Chucho Valdes will accompany Natalie Cole on a tribute both artists will devote to their respective fathers. The concert will take place at Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles right at 8:00 pm on Wednesday, August 14. After 55 years, Natalie and Chucho will relive those moments in the 50s when their parents worked together. Back then Bebo Valdés played as a guest on the CD by Nat King Cole, Cole Español. This time Chucho will open the concert with Natalie, who will pay tribute to her father to play pieces of her latest "Natalie Cole En Espanol," that reached the top of Billboard's Latin earlier this summer, according to the site Contact Music. Chucho will perform songs from his latest album, Border-Free, among which are: "Santa Cruz", "Afro-Comanche", "Abdel", "Conga-Dance" and "Taboo". In a telephone interview with a specialized news outlet from Texas, United States, Chucho has said that Border-Free is a tribute to his family. In this phonogram, Chucho includes a song dedicated to his father he called "Bebo" and in this regard said: "It's a theme I wrote in honor of my father ... what's interesting about this is that I wrote in the style of play of...

Roberto Vinas Riesgo (Pinar del Rio, 1948) has produced more than 90 feature films in his long trajectory through the seventh art; he is assistant director of the Cuban cinema and actor as a hobby.

Yarisley Silva has a friendly nature and is open to good relationships, she seems to be a common girl who likes reading, watching TV and sharing with family and friends, but it is no a secret for no one that this attractive black woman takes upon herself the responsibility of being the leading figure of the Cuban athletics and one of the most distinguished pole vaulters today. Although she says she does not like talking about sports off the track, the fact is that she had no objections to make an on-line exchange with On Cuba, as she is currently in Europe training torepresent us in the upcoming World Athletics Championship, to be held in Moscow from August 10 to 18. What do you expect from the World Cup?  "I just want to be on the podium, with the help of the Lord. It will be a very tough competition. " What does it mean to Yarisley being in the world athletics elite?  "It's a dream come true, I’ve spent years of dedication and hard work, as Cuba did not have a specialist in this discipline, and therefore, it is also a proud" The young girl, who has just turned 26, has to her credit the four best jumps of the season (4.90, 4.85 and 4.81 (twice) meters), and dominates an event that never had much development in the Caribbean nation. These records ranked her among the top three pole vaulters of all time, only surpassed by Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva (5.06) and American Jennifer Suhr (4.92). Silva, a native of the western province of Pinar de Rio and runner-up in London 2012, became the first Cuban to achieve an Olympic medal in a specialty dominated by Europeans. You were not still famous in Daegu-2011, so you gave the big surprise with a jump of 4.70 meters and ended fifth, but two years later you're already a world figure in the pole vault. How do...

When cancer stands as the first cause of death in Cuba, the news that Labiofam has developed a formulation that only affects cell malignant tissue and not the healthy one, has generated an overwhelming expectation and claim for more information to be offered with detailed status of such research, it is clear that it we can’t talk of a ready-to-use drug yet, and perhaps for some time still. According to statements the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, Jose Antonio Fraga, director of Pharmaceutical Biological Laboratories Company, "by treating nude mice (hairless lab mice) with maximum dose (of peptide RJLB14, extracted from the toxin of the red scorpion Rophalerus juencus) (five milligrams) are shown reductions of up to 90 percent of tumors in a period of 36 days. " The note adds that the findings were presented to the Board of the Ministry of Public Health, "with an endorsement containing evidence and trials", a revelation that generates a number of questions, while is not clear on what type of cancer the formulation acts or identify the certified laboratories in Europe where, in the words of master degree in Microbiology and experimental Pharmacology Alexis Diaz, they would have been testing the product around. During...

With just a day and a half of delay, Cubans from "here" closely followed and without commercial ads interruptions, the current reality show of Cubans from "there". La Voz Kids, a singing competition forchildren that captivated thousands (or millions, I have no demographic skills) of people in Cuba, by dint of much talent of the contestants and a marvelous screening. Cubans managed, via Internet, or on CDs, or flash memories, to cry for those who did not advance to the next round and laugh with those who could do it. Since the beginning, they decided, as coaches, who their candidates were, and the topic of child performers went very naturally from the "outside" agenda to the "inside" one. Today, there must be few places in Cuba where the show has not been seen and especially its outcome. People from here say the contest was won by the Cuban girl. Others argue she is not from Cuba, she was born there, but her parents are Cubans, and finally they agree it is just the same. Paola Guanche Nuviola, who is just 12 years old, had to dip into her lineage and won with more than enough merits the first edition of La Voz Kids. Her second surname, inherited from her motherLourdes Nuviola, discovers a musical genetics of a female duo that Cubans stopped listening to it one day and is now returning to the national affective memory. But her other surname, Guanche, also carries musical lineage, as Orlando, her father, is a versatile pianist who also contributed to the mix, from which Paola is the result. Anyway, the girl dazzled everyone and left no room for suspicion, or doubt, or indecision. She sang in English to...

