Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Musica Cubana. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Musica Cubana. Mostrar todas las entradas
viernes, noviembre 01, 2013
martes, octubre 08, 2013
viernes, septiembre 20, 2013
Dímelo cantando: música y política en Cuba
Un gesto como ese, transmitido en vivo por la televisión, habría sido impensable hace una década, en circunstancias de mayor hegemonía política del Estado. Sin embargo, la politización de la música popular en Cuba es un fenómeno creciente en los últimos años. En la Isla los medios de comunicación y las instituciones están bajo estricto control estatal y el debate sobre temas como los tratados por el músico, están restringidos "al lugar y al momento oportunos", siempre por venir. En consecuencia, las artes, y la música popular en particular, han reemplazado a los medios de comunicación tradicionales en la discusión de temas medulares que son silenciados por el discurso oficial.
Para explicar este proceso, es útil entender a la música popular no como un "reflejo de la realidad" sino como un medio de comunicación que contribuye a la interpretación y construcción de dicha realidad social. La música popular funciona como un medio de comunicación afectivo y eso le permite traducir problemas sociales e ideas políticas al idioma más accesible de la vida cotidiana.
La música popular acompañó a los cubanos en los años difíciles del "periodo especial", cuando apenas circulaban periódicos y las horas de transmisión televisiva eran escasas. Canciones como "La política no cabe en la azucarera" o "Guillermo Tell" del trovador Carlos Varela resumían en un código compartido la crisis generacional y económica que estaba enfrentando el país.
Continuar leyendo en Diario de Cuba >>
martes, septiembre 17, 2013
sábado, septiembre 14, 2013
El régimen sanciona 'indefinidamente' a Robertico Carcassés
El músico declina confirmar la suspensión oficial, pero promete explicar la situación a través de una carta pública.
El músico Robertico Carcassés ha sido "separado del sector" por tiempo indefinido, como represalia a sus comentarios críticos con el régimen durante un concierto dedicado a los cuatro espías, informaron fuentes del grupo Interactivo.
El grupo no podrá presentarse este sabado en el Café Miramar, ni el miércoles en el Brecht, debido a una decisión de las autoridades.
"Nos citaron ayer a todos a una reunión al Instituto Cubano de la Música, donde se nos informó que Roberto queda 'separado del sector' por tiempo indefinido. Quiere decir que no se puede presentar solo, ni con Interactivo, en ningun lugar estatal", informó la página del grupo en Facebook.
Una hora después, el mensaje fue modificado y se ahora se limita a informar sobre la suspensión de los conciertos.
Carcassés pidió el jueves "libertad de información", "elección directa del presidente" y el "fin del bloqueo y del autobloqueo", durante un concierto por la libertad de los cuatro espías presos en Estados Unidos.
Dos periodistas de DIARIO DE CUBA lograron hablar con Carcassés, este sábado al mediodía (hora local), cuando se conocieron los primeros rumores sobre una posible sanción gubernamental.
En ambas llamadas el músico declinó confirmar o desmentir si el Instituto Cubano de la Música lo había suspendido, pero prometió escribir una carta pública la próxima semana.
"¿Y así quieren que la gente hable de los problemas? Eso no se lo cree ni el que lo dijo", respondió en Facebook un seguidor de Interactivo. Inmediatamente el músico represaliado recibió decenas de comentarios de apoyo.
lunes, agosto 19, 2013
Meet Hipnosis, the First Cuban Metal Band to Defect to the U.S.
This past July 22, Giovany Milhet and Fanny Tachín, leaders of the six-piece metal act Hipnosis, launched what’s guaranteed to be the longest, strangest trip of their band’s life to date.
Along with their four bandmates, Milhet and Tachín headed from their Havana homebase to a supposed gig in Oakland, California -- with a layover in Miami. As you might guess, they never made it to Oakland, becoming arguably the first full hard-rock act to defect at once from Cuba to Miami.
And last Sunday, the group played its first real U.S. rock and roll show at the very smoky and punk Churchill’s Pub in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood.
Who are Hipnosis and why do they matter in the overall scheme of Cuban rock?
Hipnosis was, up to now, probably the biggest hard-rock act in Cuba. Though the metal field isn’t too crowded on an island still obsessed with tropical music and Latin urban sounds, the group still stood out for a couple reasons.
The first is that rather than trying to put a “Cuban”-type spin on metal, founder Milhet wanted to perform largely in English. Second, his other concept was to feature women prominently in the band. The lineup has shifted over the years, but it’s always featured two or three women as guitarists, bassists, singers, and/or keyboard players.
