First of all, I want to sincerely congratulate my colleagues and followers of ExpoFlamenco A very happy 2026, wishing everyone good health and freedom. With this article, I complete twenty short stories about "the things" that have happened to me in my long life with music and... flamencoToday I want to remember that year I spent in Cuba, 1990/91, when the island was under the "Special Period, first phase." The title of the article, in Havana slang, is equivalent to our "What's up, dude?"
In 1989, after eight years in Vienna, I obtained a degree in musicology with a thesis entitled The leitmotif in Puccini's Tritticoa topic very far removed from flamenco, a genre to which I have dedicated the last thirty-five years. With my diploma under my arm, I returned to Madrid, my city since childhood, feeling very proud, to the apartment my family rented on the wide San Bernardo street. By then, the topic of the influence of America and American culture on European music was already on my mind. Shortly after returning, I participated in the Congress of Iberian Musicology which that year was being held in Lisbon, with a free communication entitled Cadiz and Havana as ports of transculturation, the seed of what three decades later has become my book America in the FlamencoMy fellow musicologists received me warmly, until a countryman of mine stood up during the question-and-answer session after my impassioned talk and gave me a piece of his mind. I attribute it to jealousy towards a thirty-something who had just arrived from Vienna with a groundbreaking topic. As luck would have it, my professor, and the leading authority on African music, happened to be in Lisbon at that time. Gerhard Kubikwho encouraged me to continue my studies and not settle at home. I gritted my teeth and went to Havana with nothing but the clothes on my back, and a letter of recommendation from my Austrian professor, highly respected in the academic world.
Cuba 1990. Ruin. There I lived like a Cuban. I stood in every line imaginable: the bread line, the line for the snack bar, the juice lines, and the line for the meager pizza they sold all night at a tiny window/ticket booth. García Lorca Theatre at the Paseo del PradoI would walk at three in the morning, starving, from Vedado, where I had a room, to Old Havana to eat that piece of bread with cheese and tomato that tasted like heaven. I did this for almost a year. While I was researching in the CIDMUC (Center for Research and Development of Cuban Music)I offered some classes at ISA (Higher Institute of Arts), but above all, I was able to learn a lot alongside Danilo Orozco, musicologist with a doctorate from Berlin (summa cum laude at Humboldt University), who lived in Santiago, in eastern Cuba, where the seed of son germinated.
In my last year in Vienna I had become friends with the Modern Music OrchestraA traditional Cuban band, during the months they played at the Stadthalle accompanying a dance show. They filled the place every night, and some of them, after the performance, would come to hear me play at the nightclubs where I performed. I became friends with fofiA skilled saxophonist. An angel from heaven whom I've lost track of. While I was in Cuba, I contacted him through a friend at ISA and we arranged to meet. He knew of my love for charanga music. Oriental Rhythm And it turned out they were playing on a stage set up on the Malecón, in front of the Havana | Casa Particular close to Hotel Nacional de CubaRitmo were my idols, the great [name missing] sang there Tony Calá Before leaving for NG (The Band That Rules and the Metals of Terror), the great orchestra of José Luis Cortés, rough, a brilliant flautist, ex of Iraqerewho died in 2022. That day the police took Fofi away simply for being with me. The bad thing about being a foreigner in Cuba in those years was that Cubans, and what's worse, most Cuban women, wouldn't approach you for fear of being considered "jineteras" by their fellow citizens.
"Antonio Gades would get very angry with me when, jokingly, I would say to him: 'Do you want me to show you Havana? Shall I take you to Key West, to Jesus Maria, to Bethlehem? Shall we take a walk through Marianao or La Víbora, so you can get to know Cuba?' If looks could kill..."
I didn't see Fofi again until I found out he'd been detained for three days just for being my friend! It was heartbreaking. So don't come here talking to me about the Revolution. That year was the "31 and onwards" (31 years since the triumph of the bearded(today they're up to 67). The fact is that the director of the WMO had heard me in Vienna and proposed that I do an "activity" on a popular television program, where they were going to interview me, and while I was at it, "you play and sing some of the songs you did in Vienna," the fashionable rumbas: Chichos, Chunguitos, Peret and Gipsy Kingswho in the eighties had blown up the rumba market worldwide. He suggested I sing that mix between the Old Horse de Simón Díaz and the Wobble de Carmen mirandaI was summoned to the ICRT studios. The interviewer, surprised, immediately asked me: "What's a Galician musicologist doing in Cuba?" "A Galician from Galicia," I replied. And so I spent quite a while explaining my nascent theory about the presence of America, and Cuba in particular, in Spanish music, and Andalusian music in particular.
After the interview, I was invited to go to a stage on the enormous set. In the center, behind a sequined curtain, they had placed a high stool and a guitar. Without hesitation, as is my wont, I began to sing along to the Gipsy Kings, when, behind me, the curtain opened, revealing the entire Orquesta de Música Moderna playing some incredible arrangements (Cubans are the best at adapting anything to their own unique style). heavy salsa, which is what the Yankees call the variant practiced on the island, which ended up being called Timba(the renewed style of Tosco). The truth is that, without having rehearsed anything, as Morente said, We escaped unharmedMy father told me some time later that a friend of his who traveled frequently to Cuba had told him: "I saw your son singing on TV!"
My time on that weekend magazine show, which apparently all of Cuba watched, came to an end, and suddenly I was famous. I'd walk down the street and people would stop me: "Galician! I heard you on TV yesterday!" while making gestures and touching instruments. palmas And tapping her heels. That was a real blast. The interview and the performance must be in the ICRT archives. I'd give anything to see it. I've never had access to those images. I only know that it couldn't have gone too badly, considering the reaction of the Cubans, so discerning when it comes to music and dance.
I continued my studies on America in the FlamencoUntil three decades later, in 2021, four years ago this December, I was able to write, design, edit, distribute and sell my book. That year in Cuba marked my life forever. Later I returned to Cuba with Gades, but that was another level. Antonio would get really angry with me when, all jokingly, I'd say to him: "Do you want me to show you Havana? Should I take you to Key West, Jesus Maria, Bethlehem? Should we take a walk through Marianao or La Víbora, so you can get to know Cuba?" If looks could kill…
Despite everything, I have very fond memories of those Cuban months that helped me to compensate for the Viennese years. In Vienna I had become somewhat rigid, and the extraordinary Cuban experience helped me return to my natural state: a Galician from Galicia, "normal, natural, but a little bit fast-paced." Things.
