A Question of Tolerance: The Arts in Cuba and in Miami viewed by a anti-Castro hardliner

"Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy." - José Julián Martí Pérez

Cuban artists against Decree 349 | Photo © Facebook / Luis Manuel Otero

The regime in Havana has zero tolerance for artists who criticize the Castro dictatorship. Celia Cruz, Olga Guillot and others were not only not able to play in Cuba, but there music was and continues to banned from the airwaves, despite the artists having died years ago.

Therefore it is the height of irony that  the Associated Press's Gisela Salomon writing an article titled "Miami sees a return to Cold War cultural hard line on Cuba"  cited the tweet of the Ambassador to the Castro dictatorship, “Cultural terrorism? Miami politicians ask for Cuban artists to be excluded from a local concert” and failed to provide any context. Not to mention that the "cultural hard line" in Cuba has never lessened and is a zero tolerance policy. If excluding a Cuban artist from a local concert is "cultural terrorism" than what does one call removing all the works of an artist from their country of origin, banning their works from the national airwaves, and barring them from returning to their own country? This was done to Celia Cruz and many other artists, and has been described as "cultural genocide."

Salomon's article provides differing points of view from the Cuban Exile community on whether or not pro-communist, pro-regime artists should be able to play in Miami.  This is what one would expect in a free society: a diversity of opinions. Over twitter I was volunteered into the conversation.

#Cuba #Miami @giselasalomon calls us #Cuban exiles “intolerant.” She ignores the fact that the only intolerant has been the Castro regime for 61 years, repressing and killing our nation. Another journalist using regime propaganda rhetoric. @AP @johnjsuarez @alexotaola pic.twitter.com/zTqpyND8iO

— CubaPoliceAbuse 🇨🇺🚨 (@PoliceAbuseCuba) February 4, 2020

It is true that when quoting the dictatorship's ambassador uncritically that Salomon is "using regime propaganda rhetoric", but the claim that exiles have never been intolerant ignores history. Ironically, so does Salomon in her article.

In 1996 folks trying to attend a concert by Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba were verbally and physically assaulted by 200 exile protesters.  I condemned it at the time, and still do today.

Three years later in 1999 there were violent protests at the Miami Arena during a performance of the Cuban salsa band Los Van Van that left one person injured, and eleven arrested.  I spoke out again at that time condemning what happened, and still do today.

In April 2003 three young black Cuban men were summarily executed by the Castro regime for hijacking a boat and trying to flee Cuba. Cuban musicians and artists were obligated by the Castro dictatorship to sign a public letter supporting these executions, and more generalized repression, and many did, including Omara Portuondo, who years later would be invited by President Obama to perform at the White House.


This blog was started in 2009 responding to violent protests against the Colombian musician, Juanes, including death threats against his person, when he announced that he would be holding a concert in Cuba.  I spoke out again at the time condemning the death threats, pleading for tolerance and free expression, and organized a petition denouncing the death threats. At the same time we gave a critical and nuanced assessment of the concert.

Nor was any mention made of Decree 349 or the fact that Cuban artists living in the island that are critical of the regime are beaten up, jailed, and systematically censored. According to Amnesty International, "under the decree, all artists, including collectives, musicians and performers, are prohibited from operating in public or private spaces without prior approval by the Ministry of Culture. Individuals or businesses that hire artists without the authorization can be sanctioned, and artists that work without prior approval can have their materials confiscated or be substantially fined. Under the new decree, the authorities also have the power to immediately suspend a performance and to propose the cancellation of the authorization granted to carry out the artistic activity."

The speculation made in the article that the passion aroused by visiting artists was due to the 2020 elections fails to take into account this partial history, or the fact that the Castro regime extrajudicially executed tens of thousands of Cubans and is still doing it today not only in Cuba, but also in Venezuela.

The fact that Cuban artists, to be able to continue performing in Cuba, have supported the summary executions of young black men is a legitimate cause for anger, and those who signed should not be granted visas to the United States.

