AM
I
dreamt last night that I had outpatient brain surgery.
* * *
It’s
overcast and mercifully cooler today. I kept it inside last night and didn’t
set an alarm this morning, wanting to get a solid night’s sleep before what I’m
actually here for: el concierto. I
step out in the morning to a bakery to pick up a bite for breakfast, but
otherwise, trato hacer casi nada hoy para
que puedo conservar mi energía por la noche. And keeping today slow helps
me appreciate what’s happening. As a composer, every performance of one’s music
is existentially important.
And
tonight, I have two pieces being played (and am even taking the stage for one
of them) in Cuba.
* * *
PM
There’s
an excellent concert to report on from this evening in its entirety, but
naturally, what’s at the front of my mind is how my music went, and I’m very, very pleased.
I only
met the cellist and pianist playing my Incident—Maylin
Sevila and Roberto Bello López—this afternoon, when we arrived at
the Basilica for their soundcheck. The rehearsal made me nervous: there were
notes and rhythms getting dropped all over the place, and various things that
they apparently just learned incorrectly; Roberto couldn’t quite manage the septuplet
runs; Maylin was playing sul ponticello in
weird places, and had to be corrected; and the last third of the piece just
wasn’t together. We did what we could in the short amount of time we had. I
wish I’d had a chance to sit in on a rehearsal earlier in the week: one hour
would have made a world of difference. But when they took the stage for their
performance, I tried to set aside my proprietary anxiety and just listen to
them play, and goddamn if they didn’t make some fine music, never mind whatever
blemishes to the score.
I was
equally nervous about Anthem, if for
different reasons. Gear always fucking malfunctions, so I’m never comfortable
until the performance is done. Our opportunity to soundcheck didn’t come easy.
First, the sound guys didn’t have the right cables to hook me up to their PA—but,
hats off, they went out and found some adaptors, I don’t know where. But while
that was going on, the choir that was closing the program started rehearsing—not
rehearsing, actually, but just running through a compendium of vocal warm-ups—and
their unsmiling abuelita of a
conductor was gonna do her thing, damn it; when Sandra, one of the Festival
organizers, tried to gently let her know at 5:20 that three other ensembles
still needed some time before doors opened—for the “6:00” show (per tiempo Cubano—their term, not mine!)—she
was summarily waved aside.
 |
| With cellist Maylin Sevila and pianist Roberto Bello López. |
Finally,
we had an opportunity to give Anthem a
spin, but really just enough time for me to make sure the rig was functioning.
I had to adjust levels on the fly during the rehearsal, and adjust on the fly I
would in performance. Leo hit a couple of rough patches in the extended solo at
the start of the piece, but generally was executing well; Lucy was strangely
singing some wrong notes that she’d had right on Sunday, but was in
incandescently good voice.
The
performance was, I think, strong. I decided not to obsess too much about
levels, and just execute the patch. And when
those loops starting filling the space, with the Basilica’s magnificent
acoustic, it was damned glorious. I think the audience dug it. Who knows. If
not, pues, no me importa; that sound, in that room—I
felt high.
 |
| With soprano Lucelsy Fernández. |
 |
| With violinist Leonardo Pérez. |
The
concert started with a solo guitar set: pieces by Marlos Nobre, Roberto Sierra,
Mauro Cardi, and Heber Vásquez. All interesting pieces—the Sierra Toccata y lamento especially—and played splendidly by Efrén Gorrostieta, though to
be honest, I was too busy worrying about Anthem
to give the set a totally fair listen.
Next
were two pieces by Anna Bofill—Andata et
ritorno for solo piano, ft. Abel Figueredo, and Suite de Tamanrasset for solo guitar, ft. Carlos Ernesto Varona.
Both quite compelling works, and excellently played (sufficiently so, on both
counts, to re-command my focus). I really loved Anna’s music, which I suppose
is more than can be said for a group of Americans that was in attendance—one of
whom I’d spoken with briefly before the concert started; she was attempting to
ask one of the ushers (entirely in English) if she could take photographs, and
I stepped in to translate. Yes, I’m proud of myself. She lives in Albany and is
visiting Cuba with a tour group, and was excited to have found out about the
Festival and this evening’s concert—and also, it seemed, to meet a fellow
American, here to present his music. Pues,
I suppose Anna’s music isn’t unchallenging for the lay listener, and the
Americans got up and left en masse before
the ACF set began. Me chupa un huevo.
