Rolling Stones in Cuba: Sympathy for the Devil

On March 3, 2016 also known as Music Freedom Day I posted a blog entry on the upcoming Rolling Stones concert in Cuba on March 25th and the continued censorship in Cuba of iconic music artists such as Celia Cruz and Olga Guillot.What the Castro regime did to rock n rollers in Cuba in the 1960s who listened to the Rolling Stones is reflected in the art work below by Sergio Lastres. Today I read, in Spanish, the following essay by rock fan, former Cuban prisoner of conscience and Christian Liberation Movement spokesman Regis Iglesias. Below is a translation of the essay. 

Artwork by Sergio Lastres

Sympathy for the Devil

by Regis Iglesias

I remember how difficult it was to have one of the latest albums of the Rolling Stones in the Cuba of the 80s.It always had been, even now that maybe in stores run by military and Interior Ministry officials their CDs maybe on sale, when usually any musical production of their satanic majesties costs around 15 euros and the average monthly salary of Cubans on the island.

We listened to their songs using a thousand homemade contraptions to have the signal from the rock stations in South Florida that eventually came to Cuba in a semi-clandestine manner. Neither on TV stations or local stations, all-government, broadcast their videos or their successes, except perhaps once their old hymn "(I Can not Get No) Satisfaction". Of course not.
 
The Stones were, or that is the image they sold, a rebel band, a cry against the established and totally irreverent with power. In a communist system they were definitely not welcome. But still they were in Tito's Yugoslavia in the late 60s, where they were defrauded by their presentations, which ended in youth riots. Incidentally, most Yugoslav spectators were youth linked to the Communist Party and the official nomenklatura who detested the music of the Stones. 

Not chastened, a few years ago they returned to play in a square behind the Bamboo Curtain. The Chinese could see the Rolling and almost without any prior announcement, as the opening act, a dissident artist, Cui Jian, the father of rock in the empire of paper, youth idol during the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989. Nevertheless, communist leaders succeeded in vetoing two songs of the rebels Mick and Keith, as sexist "Lets Spend the Night Together" and "Honky Tonk Woman", of course! 

I never spent more than one day without hearing the music of the Stones, as it touches every good follower of the oldest and best distillation of rock and roll in the universe. Still, rock lovers we made do with a thousand difficulties to delight us with our musical idols. Never, until I spent seven and a half years in Cuban prisons cells.
 
Then I could not listen to the Rolling Stones, but asked friends to send me the lyrics of their songs, and could in the solitude of my cell set up an imaginary scenario and tried to follow the riffs of Richards, the shrieks of Jagger in my mind. I had a black shirt with the famous logo designed by John Pasche, that raunchy red tongue that seems to mock everything. Two posters with the five Stones adorned my cell. It was a matter of rock honor to keep as a symbol of my inner freedom in the middle of those walls, in front of some jailers who were trying to stop me and also prevent me keeping my hair  with the Jagger cut. 

All these whims I was able to keep them with determination. I was in that place for demanding that Cubans could decide, for being a manager of a demand for a referendum for laws that guarantee the right to popular sovereignty. I would not let them also continue to prevented listening to the music of the Rolling Stones in my mind and being free, as much as I could, to do what I please with respect to my musical and spiritual preferences. 

Exiled in Madrid, I was able to see them at the Bernabéu a couple of years ago, all my life and that of my friends passed before my eyes.

The Rolling Stones are an industry that poses as rebels, but they are an industry. Also rock and roll, does not lack jockeys (jineteras) - the regime's euphemism for prostitutes and thus deny their existence, official rockers or regaton fans who at the last minute are willing to memorize "Gimme Shelter" for a kiss by the old snouts of Mick and have something to take home to eat. 

It is not the '80s when everyone was embarrassed to be invited to give concerts in countries where citizens were segregated by their skin color, their ideas or beliefs, where citizens had no right to prosper economically, and less a choice to elect and be elected to be part of a fair and democratic government. Now it does not matter because, no matter in China or Cuba people are segregated and oppressed, imprisoned, exiled and murdered. We are in the world of posers, in the world of interests, and the Rolling Stones are no exception on this point.

I will rejoice that some of my friends on the island will enjoy, if they can, the concert of the Rolling Stones. I say "if they can" because surely the grounds of the Sports City will be filled by the regime with young communists, students of military academies, informers, rapid response brigades (the paramilitaries) and "reliable" people for the security of the system. 

It would not be the first time, and to the baseball game between the Major League team of the United States, Tampa Devil Rays (I think, after all, there is something, a mocking allusion to the devil behind all this) and a selection of the regime -part of all this show designed from Washington by the Obama Administration - already announced that the tickets would be "by invitation". A hidden swallow does not make spring, but if it at least to be in the place, no matter if it is 200 or 300 meters from the stage, I will rejoice, but it would not leave me satisfied with the Rolling Stones.

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?