However, those who did not, and do not have blood on their hands, regardless their ideological outlook should be able to play their music. We do not have an obligation to watch them play, but we do have an obligation not to censor or threaten those that we disagree with.  That is what the Castro regime does.  It is because I am a hardliner that completely rejects the Castro dictatorship that the defense of artistic freedom and freedom of expression more broadly are precious to me, along with the virtue of tolerance for those I disagree with.

Music Freedom Day 2016: Cuban music still censored by regime in 2016

 Reflection for Music Freedom Day

Rolling Stones to play free concert in Cuba on March 25th

The Rolling Stones have announced that they will perform a concert in Havana, Cuba on Friday March 25, 2016.  The free concert will take place at the Ciudad Deportiva de la Habana.  Before going any further, let me state for the record that I saw the band in concert during the Steel Wheels Tour in Miami, Florida at the Orange Bowl on November 15, 1989 and enjoy their music.

The international press has been dutifully reporting on how the Castro regime "prohibited the sale of the band’s records, considering its music a symbol of capitalism." However, this "cultural liberalization" of permitting foreign rock bands to play in Cuba is not new, but can be traced back to March 2, 2001 when the first major British rock band, The Manics, played in Cuba. Months earlier on December 8, 2000 John Lennon was "politically rehabilitated" on the 20th anniversary of his death, by no less than Fidel Castro who unveiled a statue, and by regime spokesmen who would try to claim him as an ideological fellow traveler.
  
Imposing systematic music censorship in Cuba
This censorship the Castro regime engaged in amounted to cultural genocide: banning musicians, musical groups, and genres that were viewed as decadent or counter-revolutionary. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and later on John Lennon's solo music were officially banned for years along with the rock genre. 

Kenia Fernandez wrote an article in My Latino Voice titled "Nostalgia Corner: Why the Bolero was censored in Cuba" which describes how the crackdown on music began in Cuba: "First, jukeboxes were confiscated from corner bars and nightclubs (there were as many as 20,000 jukeboxes in Havana in the 1950s). Then, in 1961, at the First Congress of Writers and Artists, music was defined as an organ of integration into the new Revolutionary society." Two years later on March 13, 1963 Fidel Castro gave a speech were he openly attacked “long-haired layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator warned: “They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degeneracies.”


This meant that members of these targeted groups including rock n roll fans were sent to work camps called the UMAP (Military Units to Help Production). Young Cubans were sent to prison work camps because they were caught listening to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Rock music which was developed in North America and Western Europe at that time by groups and musicians like: The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Janis Joplin, and Earth, Wind and Fire, was labeled decadent and counterrevolutionary.

Over the past 20 years rock n roll as a genre has been permitted in Cuba under the dictatorship, although it still censors content.

Censored and banned from Cuba by Castro: Olga Guillot and Celia Cruz

 It wasn't only rock that was censored, Cuban music was too
Many great Cuban musicians were marginalized and their music censored by the Castro regime beginning in the early days of the Cuban dictatorship. For example Kenia Fernandez in the previously mentioned essay "Nostalgia Corner: Why the Bolero was censored in Cuba" described how a Cuban musical genre was systematically censored:

The bolero came to be seen as a reactionary genre, in bad taste, and ultimately, banned. Cuba's world-class composers and performers, many of whom had brought the genre to its golden age, were abruptly silenced. Finally, in 1968, in the Ofensiva Revolucionaria -- the Cuban equivalent of China's Cultural Revolution -- most of the 1,200 cabarets and dance halls for which Havana was known were shut down (with only a couple of exceptions, including the notable Tropicana). Bolero lovers and performers were left with no viable venues.

The queen of the Bolero was Olga Guillot who passed away in exile in 2010. According to the book Shoot the singer!: music censorship today edited by Marie Korpe there is increasing concern within the international music community that post-revolution generations are growing up without knowing or hearing these censored musicians and that this could lead to a loss of Cuban identity in future generations.

Music performed by musicians who chose to go into exile criticizing the Cuban regime, such as the popular Celia Cruz and her orchestra, Sonora Matancera. were banned, their music censored, and it  forbidden to mention their names. The banning of Celia Cruz was especially tough because she was so popular before the revolution in Cuba.
 
