organic farming when the source of fertilizer (Soviet Union) collapsed.

Cuba's Capitol building in Central Havana

It is a "godless communist" government where people practice all religions in elegant churches, cathedrals, mosques and synagogues and where Raul Castro attended the dedication of a new Russian Orthodox church a few years ago. 

The free public education system produces a 99 percent literacy rate and 99 percent employment.The health care system is free to all Cuban citizens and good enough to attract foreign heads of state for cancer treatment.

When I changed my money from dollars to CUCs, the convertible pesos that tourists get (not the same as the Cuban pesos that Cubans are paid with), the friendly bank teller told me, "Welcome to Cuba. You're going to love Havana, but you will hate the people." I assumed she was joking, and my experience for the ensuing eight days confirmed it.

I did love Havana, but I did not hate the people. I deeply regretted that I speak almost no Spanish, because I would have loved to converse more with people, but enough of them spoke English that I could get by. When people learned we were Americans they were friendly, curious and generally helpful. On the other hand, nearly everyone had a service or product for sale, whether it was questionable little candies, willingness to pose for pictures, or prostitutes. Hardly anyone just asked for money, but there were always a few panhandlers near the big hotels in Central Havana.

In subsequent blog posts, I'll ruminate on some of my experiences in more detail. In the meantime, please visit my Cuba photos at http://www.finsfeathersfoto.com/f461394966.