After much struggle it seems that finally, on October 5, at the Salon Rosado de la Tropical, Cubans of my generation can go to a concert of Habana Abierta. A spectacular band that has grown on the myth of the distance and those eerie gatherings at 13 and 8 streets in the Havana city’s neighbourhood of Vedado, albeit with bitter pride, just some nostalgic people can recall.
Symbols of uprooting, the uncomfortable children of the virulent 1990s, very talented group of restless musicians, Habana Abierta really excels in some poorly suited conditions. The limited syndication, economic asphyxiation, their scattered condition (until Vanito Brown’s mother got them the museum located in 13 and 8, of which she was the director) and then emigration. They left from Spain and from there, as so often happens in the history of art, the band, something heterogeneous in its aesthetics, their project reached Cuba, and it garnered fans all over the country.
First they recorded an eponymous CD, then the popular “24 horas”, and after that, in 2006, “Boomerang”. Critics see in Boomerang certain maturity, certain strength in its themes, a clear balance in the composition, but to me, frankly, any of the three albums is good enough.
There is a condition of displaced people in their music, a resistance towards canons. They spread-even today-in an almost clandestine way. They never have them on television or radio. There has never been, in Cuba, regular information on these artists. We do not know what happens to them, if they survive.
That dose of public inconsistency, a kind of vagueness about their lives, makes that even their more strongly driven songs are crossed by the languid spears of European cold, of geographical distance, for resilience that facing the market entails.
On one occasion, in 2003, Habana Abierta could play at home (also at the Salon Rosado), and neither before nor since they have performed as a group (they have, they say, individually). We know some of the key players are now missing, many years after the start: Kelvis Ochoa, Boris Larramendi, Pepe del Valle. It is Vanito Brown, Jose Luis Medina, Alejandro Gutierrez, and Luis Barber. Rarely, in the last twenty years, music has been played as well as they these tanned boys have been doing. I would say that in the last twenty years no one has played better.
The vaunted influence that any fairly young Cuban artist preaches (from the Beatles to Van Van, Led Zeppelin to Chano Pozo), for us who know nothing about music, is barely audible in Habana Abierta.
Its accent comes as muted. A frenetic but careful dance. Uprooting do those things. We are Cubans, OK. Let’s sweat, OK. Let’s do the conga, fine, but let’s not forget. The euphoria of Habana Abierta is the euphoria that happens to states far more reflective and solitary than ours.
It is easy to see that they can not and probably don’t want to come back. And if they do return, nothing will be the same. You can tell that to many of the Cubans they are complete strangers. It shows that have performed here only twice. You can tell that it could have been otherwise. But otherwise is no longer valid. What would have had become of them then. What would have become of us if Havana Open had never left Cuba?
Remember this: their soup is a concept. And it says a little of what is. And a little of what is needed.
Author
Carlos M. Álvarez