Fake Change in Cuba: Celia Cruz and Olga Guillot still censored in Cuba in 2016
Diario de Cuba reported on August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue to be banned. The e-mail clearly stated: "All those who had allied with the enemy, who acted against our families, like Celia Cruz, who went to sing at the Guantanamo Base, the ICRT arrogated to itself the right, quite properly, not to disseminate them on Cuban radio." The irony that it was the Castro regime, that acted against Cuban families dividing them for over half a century, in 1962 had denied Celia Cruz's request to return to Cuba to attend her mother's burial. She never again tried to return to Cuba and passed away in 2003. 

Cuba's cultural genocide continues in 2016 and icons of Cuban music such as Celia Cruz and Olga Guillot remain banned from the airwaves and must be discovered in Cuba on the black market and in the underground.  

Olga Guillot and Celia Cruz music still banned in Cuba

In 2016 the music of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles play over the official airwaves in Cuba while the music of late Cuban icons Celia Cruz and Olga Guillot remains banned in Cuba. What does it say about the regime in Cuba that British and American rock bands are now heard over the airwaves in Cuba and are playing concerts in Cuba and at the same time the music of Cuban musicians of the stature of Celia Cruz and Olga Guillot remains censored in Cuba, even though they passed away years ago?

 

"Migration Reform" in Cuba: New rules to achieve the same result

What is the reason behind the latest regime distraction?

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The Castro dictatorship in 2012 is once again demonstrating that it is a master of distraction highlighting a new migration law with new rules that achieve the same result: travel in and out of Cuba is to be administered by the Ministry of the Interior and professionals such as medical doctors do not have freedom to travel. The infamous white card, an exit visa, that Cubans need to exit their own country will according to the regime announcement be replaced in 2013 with new more stringent requirements for the passport.

The White Card (La Tarjeta Blanca) is an exit visa for Cuban nationals

What do the authorities hope to accomplish with this so-called reform that the regime says will come into effect on January 1, 2013? First, one of the long term objectives of the dictatorship is eliminating the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act which grants Cuban refugees special immigration privileges for fleeing a totalitarian dictatorship where the freedom of travel is nonexistent. Floating the threat of a slow motion Mariel is meant to pressure U.S. lawmakers into eliminating a law that demonstrates that the Castro regime is different from every other country in the hemisphere. 

This migration "reform"is an example of what the late dissident leader Oswaldo Paya referred to as "fraudulent change." Giving the image of an opening while the Stalinist character of the dictatorship remains intact thus benefiting from the image makeover in order to provide decreased international scrutiny and increased legitimacy. Sadly, the reality is very different. Cubans will be no freer to travel on January 1, 2013 then they are today. It will be up to the whims of the dictatorship.

 

Despite the new law, Cuba remains the only country in the hemisphere that systematically bars the freedom of movement in and out of the country of its nationals in violation of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which reads as follows:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Between 70,000 and 300,000 Cubans are banned by the Castro regime from returning to their homeland reported The Miami Herald on August 15, 2011 in an article titled Many Cuban expatriates can't go home again.The new law does nothing to change this reality maintaining freedom of movement firmly in the hands of the Ministry of the Interior i.e. "State Security."

The Cuban government under the Castro dictatorship has engaged in atrocities to prevent Cubans from freely leaving their own country such as the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat masssacre and has also denied activists the right to attend international human rights gatherings. 

One concrete change is that the cost of the passport for a Cuban national has increased in cost from 55 CUCs to 100 CUCs when the average Cuban earns 20 CUCs working for an entire month. This means that under this so-called reform for a Cuban to obtain a passport he needs to spend five months salary.

In August of 2012 the regime floated that it would end its blacklist of artists and got a lot of positive media coverage although a few days later clarified that artists like Celia Cruz and Olga Guillot, who had been critical of the regime would continue to be banned that is to say blacklisted. There was much less press attention to this setback for music freedom and the dictatorship got a free pass.In March of 2011 it held its 6th Communist Party Congress that kept many Cubans on the island and Cuba experts abroad focused on the gathering to the exclusion of all else and again despite all the propagandist drama anticipating and following the meeting it achieved little other than distraction.

