For days now, several Facebook profiles in my digital neighborhood have shared a photograph that has made me stop and look at it in detail. Although I have been feeling saturated by social media for some time now, from time to time these discoveries more than make up for the frenzy.
The snapshot in question, which first circulated in a black and white version and then in color, shows — no less — Pablo Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez, Vicente Feliú, and Noel Nicola around a table, immersed in a game of dominoes.
It is a horizontal photo, taken from a slightly high angle, with Pablo in the center, flanked on his left by Silvio, and on his right by Vicente, at whose side appears Noel Nicola, a spectator of the game. They all wear military uniforms, which suggests that the photograph was taken in the mid-1970s when the artists enlisted in the internationalist brigades that fought for the independence of the African colonies. Although there are several well-known images of the singer-songwriters in that conflict, this one, in particular, I had not seen.
I was overcome with curiosity to know the details of the scene, so I went to Silvio, one of the protagonists of the table, who kindly shared information about the snapshot in a back-and-forth email.
“That was on Vicente and my second trip to Angola, which Noel and Pablo joined. We are in the basement of the Presidente Hotel, the official residence of all the Cubans who passed through there, always half-built. It must have been in the first days of December 1976, because we arrived in Angola on November 29, the day I caught up with Noel in his 30s. Pablo was 33 and Tinto* 29,” Silvio specifies in his message.
When you see how young they were, it is overwhelming to think that those who appear in the photo, sitting playing dominoes, already had songs behind them that would form part of the identity of an entire nation, and beyond. These lyrics and melodies would leave a deep mark on the lives, loves, heartbreaks and struggles of generations.
That year Pablo published the album Pablo Milanés, which included, among others, the iconic songs “La vida no vale nada,” “Para vivir” and “El tiempo, el implacable, el que pasó.” A year earlier, Silvio had released Días y flores, his first album, which contained famous songs such as “Sueño con serpientes” and “Pequeña serenata diurna.” He had already composed “Ojalá,” “La era está pariendo un corazón,” “Fusil contra fusil.” Vicente Feliú had in his repertoire, among others, the heart-rending “Detrás del mar queda el soldado,” and his hymn “Créeme” was beginning to resonate. Noel Nicola had composed “Comienzo el día” and “Para una imaginaria María del Carmen,” as well as “Es más, te perdono.”
In the photograph, everyone is shown concentrating on the game, with their eyes directed at the pieces arranged on the table. Although the photo appears to have been digitalized from a paper copy deteriorated by the passage of time and the design of the pieces cannot be distinguished, they are playing with double nine because of the discarded pieces piled up in a corner of the table, between Pablo and Silvio. And from the body language of each of the players at that moment, it seems that it is the author of “Yolanda” who has to place a piece.
“There was a lot of playing dominoes, both between civilians and soldiers. Some had just arrived from Cuba, like us; others were leaving for Cuba or on missions elsewhere in that vast territory. We had probably just had breakfast and waiting for someone or some transport to take us to an activity, a meeting or even to the airport. I remember that during those days in Luanda, we did several activities, especially a very emotional one in the hospital, for the wounded, sick and health personnel. Perhaps the photo is from that day,” Silvio recalls.
The scene denotes an ephemeral fragment of calm amid the turbulence and urgency of a war. “The truth is that I don’t remember the domino table in the photo very well. In Angola, there were dominoes in all the Cuban units and I think they were used a lot to relax, to release tension,” Silvio confirms.
In the image, some details stand out, such as his right arm in a cast. “the fifth metacarpal, a classic fracture of someone who fights against a wall. I still have that hunched little finger,” the singer-songwriter reveals.
Another curiosity of the photograph is the figure of a child, very subtle, superimposed on part of Pablo’s body and the table. The author of the photo is still unknown, who could clarify some mysteries like this one; but the effect is probably due to a double exposure because of a frame error.
In photography, double exposure occurs when the same frame of a film is exposed more than once. It was a common mistake in analog photography, especially when, having used a roll of film and left it undeveloped, it was used again, taking it for virgin. It is also possible that the photo was taken through a glass, capturing the reflection accidentally.
Another mystery is the identity of the fourth person playing (and the rest of those present), who appears with his back turned and is paired with Pablo. Some comments on Facebook speculate that it could be the Cienfuegos singer-songwriter Lázaro García. The author of “Si de tanto soñarte” was also in Angola in 1976 with other founders of the new song movement. However, Silvio points out that, due to the place and time in which the photo was taken, it must be of another person, since Lázaro was in the south and, given the date, perhaps on his way to Cuba.
Lázaro, by the way, set to music “Ahora mujer que estás lejos,” a poem by the filmmaker Jorge Fuentes, written at that time in Angola when he was filming with his camera, amidst the whistling of bullets and the roar of cannons, the counteroffensive that stopped the South African invasion in 1976.
Silvio himself wrote songs about his experience in Angola, the best known of which are “Testamento,” “Canción para mi soldado,” “Pioneros,” and “Angola es una.” Pablo set to music “Havemos de voltar,” a poem by Agostinho Neto, the first president of Angola and president of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. The song was included as the closing of his album No me pidas (1978).
The recently circulated image is added as a testimony of those Cuban artistic brigades that reached remote regions of Africa. Musicians, actors, actresses and filmmakers who, with their art, brought a message of hope and resistance to the Cuban troops and the Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) in their fight against colonialism and apartheid.
In one of his emails, Silvio evokes other memories related to the most popular pastime among Cubans: “At Vicente’s house, when he lived in Alamar, we often played dominoes. I would arrive and he would be there with his family and we would have a good time. The ones who really liked dominoes were my mother and her husband, Rolo. They never played as a couple, they were the perfect rivals; those of us who surrounded them had to be part of that rivalry with classic tones, only comparable to that of Batman and the Joker.”
I look at the photo again and again and it is as if it were speaking. I am moved by the strong camaraderie around a domino table. I recently rewatched the documentary Que levante la mano la guitarra, directed by Víctor Casaus and Luis Rogelio Nogueras, Wichy. In that 1983 film, seven years after the photo was taken, Silvio makes a powerful declaration of principles and brotherhood, regarding his relationship with Pablo Milanés, which could well be applied to the protagonists of this historic image, or be a text on the back of the snapshot. It says:
There is one thing that I believe is cardinal…and that is that we made a trench together, we dug it together, and then we defended it together. And that is something important for men: to fight in the same trench.
*This is how Vicente Feliú (1947-2021) was known among his friends and other close associates.
Author
Kaloian Santos
