Some songs never go out of fashion, they have the mystery and the power to dialogue with all times. Some remain in the voice of their author; others sleep until some artist brings them out of their lethargy and returns them to the place from which they should never have left.
A recent example was what happened with that hit from the 1990s, “Qué sorpresa,” when Alexander Abreu with his peculiar voice and his energy put it on the air again on television and on the radio. At parties, the youth chanted “I’m going to publish your photo in the press,” from a song by Los Van Van, mixed with the new chorus of this century, “I’m going to have to upload you to social networks…”
It should be the job of contemporary musicians to sing those works whose message is equally valid in any century. There are aspects of human and social relations that remain there, to be pulled by the same thread that was once taut.
An uncle who generated theories about everything and who claimed that the professors of the TV program Escriba y lea were not intelligent because their knowledge was disorganized and they were not capable of asking the right questions, was convinced that present-day musicians should give up composing and only focus on studying the tremendous songs already made, already tested, and work so that they do not get lost in the country’s everyday sound.
However, making songs is a necessity. Although sometimes it seems that everything has been said, there are always new threads to pull on a subject, a different language appears, codes that are only from a certain time, from a single context.
Cuban music is not an entelechy, it is a social construction in which human beings and their representations, common senses, and environment participate; it is an expression of everyday life. There is music for a neighborhood that is born with the codes of that neighborhood, and that is different from the language of another. There is music for moods; music for optimists, for nostalgic people because there are authors who compose based on hope or sadness.
Juan Formell or Celia Cruz are indisputable names in Cuban music, they were born in Cuba and made their music from here, the country in which they were formed. They knew how to look and sing, using rhythms of their time, influences from other cultures, from the universe of sound of the 20th century.
In other words, Cuban music is also that of Bebeshito, Yulien Oviedo, or DJ Unic, and, without trying to romanticize the genre, or making an apology or musicological analysis of their more or less vulgar texts (concerning a certain ethical worldview) or of their more or less repetitive or original music, it is a certainty that it responds to the daily life and needs of an important sector of society.
Speaking of Cuban music, of those composers, of those great songs that should be the country’s living heritage, Alexander Abreu, who is also an author sensitive to his reality, has dedicated a letter to “young people,” and if one goes out on the street each one would have a personal response.
Some university students would reply that nothing is lost, that they have not let Cuban music die, that on their cellphones they have Benny Moré sung by Nelson Valdés, the Los Van Van classics, the verses of Silvio, of Pablo, the songs of Marta sung by Gema Corredera, by Haydeé Milanés; they would even respond that they listen to an exemplary album by Picadillo, that duo that is also from Cuba, and the “lost” record of Estado de ánimo, and the work of Habana Abierta, and that they have not stopped singing “Me dicen Cuba.”
Some young people in my building wouldn’t even feel alluded to, because they hang out at La Piragua to dance to Los Van Van of today, to Manolito Simonet and Alexander chanting loudly — yes, of course — “I’m going to publish your photo in the press,” and any other chorus that comes along.
The guy from the MSME who hands me a carton of eggs almost equivalent to an average salary in Cuba, and who says that of course, it’s very expensive, that hens are worth millions now, but that he doesn’t set the prices, looks at my guitar and asks if I’m a musician. He’s one too, he tells me, and in passing he cheerfully shows off a new song that he was able to record thanks to a DJ friend that everyone knows — I don’t remember his name. I listen to it and smile at him, and tell him that he has to release it, that it will surely be a hit — and it will be for a few months. I open the case and sing for him “Laura, milonga y lejanía” by Noel Nicola and he smiles, and tells me that one of these days we have to jam.
Who am I to tell him that the music I show him is worth more than the music he sings to me?
We must approach the young people and the neighborhoods without the prejudice that their language is not “the language,” without the elitist tone that the music they listen to is not “the music.” We must approach them with the need to understand the reason for their culture, the reason for their soundtrack, and then show them the one we bring, which is not worse or better, just different.
My nostalgic “I” listens to Alexander Abreu’s “La carta” and gets emotional. I wish, like him, that the youth would not make our classics go through “the torture of oblivion,” but this other “I,” so social and contradictory, is sure that there is not just one youth, nor just one “Cuban music,” and I take on the task of exploring it all, understanding why “Moscas de fuego” by Roly Berrío is foreign to so many young people, as is the name and work of Portillo de la Luz or Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, when in fact, “the whole world loves them.”
The diverse senders whom the artist brings together in the words “young people” have a lot to say, and in any case, the thousands of responses would have a common thread, without exception: no, Alexander, my friend, it is not our fault.
| Laura, milonga y lejanía
Noel Nicola Laura, yo me pregunto si nuestro breve encuentro fue un llegar a una orilla o un viaje sur adentro, regalo o semilla.
Laura, yo me pregunto si echado allí en tu cama tuve o no tuve un sueño más grande que mis ganas, clavado en el ceño.
Laura, no sé por qué me pregunto tanto si al final las respuestas van en el viento. Laura, la libertad es una locura, una ternura que me apresura y en tu cintura es un juramento.
Laura, yo me pregunto: Cuando no haya fronteras, ¿dónde irán los que odian a pagar con su tiempo este tiempo de espera? |
Laura, milonga y lejanía
Noel Nicola Laura, I wonder if our brief encounter was a coming to a shore or a journey south, a gift or a seed.
Laura, I wonder if lying there in your bed I had or did not have a dream bigger than my desires, stuck in my brow.
Laura, I don’t know why I wonder so much if in the end the answers go in the wind. Laura, freedom is madness, a tenderness that urges me and on your waist is an oath.
Laura, I wonder: When there are no borders, where will those who hate go to pay with their time for this time of waiting? |
Author
Rey Montalvo