The question that arises is why launch this migration initiative now if this is to serve as a distraction? Not to mention the rumors of Fidel Castro's death.  What is the dictatorship trying to take attention away from? Could it be to take attention away from the news reports surrounding Fidel Castro's contracting Nazi Waffen SS to train Cuban troops in the early 1960s. Is it the news that the Soviets thought the Cuban regime so unstable and willing to unleash a nuclear holocaust that they withdrew 100 tactical nuclear weapons from Cuba following a letter Castro sent to the Soviet leadership in October of 1962 encouraging they launch a nuclear first strike? Not to mention that he requested a second nuclear strike on the United States in the early 1980s? Could it be to distract from opposition activities on the one year anniversary of the passing of Lady in White founder Laura Pollan who died on October 14, 2012 under suspicious circumstances? Or could it be trying to cover up the show trial of the Spanish youth leader sentenced to four years in prison in a process where the family of Oswaldo Paya was denied access and has refused to recognize as legitimate?

The fundamental reason that the totalitarian regime in Cuba engages in these distractions is that this kind of system cannot survive transparency and the free flow of information especially when large numbers of Cubans are fed up with the system. As long as the dictatorship continues in power the art of distraction it has perfected over half a century will continue.

Celia Cruz still banned in Cuba but International media remains silent

Celia Cruz's music remains banned in Cuba by the dictatorship

On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported that Cuba's ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and on August 10 the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news. The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio.

There is only one problem. It is not true. Diario de Cuba reported on August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue to be banned. The e-mail clearly stated: "All those who had allied with the enemy, who acted against our families, like Celia Cruz, who went to sing at the Guantanamo Base, the ICRT arrogated to itself the right, quite properly, not to disseminate them on Cuban radio "

Olga Guillot's music is still banned on Cuba radio

 Cuba's cultural genocide continues in 2012 and icons of Cuban music such as Celia Cruz and Olga Guillot remain banned from the airwaves and must be discovered on the black market and in the underground. 

The Castro regime has demonstrated a great ability to distract attention from the real news in the country with non-stories such as this one.  It is one of the tools that they have used to remain in power. Unfortunately, when an activist on the island succeeds at exposing the true nature of the regime and exposes the smoke screen of distraction and demands concrete progress they are terrorized, imprisoned, become suddenly ill and die, or die in a car "accident."

Sadly international journalists on the ground in Cuba do not report on these patterns because if they do they are expelled from the country by the dictatorship as many have been over the years for even mild critical reporting of the regime.

Nevertheless, one needs to ask reporters that published articles that the music of Celia Cruz and Gloria Estefan would be heard over the airwaves in Cuba now that the regime has confirmed that is not the case will they print a retraction or a clarification? Or will the dictatorship get away with using the press once again?

Cuba's Olga Guillot, Queen of the Bolero: Singer and Victim of Cuba's Cultural Genocide

“We are united in a cause that is really important. We are united with women who are heroes and who are the only ones who have done for Cuba’s political prisoners, for the exile community, for the dissidents, for the opponents of the government and for us who have been 50 years in exile without a country these women have made news around the world so that the world know the pain of our Cuba. Thank you for giving us our heroes. Thank you. We will continue our fight. And while they march with bouquets of flowers in their hands--the only weapons they have. We, too, will continue to march in support of them. Thank you, Long Live a Free Cuba!

- Olga Guillot, Ladies in White Demonstration, March 25, 2010

International media are reporting on the passing of Olga, artists are recalling their friendships with her and Olga's impact in music and culture around the world but not in her homeland Cuba. The Miami Herald reported how fans and friends stretched out over 8 city blocs to pay tribute to La Reina del Bolero -- The Queen of Bolero.

According to the book Shoot the singer!: music censorship today edited by Marie Korpe there is increasing concern within the international music community that post-revolution generations are growing up without knowing or hearing these censored musicians and that this could lead to a loss of Cuban identity in future generations. One of the musicians to undergo this process is Olga Guillot.

