Word: bandness
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...video could tease at all that, but of course, there is no video. This is Cuba, 2008. For most people, there's still not much besides sugar, pork and 1956 Chevrolets. This band practicing in the cramped living room--Los Reyes '73 (the Kings of '73)--was famous decades ago but traveled so much abroad that it fell out of the limelight. Now the band has new members, neither well-off nor famous: just another group of ridiculously skilled Cubans trying to hit a seam in a tightening music market...
...middle of a short and ill-fated career as a saxophone player, I was one of a wave of American musicians who made the pilgrimage to Havana. I was a worse player than most, but luck was with me--I quickly fell in with Oscar and a traditional band called El Septeto Tipico de la Habana. I played out the summer at their regular gigs in the mansion district called Vedado, west of the old city...
Oscar sees his current band's mission as simple: defending the Cuban sound. In 10 to 15 years, adds the bandleader Jesús, there won't be any Cuban music left on the island. It will all be in foreign countries, stagnant nostalgia acts like the kind that spun off from the Buena Vista Social Club album. That seems a dire prediction, but a Thursday night in Havana makes you wonder how Cuban music will survive. On Avenue G, the roqueros gather to get high and watch rock videos on makeshift outdoor screens. On the Malecón in front...
...Cuba is cracking up from the inside. I came here to find the band, but not only did it split up (Oscar joined Los Reyes long after leaving El Septeto), but most of its members don't even live in Cuba anymore. Jorge and Piri, who played bass and drums, live near Cancún. They've got a regular gig at a Cuban-themed bar; Jorge married the bleached-blond singer who fronts the band, which now calls itself La Barbie de la Salsa. George works in Mexico City as a producer and guitarist with Margarita Vargas Gaviria, known throughout Mexico...
Damaris was one of the dancers who used to perform with our band--more than 40 years after the Mafia quit Havana, some Cubans still like their music accompanied by girls in slinky sequined outfits with tail feathers. Damaris and the drummer, Piri, wound up having a daughter together but eventually divorced. He moved to Mexico, found a new wife and had another child. So Damaris is raising their child alone in a small apartment in the shadow of the capitol...