Word: havana
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...take so long to get a foothold in Cuba, the richly musical culture that gave the world rumba and mambo? "Hip-hop everywhere else has one reality. We have another," explains Ariel Fernandez, 24, a DJ, organizer of Alamar's annual summer rap festival and a central figure in Havana hip-hop. Fernandez couldn't be more right: Cuba's record industry is entirely government run, from the recording studios to the record stores. Which means that raperos, like bus drivers, hotel clerks and doctors and lawyers, work for the state. And state bureaucracies never move quickly; Cuban officials were...
Part of the cultural resistance to hip-hop has to do with the music's do-it-yourself style. Musicianship in Cuba is traditionally measured purely by formal skill. Even the players working the lounges of Havana hotels are stunningly accomplished. Older Cubans, accustomed to salsa, have difficulty accepting rap as music...
...rappers who are lucky enough to get a shot at recording usually turn to Pablo Herrera. Herrera, 33, who studied English and Russian at the University of Havana and wrote his dissertation on American hip-hop, is one of the island's foremost promoters and producers. Herrera was able to persuade the Ministry of Culture to provide a turntable, drum machine, sampler and keyboard for the studio in his aging Spanish-style home in Havana. Thus equipped, he has promoted, produced or managed a dozen or so hip-hop acts, including Cuba's founding fathers of rap, Amenaza, which later...
That remains to be seen. Even though there's no money to be made in hip-hop, it attracts top talent. In Havana's lush Miramar neighborhood, Equis Alfonso, a.k.a. X Alfonso, 28, is talking about his upcoming hip-hop/son fusion album titled X-More. He also has some sharp words about the Buena Vista Social Club, the geezer vocal group that popularized prerevolution balladry everywhere but Cuba. "People think because of Ry Cooder and Buena Vista that Cuban music became better known," says Alfonso, who is also a member of the hot fusion group Sintesis. "That...
...HAVANA BALL In 1996 American blues guitarist Ry Cooder gathers some of the greatest veteran performers in Cuban music to collaborate on the album Buena Vista Social Club. The success of the bestselling, Grammy-winning recording spawns a documentary of the same name by Wim Wenders, as well as a worldwide tour, and brings the lilting, sensuously rhythmic music from the old Havana of the 1940s and '50s to an international audience...