Wikipedia offers the following description of Olga's career:

Olga Guillot (born October 9, 1922 in Santiago de Cuba - died July 12, 2010 in exile in Miami, Fl) is a famous Cuban singer who was known to be the queen of bolero. She is a native of the Cuban city of Santiago. In 1954, she recorded her song "Mienteme" ("Lie to Me"), which became a hit across Latin America, and earned her three consecutive awards back home in Cuba as Cuba's best female singer. 1958 proved to be an important year for Guillot, as she toured Europe for the first time, including stops in Italy, France, Spain and Germany.

She sang alongside the equally legendary Édith Piaf during a concert held in Cannes. Olga Guillot kept a house in Cuba as she traveled around the world with her music, apart from her house in Mexico. But Guillot opposed Fidel Castro's Government, and, in 1961, she decided to leave Cuba for good and establish herself in Venezuela. Not long after that, she left Venezuela, making Mexico her only permanent residence country.

Kenia Fernandez wrote in article in My Latino Voice titled "Nostalgia Corner: Why the Bolero was censored in Cuba which describes how the Bolero was banned in Cuba:

First, jukeboxes were confiscated from corner bars and nightclubs (there were as many as 20,000 jukeboxes in Havana in the 1950s). Then, in 1961, at the First Congress of Writers and Artists, music was defined as an organ of integration into the new Revolutionary society. The bolero came to be seen as a reactionary genre, in bad taste, and ultimately, banned. Cuba's world-class composers and performers, many of whom had brought the genre to its golden age, were abruptly silenced. Finally, in 1968, in the Ofensiva Revolucionaria -- the Cuban equivalent of China's Cultural Revolution -- most of the 1,200 cabarets and dance halls for which Havana was known were shut down (with only a couple of exceptions, including the notable Tropicana). Bolero lovers and performers were left with no viable venues. An entire generation was traumatized by loss of the very words and music that had defined the key moments of their lives -- coming of age, first loves, stolen kisses, secret romances.

Olga speaks in defense of the Ladies in White on March 25, 2010



Olga Guillot is one of many Cuban artists disappeared by the Cuban regime from Cuba's cultural life in what music censorship experts have described as a cultural genocide. She like Celia Cruz would be erased from Cuban culture under the communist dictatorship in Cuba. Both would never be able to physically return to Cuba because of the communist dictatorship there in power that banned their music and made the nonpersons. Please engage in an act of cultural resistance and rescue help spread their music and that of other censored artists into Cuba by any means at your disposal. Olga and Celia may not be able to return to Cuba physically, but there music and their place in Cuban culture can be restored.



Her long and talented life ended on July 12, 2010 but she will always be remembered for her music and as a Cuban who suffered a long exile from her homeland thanks to a brutal dictatorship that banned her music. Requiescat in pace Olga Guillot, Queen of the Bolero and Cuban patriot. We, free Cubans and children of Cubans, will make sure that your music and your cultural legacy are restored in Cuba.

Cuba's Cultural Genocide: Cuban Music & Musicians Blacklisted Pt. 1

"I think they kill my child every time they deprive a person of their right to think." - José Martí

"The man who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman." - Mahatma Gandhi

Over the years when it has been necessary to speak out against censorship of musicians and attempts at intimidation I spoke out and signed my name to opeds and petitions denouncing coercion, intimidation, and government attempts at censorship, but failed in taking a closer look at what was taking place in Cuba. According to the book Shoot the singer!: music censorship today edited by Marie Korpe there is increasing concern within the international music community that post-revolution generations are growing up without knowing or hearing these censored musicians and that this could lead to a loss of Cuban identity in future generations. What follows is a partial list of important musicians and groundbreaking music denied Cubans in the island. Text is taken from hyperlinked sources in each entry. I am not a musicologist but listen to their music and you be the judge.