The group first found real fame a little over a decade ago, when it appeared on a Cuban reality talent show called Cuerda Viva. Since then, it’s gained a following around the island but has never been able to leave to perform elsewhere.
Because the band lived walled away from the rest of the heavy metal world at large, its look -- kinda goth and theatrical -- lags a few years behind current trends. But its blend of thrash, symphonic, doom, and various other strains of metal spews out tightly and forcefully.
Did the band perform in Cuba with the approval of the Cuban government?
Yes. Though the Cuban government regularly censors performers and casts a side-eye at youth culture, Hipnosis, at least on the surface, was generally allowed to do its thing. The group was “signed” to the Agencia Cubana de Rock, an organization that functions sort of like the official ministry of rock and booking agency. (To legally make any money off performances, bands must sign to the agency to be deemed "professional" musicians.)
The Cuban press regularly previewed the band’s gigs. In fact, Suffering Tool, a side project of erstwhile Hipnosis singer Ramiro Pupo, enjoyed a glowing profile just this past April in no less than Granma, the official Communist party newspaper.
What kinds of gigs did they get to play in Cuba?
The group was a regular headliner at Havana’s official club, Maxim Rock. In fact, they were such regular headliners that it caused reported scene grumblings that they played there a little too often, according to the Cuban communist party web site CubaDebate. They also appeared regularly at the government-organized Caiman Rock festival series.
More interestingly, side project Suffering Tool also played at the August 2011 edition of Brutal Fest, the closest thing the island has to a fully independent, heavy-music festival. It’s organized by French national David Chapet, the head of Brutal Beatdown Records, a label dedicated to sharing heavy music in and from Cuba.
“I was about 27 when I came to live in Cuba, and when I got there, I got interested in the little local [metal] scene. I discovered an underground movement that was pretty important,” Chapet wrote by e-mail in French. “But there was no real support for them from the national institutions or record labels. So I decided to create Brutal Beatdown Records.”
If Hipnosis was doing okay on the island for so long, why did they finally decide to leave and plead asylum in the U.S.?
It’s unclear whether or not the band had been planning an escape for several years. The night after the group arrived in Miami, I found Archie Pantelmann, a Canadian listed as Hipnosis’ North American contact on an English-language web site for the group.
In an interview for WLRN, the Miami public-radio NPR affiliate, Pantelmann told me he had originally tried to organize a Canadian tour for Hipnosis in 2011. He said he got the sense that if the group were to make it to North America, they would not be returning to the island. He also said he felt that Cuban government officials got the same sense, and refused to grant the band’s travel visa.
Meanwhile, though Hipnosis played with official approval, more or less, and played all the available metal clubs and gigs on the island, the market for heavy music there is still limited, to say the least. And the government, too, has been increasingly cracking down on musical expression.
In 2011, the government pulled the plug on the Rotilla Festival, the island’s largest multi-genre music festival, fearing its 20,000-audience-member-strong power as a temporary autonomous zone. This past December, Fusion’s Manuel Rueda reported on a government crackdown on reggaeton lyrics.
How did they manage to finally make it to the U.S.?
That first attempt at traveling to Canada to tour got foiled, but in ensuing years, travel restrictions from the island have lifted somewhat. As the band told *Cafe Fuerte’s Cancio Isla, they managed to score a gig in Oakland for July 27. The government allowed Hipnosis to travel, but required that a culture ministry official chaperone the group.
As Hipnosis members told it -- at least to the press -- their government-appointed chaperone essentially annoyed them into defecting at the Miami airport. “This lady started to give us rules about what we could and couldn't do on the trip,” Giovany Milhet, the group's guitarist, told Wilfredo Cancio Isla of the independent news site Café Fuerte. “With all of her pressures, we think she really helped us to escalate things.”
Still, the Oakland gig may have been a big, clever cover-up. Back in July, I couldn’t find any proof that any such performance was ever scheduled for the city. And though Hipnosis arrived in time to travel to Oakland, they never did, and instead billed the pair of Miami shows this past weekend as their first in the U.S.
The details behind the supposed gig and the band’s escape from the island may forever remain shrouded. In late July I contacted Maylin Ruiz, a former frontwoman for the band who managed to get to Spain a couple years prior, to ask about the Oakland gig. But she declined to comment.
Keep reading on abc news >>
domingo, agosto 18, 2013
viernes, agosto 02, 2013
Xiaomara Laugart ready to party at Festival Cubano
 |
| www.lastfm.es |
Xioamara Laugart believes in the Celia Cruz philosophy of life: “La vida es un carnaval.”