For
those listeners who stayed, I think mis
compañeros and I represented ourselves well. Carol Barnett’s toe-tapping Variations, Oh Yes! for clarinet and
piano reset the audiences’ palate with a joyful, irresistible noise, and Mary
Ellen Childs’s evocative A Frail Weight was
served extremely well by Lucy’s clarion tone, ably accompanied by her sister
Roselsy. (Mary Ellen had another vocal work listed in the program, Night, which went unperformed with no
explanation.) Sage’s Elegguá felt an
appropriate nod to the cultural exchange represented by our music being heard
here—scored skillfully for two guitars, and with a gentle dash of Latin spice—and
was performed sabrosamente by Carlos
Ernesto Varona and Luis Angel Chouza.
* * *
I had
heard and read that Cubanos, garrulous and gregarious though it is their nature
to be, will generally be guarded when it comes to talking politics, if they don’t
submarine the topic entirely. But scavenging for a late slice of pizza and a
beer back in Vedado after the concert, I do meet and start chatting with a
young Cubano at a fast food counter on the Malecón who’s very happy to share his
thoughts on the state of things. It was a quiet night, with almost no other
patrons around, and/or maybe a few drinks had loosened him up enough to get
some things off his chest. Whatever the case, his wasn’t a rosy view.
For
me, what a fascinating lens into at least one side of the Cuban psyche. Our
conversation is the latest of numerous experiences I’ll have this week that will
equally enlighten and confound me. It’s impossible to enumerate all of the
thoughts and theories that this thirty-something shared. (For
the record, I didn’t get his name, and I wouldn’t mention it if I had.) But by
the end of our conversation—and he spoke with such eloquent fervor—I felt my
understanding of this place had begun to be three-dimensionalized.
I
began to understand more deeply the degree of social inequality in Cuba. Not
just its severity, but its essential nature, which here is patently bizarre.
How the circulation of multiple currencies has punished the working class and the
poor, both financially and psychologically. How there are people with money,
and then there are people with opportunities—in my country, essentially a
one-to-one equation. Not so here. You can have the money to accomplish what you
want, and still be left out in the cold. But friends and darlings of the
(ostensibly communist) state enjoy greater privileges – “Aparecen comunista,
pero aman el capitalismo—tienen coches, cosas, dinero, privilegios, poder…” – allowing a family of three to own three cars while their neighbors struggle to find five pesos for a liter of milk out of their income of 40 pesos p/month.
Of course, there's inequality back home too. But it's not easy to square what I know in the United States with what I see here. In my country, we have so much, and yet people are sleeping on the streets; here, where they have so much less, almost everyone owns their own home.
Of course, there's inequality back home too. But it's not easy to square what I know in the United States with what I see here. In my country, we have so much, and yet people are sleeping on the streets; here, where they have so much less, almost everyone owns their own home.
After learning that I’m a musician, the young Cubano describes what he sees as the complicated
nature of his country’s flourishing arts and cultural landscape: that many prominent
cultural figures are among those enjoying their great share of privilege and
power. That art, film, and music festivals, he says, are not always about art.
They’re about politics and power, siempre
la política y el poder—and I wonder if I’m complicit in an oppressive
system, simply by being here.
I
began to understand la gente’s nuanced reverence for Che. He’s seen as the pure idealist of the Revolution, the yin to
the charismatic, ambitious yang that is Fidel. (“Y mira, Che está muerto y Fidel todavía vivo.”) The man on the
street here associates Che exclusively with his ideology; he doesn’t know (as this young intellectual does) that
Che presided over so much violence, over the bloody executions of Batista’s men
at the Fortaleza, where I just was two nights ago. Pero, ¿cómo es posible, I wonder, que la gente no sabe de este? Yo lo leí, not in some deeply
researched academic volume, but in Lonely
Planet! ¡La información sí existe!
–Sí, pero claro, el Cubano típico no lee el Lonely Planet. Y no le
importa ni la política ni la historia… Solo le importa la comida, la ropa, la
electricidad. No le importa ni mañana ni ayer. Solo hoy, hoy, hoy.
I hear
the cynical joke that, when the apocalypse comes, there will be no food, no
electricity, no internet… and that the only ones who will survive the
apocalypse will be los Cubanos.
And I
hear the weariness in the voice of a proud Cubano who has, he says, consciously
decided to stop developing new friendships. Because every friend he’s made, and
his family too, has, one way or another, found a way off la isla for good.
“La realidad Cubana… Los extranjeros no pueden
entender–porque los Cubanos no entienden.
“Es complicado.”
“Es complicado.”