Israel Cachao López

Known just as "Cachao" was a Cuban mambo musician, bassist and composer, who has helped bring mambo music to popularity in the United States in the early 1950s. He was born in Havana, Cuba. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, won several Grammy Awards, and has been described as "the inventor of the mambo". He is considered a master of descarga (Latin jam sessions). Cachao left Cuba in 1962. He spent two years in Spain, then came to New York City, where he performed with mambo bands led by Tito Rodríguez, José Fajardo and Eddie Palmieri. For decades, he worked almost entirely as a sideman.

Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría





He is most famous for being the composer of the jazz standard "Afro Blue," recorded by John Coltrane among others. In 1950 he moved to New York where he played with Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, Fania All Stars, etc. He was an integral figure in the fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms with R&B and soul, paving the way for the boogaloo era of the late 1960s. His 1963 hit rendition of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. With the cover of "Watermelon Man," Santamaria found himself garnering the acclaim of his former mentors. He would even visit the pop charts once again - a feat that, among his mentors, only Prado ever accomplished - in 1969 with "Cloud Nine." And he recorded prolifically through the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, before slowing things down last decade.










Miguelito Valdés

Born Miguel Ángel Eugenio Lázaro Zacarias Izquierdo Valdés Hernández (Havana, 6 September 1912 – Bogota, 9 November 1978), also called Mr. Babalú, was a Cuban popular singer of high quality. His performances were characterized by a strong voice and a particular sense of cubanismo. Miguelito Valdés was a street wise rumbero in tune with the Abukuá and Nañigo percussion rudiments he absorbed in Cuba. He is immensely responsible for the manner in which afro-cuban son, and salsa singers have evolved musically. He described the '70s salsa phenomenon as 'a beautiful continuation of something that started many years ago ... I'm glad it's still alive'.
















Mario Bauza



He was one of the first musicians to introduce Latin music to the U.S. by bringing Cuban musical styles into the New York jazz scene, and is one of the most influential figures in the development of Afro-Cuban music, and his innovative work and musical contributions have many jazz historians to call him the "founding father of Latin jazz." In a musical trajectory that spanned over seventy years Mario Bauzá covered and mastered the realms of symphonic, Latin, jazz, African American, and popular dance music. He was a multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and teacher. He earned the respect of all the musicians he played with by being talented and by commanding respect by example. He was a true innovator of his craft and had the vision and determination to see it manifested.











Arsenio Rodríguez

Cuban musician who played the tres (Cuban guitar), reorganized the conjunto and developed the son montuno, and other Afro-Cuban rhythms in the 1940s and 50s. He claimed to be the true creator of the mambo, and was an important and prolific composer who wrote nearly two hundred song lyrics. Father of the son montuno, prolific composer and lyricist, unequalled tresero, creater of the conjunto format, it is impossible to overstate the importance of Arsenio Rodríguez in Cuban music. Arsenio defined the sound of Cuban music in the 1940s and is both the mother and father of the mambo, even if others would be its most popular figures. The reverbations of his musical revolution can be still be felt today. Despite all this, Arsenio remains on the margins of the official musical pantheon and is a largely forgotten figure.

Olga Guillot

Olga Guillot (born October 9, 1922 in Santiago de Cuba) is a famous Cuban singer who was known to be the queen of bolero. She is a native of the Cuban city of Santiago. In 1954, she recorded her song "Mienteme" ("Lie to Me"), which became a hit across Latin America, and earned her three consecutive awards back home in Cuba as Cuba's best female singer. 1958 proved to be an important year for Guillot, as she toured Europe for the first time, including stops in Italy, France, Spain and Germany. She sang alongside the equally legendary Édith Piaf during a concert held in Cannes. Olga Guillot kept a house in Cuba as she travelled around the world with her music, apart from her house in Mexico. But Guillot opposed Fidel Castro's Government, and, in 1961, she decided to leave Cuba for good and establish herself in Venezuela. Not long after that, she left Venezuela, making Mexico her only permanent residence country. First, jukeboxes were confiscated from corner bars and nightclubs (there were as many as 20,000 jukeboxes in Havana in the 1950s). Then, in 1961, at the First Congress of Writers and Artists, music was defined as an organ of integration into the new Revolutionary society. The bolero came to be seen as a reactionary genre, in bad taste, and ultimately, banned. Cuba's world-class composers and performers, many of whom had brought the genre to its golden age, were abruptly silenced. Finally, in 1968, in the Ofensiva Revolucionaria -- the Cuban equivalent of China's Cultural Revolution -- most of the 1,200 cabarets and dancehalls for which Havana was known were shut down (with only a couple of exceptions, including the notable Tropicana). Bolero lovers and performers were left with no viable venues. An entire generation was traumatized by loss of the very words and music that had defined the key moments of their lives -- coming of age, first loves, stolen kisses, secret romances.