That’s the title of a signature song for Cruz, the Cuban-born “La reina de la salsa,” who died a decade ago at age 77, and was an international sensation from the ’50s, as the lead singer of La Sonora Matancera, to the ’70s with the Fania All-Stars, to the late ’90s, when she peaked again with hits such as “La Vida Es Un Carnaval” and “La Negra Tiene Tumbao.” Laugart, also a Cuban native, knows Cruz well; she portrayed the Latin music icon in the touring Broadway musical “Celia: A Musical Journey.”
“Life IS a carnival,” said Laugart with a throaty laugh. “We are Latinas, we like to party. It’s funny, I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink, and I have been married to the same man for years. But I still like to party!”
Laugart will be in full fiesta mode when she performs Sunday with Alfredo de la Fe and the Cuban All-Stars at the fourth annual Festival Cubano at Riis Park. Also booked for the fest are salsero Jerry Rivera, the group Timbalive and the Cachao Mambo All-Stars.
To honor the 10th anniversary of Cruz’s death, Laugart will sing several standards associated with her such as “Quimbara,” “El Manisero” and “Guantanamera.” She also will perform selections from her two solos discs released by Chesky Records and from days with the New York-based Latin fusion group Yerba Buena.
Though she portrayed Cruz for three years in “Celia,” Laugart met her only once. “I was introduced to her after a performance in Central Park [in 2002],” she recalled. “It was before I had the proposal to do the Broadway play. So I really didn’t get to know her in person. To prepare for the play, I just talked to the people who knew her, and I read a lot about her. We are both black, Cuban, with loud voices and laughs. It wasn’t too hard to play her.”
Laugart looks back with fondness at her time in “Celia.” “We created this experience like a small family, that was fabulous,” she said. “To perform with the musicians knew her and had played with her, I will keep that with me for always. She never learned English, but look at how her voice and name is known around the world. It proves that music is the universal language.”
Though they shared the same homeland, Laugart did not hear Cruz’s music while growing up in Cuba. “That was not possible because of the embargo,” she said. “I met her music here.” When Castro took power in 1959, Cruz left for Mexico and then the United States, and in Cuba, her recordings were essentially banned.
Laugart, who came to the States in 1998, experienced a similar situation. Though she recorded 15 discs in Cuba, none were picked up for global distribution. “Celia couldn’t come back to Cuba,” she said. “That happened to me, too.”
Cruz left Cuba for political reasons, but Laugart departed primarily for artistic purposes. “I needed to spread my wings,” she said. “I sing everything, like boleros, of course, but I always challenge myself. I even have sung rap. I recorded with [the New York rock-rap trio] Fun Lovin’ Criminals and [jazz pianist] Jacky Terrasson. There are all these projects I would like to try. I have been very lucky.”
miércoles, junio 26, 2013
jueves, junio 20, 2013
jueves, junio 06, 2013
martes, junio 04, 2013
viernes, mayo 24, 2013
sábado, mayo 11, 2013
sábado, mayo 04, 2013
Fallece el músico cubano César Portillo de la Luz, autor de ‘Contigo en la distancia’
imprescindible compositor e interprete de la musica cubana, firmo cuanta ignominia el castrismo le puso delante. imperdonable que no existan videos originales suyos cantando su emblematica "contigo en la distancia".
------------------
miércoles, mayo 01, 2013
lunes, abril 22, 2013
domingo, abril 14, 2013
martes, abril 09, 2013
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
La columna de Cubanalisis
NEOCASTRISMO [Hacer click en la imagen]
![NEOCASTRISMO [Hacer click en la imagen]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5jy0SZhMlaU/SsuPVOlq2NI/AAAAAAAAH1E/4xt2Bwd2reE/S150/ppo+saturno+jugando+con+sus+hijos.jpg)
¨Saturno jugando con sus hijos¨/ Pedro Pablo Oliva
Liborio
A la puerta de la gloria está San Pedro sentado y ve llegar a su lado a un hombre de cierta historia. No consigue hacer memoria y le pregunta con celo: ¿Quién eras allá en el suelo? Era Liborio mi nombre. Has sufrido mucho, hombre, entra, te has ganado el cielo.
Martha Colmenares
Un sitio donde los hechos y sus huellas nos conmueven o cautivan
CIF: Cuba Independiente http://CubaIndependiente.blogspot.com Registro (c) Copyright: ® DIN 189297780000 Gerente By: www.copyrightwww.com