Perhaps this month OnCuba will be part of that time that you give yourself, and that’s why we would like to propose an especially useful and pleasant issue. This month we bring you the secrets of El Aljibe, the restaurant where the chicken and black beans seem to have been made by grandma; artistic projects by enterprising young people devoted to “putting on a good party”; José Manuel Carreño, the Cuban ballet dancer who has been named artistic director of a U.S. ballet company; the incredible city of Bayamo, and women of that city, as it approaches its 500th anniversary; the unmistakable work of Mendive, a Cuban artist with deep African roots; an analysis of the revival of the sugar industry in Cuba; Elpidio Valdés! the favorite cartoon of several generations of Cubans; an interview with Fernando Rojas, Cuba’s vice minister of culture, who agreed to chat with us about the main lines of work followed by the Ministry of Culture in the context of changes to the Cuban economy.      

The Cuban business world is undergoing constant change as a result of the economic policies implemented by the government in the last few years. New businesses are opening up, as are new ways of conceiving of and projecting the country’s economic future. And while it is true that the tendency is to open new establishments in the food and drink sector, other business forms are also on the horizon. In this issue, OnCuba takes a look at two of the most popular show business companies in Havana: Havana Show and P.M.M (Por un Mundo Mejor – “For a Better World”). Both of them feature live performances with audiovisual projections using the latest technology available in Cuba: lasers, screens, pyrotechnics, special effects and light shows. By working with artists from different backgrounds and assembling the top exponents of popular dance music, these shows have brought the highest turnouts and cover sales at Havana’s nightclubs. P.M.M With the slogan Los que mueven La Habana (The ones who move Havana), P.M.M was created as a business in 2005. Its director, Hectico, tells us that the project started with the coming together of various artists and friends with whom he shared the stage as...

The two-hour conversation between Vice Minister of Culture Fernando Rojas and a group from OnCuba group flowed naturally and courteously. We were interested in examining the principal lines of work of the Ministry of Culture in contributing to the updating of Cuban society. At a time when everything seems to be subject to review and change at the socioeconomic level, will “Words to the Intellectuals” continue to be the guiding document for Cuba’s cultural policy? “Words to the Intellectuals” is a document that has been very badly interpreted and quoted, with little recollection of the abundant concepts that qualify and clarify the famous statement ‘Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing.’ It is a text that talks about freedom of creation the whole time. And even though it extensively sets out the Revolution’s desire to broaden the general public’s participation in cultural consumption and in the act of creation itself, as a form of personal fulfillment, that is the aspect that is most ignored. For the country’s updating process, it is essential to preserve that democratizing vocation of cultural action. Among the new policies being implemented in Cuba, there have been references to a reorganization of art education. What...

Release of short fiction Exit and Casting by Cuban writer-director Eduardo del Llano in the film exhibition network of the Island

Currently, in Varadero resort, some 120 kilometers east of Havana city, there is the only 18-hole golf course in the country. But this statement has very little time to live on. Recently, the Cuban government has signed a number of projects with foreign companies for the construction of golf courses of this type, as part of the expansion of tourism offers for the next semester. The most comprehensive of the new projects approved has been proposed by the British firm Essence to build the Carbonera Club estimated to cost some 350 million dollars. This company reached an official agreement with the Cuban government to develop this course, a few meters from the coast. "It will be an important complement to the tourist offer of the resort of Varadero and the beginning of a whole new policy to increase the presence of golf in Cuba," Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero said. Construction will begin in 2014 on a design that will transform the area of ​​170 hectares where they intend to have the club area. Carbonera drafts, besides the golf course, feature an exclusive community of 650 apartments and villas, as well as a hotel and country club, tennis courts, spa and...

Lester Chio, a Cuban clarinetist that since 2000 has had a successful career in France, concerning the Concertantes Colors Routes project that aims to cultural exchange between the two nations, made that statement to OnCuba.