Nostalgia Corner: Why the Bolero Was Censored in Cuba | My Latino Voice

My Latino Voice, November 4, 2009

Nostalgia Corner: Why the Bolero Was Censored in Cuba

Written by Kenia Fernandez

The recent Juanes concert in Cuba created a storm of controversy over the issue of censorship of cultural expression. Many non-Cubans were perplexed by the intensity of emotion in Cuban-American communities. But a recent conference I attended illustrated how the emotions were attached to the sounds and scenes we saw erupt across the country.

Boleros Prohibidos, o La Habana Sin Olga Guillot ["Forbidden Love Songs, or Havana Without Olga Guillot," the acknowledged queen of Cuban torch songs], is a powerful multimedia tour of the romantic music of Havana in the 1950s, the golden age of the bolero. Its author, Armando López, a journalist and cultural critic, was a man who came of age in Havana's cabarets and night clubs, when world-class stars such as Olga Guillot, Elena Burke, and Beny Moré were creating their best ballads: "Miénteme," "Qué Sabes Tú," "Cómo Fue."

Olga Guillot, her music was banned and black listed by the Castro regime.

I grew up hearing this music, and it does evoke powerful emotions in me as well. Few love songs in English can move me so. These songs and artists are the soundtrack of memories of my mother and father, dancing to "Soy Tan Feliz" in an embrace, of my abuelito serenading my abuelita with "Contigo en la Distancia," in his honeyed baritone.

The Union City audience of several hundred bolero fans -- many silver-haired abuelitos y abuelitas, and not a few much younger folks -- sang along with every single sound clip, and ooh'ed and aah'ed at the photos and film clips of their idols. Many were overcome with feelings and memories.
Why the nostalgia, why such emotion? Anglo-American seniors don't tend to cry like this when they hear Nat King Cole or Johnny Mathis.

López went on to explain that in Revolutionary Cuba the bolero came to be seen as incongruent with the goals of building a new society. First, jukeboxes were confiscated from corner bars and nightclubs (there were as many as 20,000 jukeboxes in Havana in the 1950s). Then, in 1961, at the First Congress of Writers and Artists, music was defined as an organ of integration into the new Revolutionary society. The bolero came to be seen as a reactionary genre, in bad taste, and ultimately, banned. Cuba's world-class composers and performers, many of whom had brought the genre to its golden age, were abruptly silenced.

Finally, in 1968, in the Ofensiva Revolucionaria -- the Cuban equivalent of China's Cultural Revolution -- most of the 1,200 cabarets and dance halls for which Havana was known were shut down (with only a couple of exceptions, including the notable Tropicana). Bolero lovers and performers were left with no viable venues. An entire generation was traumatized by loss of the very words and music that had defined the key moments of their lives -- coming of age, first loves, stolen kisses, secret romances.

So in the context of musical censorship, it is not surprising that Juanes and his project stirred so much controversy. Heartfelt debates on the usefulness of economic and cultural boycotts are not likely to end, as long as there are states that attempt to silence a love song.

Armando López is a writer, journalist, and arts producer, using a fusion of genres and artists. His shows have been staged at Lincoln Center and other major venues in New York and Havana. In Cuba he founded the journal Opina, which the state shut down in 1990. He has spoken on Cuban popular music at universities and cultural institutions all over the US. He often writes for Cubaencuentro.com.

http://mylatinovoice.com/music-and-arts/13-music/1278-nostalgia-corner-why-the-bolero-was-censored-in-cuba.html