I read in Granma newspaper the news-signed by dear colleague Venereo- that the Buena Vista Social Club will be at the Marbella’s Starlite Festival, which runs from July 23 until August 24. It make me glad that everything that means promoting Cuban culture and the so-called “Buena Vista phenomenon” has been, due to an unknown sum of factors ranging from talent and vigor of our music to the exact circumstances of its birth and how it was promoted: an authenticity crack open in the thick wall of the Market.
The tendency to legitimize the known, the trademark, the sure bet does not cease among the producers of books, records or shows or- at least in Spain-in the media. It is very easy in Madrid or Barcelona to evoke a classic song by Silvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milanes but if you talk about other great troubadours as Pedro Luis Ferrer, they usually look at you as if you had turned to Chinese. In the case of Pedro Luis, for years I gave my old cassette over and over again to those friends who could interest with a passion for his work. Now social networks are helping. When his most recent concerts in Spain you can already appreciate the remarkable growth among those who know of his formidable songs.
Omara Portuondo is an extraordinary singer (consolidated in the most exalted spot of the Cuban music scene and other circuits well before the start of the project by Ry Cooder), but she is recognized as such at the global level from the happy-in the double sense of fortunate and worn-out -Buena Vista project. The as powerful as Omara, Elena Burke died without being part of the seal of consecration and the tendency is to disregard her legacy. The fellow writers and literature fans will be thinking of Virgilio Piñera and ignorance or lack of presence of his because he didn’t enter the boom of the sixties.
And it is not even the fact that the Market welcomes the attractiveness, sensory, cool. Borges and Lezama are besides immense,complex writers, even abstract. What happens is that the old Borges with his acute and repeated conferences around the world put the necessary drop of glamor and scandal palatable to be forgiven for the legitimate philosophical depth and beauty of his literary output. In the case of our article that Cortazar’s work Around the Day in Eighty Worlds came just in time.
I remember a press conference in Santander by the bright Argentine writer Fernando Castets. We had just finished teaching a playwriting workshop. All journalists asked about The bride’s son, the film that was nominated for an Oscar in 2001 – that has been seen a lot in Spain. I insisted that Fernando’s script is also formidable like in the case of Luna de Avellaneda. I had the impression that I was talking to myself or that-as stated in my youth, “missed a good opportunity to keep quiet”. No journalist was asked why he praised that other film, but all focused on ratifying the legitimate and especially “Oscar-winning” movie.
In another press conference I applauded the sincerity of Eliades Ochoa – deservedly installed on the wide fame and productive door by Buena Vista when he remembered the years (with a similar repertoire that took himto the toughest places in the world) and nothing was heard in the provinces of Eastern Cuba, it was within range of the only station where for many years he performed his delicious guarachas.
Sometimes we feel like surrendering to the reductionist look and comfortable repetition of the same names and groups. When we do, we are helping to complete the circle, confirming the rule, lowering the arms at the arrogance of that giant commitment to restrict our access to diverse cultural products consumption.