Yves Sheriff is a man with a lot of imagination. You can say that is his main resource. Due to his relationship with the best clowns in the world, he has ended up thinking like them: "Anything can happen." He did not come to the 12th International Summer Circus Festival: Circuba 2013 to explain how to make a clown, nor to make or correct comedy acts. His clowning workshop, held in the afternoon of Wednesday at the Riviera Hotel, was more related with the philosophy of sharing the knowledge of his company than with an uncompromising stand on what works or not in the clown’s job. The Bolivian, who has been outside of his homeland since very young, is casting director for the famous company Cirque du Soleil. For a long time he lived in Italy. He also studied philosophy. For him, a clown is the person who got the wrong door and found himself suddenly in public. "As he is a clown he is not going to take the seemingly most logical solution, which is to move away by the same door he came in, but he goes forward with the absurd. He's in the scene and does not...

He has a private jet called G-Laci. He also rides a Harley Davidson and loves Rock & Roll. He was who displayed the images of Freddie Mercury’s vocal improvisation at the closing of London 2012 Olympic Games to 750 million people, the estimated global audience that night. He was the artistic director of that show. Laci Endresz was also who devised the presentation of Take That: The Circus on Tour, one of the albums of the English popular band Take That. On stage, he simply made an elephant and an over 20 meters high big top; both built with fiber optic lights disappear, plus he made the singers to ride on monocycles and doing stunts, for which they were subjected to months of training. He led the Tower Circus in Blackpool, England, just when the manager of the company, Lord Delfont, disallowed animal presentations in the big top. It was 1992 and Laci Endresz, who is the sixth generation of his family devoted to the circus life, had already traveled the world with his trapezes and trampolines. By these days he is in Havana, and not for the first time, as a member of the jury of the 12th International...

Dialogue with the architect and art director Juan García Prieto about the changes taking place in the look of Vedado and other Cuban geographical areas as an important phenomenon in contemporary aesthetics.

William J. Grenier, a professor at Florida International University published in the website of the Cuban Temas magazine an article that analyzes the changing demographics of the Cuban community in the United States. In his text, Geinier concludes that "exile ideology will give way to a new ideology based on the recognition that the Cuban diaspora is an extension of the nation with responsibilities and duties to the civic, cultural, economic and political development, not only of the Miami-Dade county, but of Cuba ". Days after publication of the article in Temas, Jesus Arboleya makes an analysis in Progreso Semanal in which he states that "people have tended to overestimate the role of the Cuban-American electorate, expressed in the positions of the extreme right, in the design of United States policy toward Cuba, forgetting that their attitudes have been rather a reflex than a cause of it ". "There is no doubt-he clarifies- that the Cuban-American right-wing activism has resulted imperative to keep the climate of hostility that has prevailed against the island, but its influence in American politics has not been determined by the importance of the Cuban-American electorate, as evidenced by the fact that even in counties which...

On July 14, at the Havana’s Conventions the IX Congress of the UPEC (Union of Journalists of Cuba) concluded with broad national impact. The First Plenary Session of the National Committee on the eve of the event, elected the organization's president by direct and secret ballot, Antonio Molto Martorell and as first vice president   Aixa Hevia Gonzalez. Also were elected as vice presidents Belkis Doval and Barbara Perez Cruz. They were members of the Presidency of the UPEC, not professionalized, Arleen Rodríguez Derivet, José Alejandro Rodríguez, Ariel Terrero, Angelica Paredes, Yosvani Albelo, Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Raul Garces. Precisely the two latter ones delivered lectures on Cuban journalism today, its shortcomings, its urgent need for improvement and social and political importance. Both speeches were broadcast in full, on national television during the week. One of the most common complaints, according to reports, is the essential and rapid implementation of a press law. The Congress ended with the intervention of the First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers and Politburo member of CPC Central Committee, Miguel Diaz-Canel, who seems truly focused on solving the key points of national journalism. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Diaz Canel himself met a day later, on...

NEW YORK - Yoenis Cespedes won baseball's Home Run Derby on Monday night, becoming the first player left out of the All-Star game to take home the crown. The Oakland Athletics slugger beat Bryce Harper 9-8 in the final round at reconfigured Citi Field, hitting the decisive drive with five swings to spare. In only his second major league season, the outfielder from Cuba dropped his bat and raised his arm in triumph when he sent his 32nd homer of the night some 455 feet to deep center field, where it caromed off the back wall of the black batter's eye. He was swarmed by the American League All-Stars near the third base line. The final addition to the field, Cespedes was the fourth player not selected for the All-Star game to compete in the event. Right off the bat, he proved he belonged and put on quite a show with family in the stands. Cespedes hit a whopping 17 home runs in the first round - more than any other player managed in their first two trips to the plate. That sent him straight into the finals, though he added six long balls in round two for good measure....

Statements of Maximo Gomez, chief curator of the Cuban National Museum of Fine Arts