The
rain has mostly let up this morning, but it’s still chilly and damp. I start
the day reading on Emilio’s patio overlooking Malecón, and the waves are
majestic.
By
9:00, it’s time to head out and be a responsible tourist finally—desde ahora, soy exclusivamente turista. I
think I’ll still stick to Vedado today, given the weather and the 3:00 concert
in this neighborhood, and will save Habana Vieja for tomorrow. I walk around looking
for the Museo Napoleónico, but lose my way around La Universidad. Staring at my
map, I’m approached by a young Cubano claiming to be a history professor at the
University, accompanied by a woman he introduces as a University student. I
smell bullshit, pero vale—I ask where
the Museo is, and he points me in the right direction, but tells me the museum
is closed for fumigation. But he recommends another place that I absolutely
have to see while I’m in Havana, and starts walking me there. We stroll down
San Lazaro, a street rich with revolutionary history, which they narrate for me
as we walk. But once they enter the building they want to show me, I invent
some excuse for why I have to be on my way, thank them for showing me the
building, and promise that I’ll come back to check it out later in the week. They’re
cool about it, and my next potential Ricardo y Gina have been averted.
After
a stop at the Hotel Nacional to email my family, I’m back at Emilio’s, sitting
on his patio again, and the waves have only become more spectacular. It’s the
kind of cool, gray day that in college used to most inspire the most studious
and most bohemian in me. And Emilio’s made me a cup of coffee. (The café Cubano, by the way, es sabrosísimo—I wish I were a poet, to
describe how rich and delicious.) I’m not technically on vacation, and I won’t
have any less work to do when I get home next week. Elements of Cuba may seem
frozen in time, but not so my deadlines. So I’ll sit here and write. And watch
the waves. Tourism can wait.
* * *
Today’s
concerts are the La Casa de las Americas, a robust cultural center in Vedado
that hosts conferences, exhibitions, concerts, and other events. I stroll the
gallery currently showing work by a modern Latin American artist before the
concert starts. The first event is actually a lecture on music for guitar and
electronics, given by Ricardo, followed by what’s billed as a concert of
electroacoustic music—for the most part, actually just a presentation of
electronic works, though there is one piece with live performers—Wilma Alba Cal’s
mmm S.A., for wind quintet and tape—that
really grabs me. The other highlights are Carlos Fariñas’s Fractales; René Alberto Rodriguez’s Parajes de un tiempo, which takes vocal recordings and does spooky
things with them; and Ariannys Mariño’s Cavilaciones
nocturnas, which is accompanied by an excellent video by David Placeres.
Between
concerts, I step out and cross the street to a plaza for an up-close view of
the monstrous waves punishing the Malecón. Mira,
how spectacular.
* * *
I’ve already mentioned that this Festival features a lot of guitar, and never more stultifyingly so than as on this evening’s second concert: a two-hour parade, sans intermission (none of the concerts have an intermission, but most run just over an hour long, maybe 90 minutes tops), of five guitarists, all with distinctly different sounds (and, almost comically, distinctly different setups). Not that the concert wasn’t excellent. These guitarists put on a clinic. And the repertoire was varied and interesting and, across the board, really good music. Ricardo opened the program with a set of four pieces, composed between 1977 (Argentinian composer Gerardo Gandini’s Webernesque Seis Tientos) and 2014 (the Ecuadorian Mesías Maiguashca’s V Microgramas for guitar and electronics). Other standouts were Tania León’s Paisanos Semos and the world premiere of three Bagatelles by Amparo Fabra, a former student of Tania’s at Brooklyn College, played by the excellent Ana Maria Rosado. (Amparo is in attendance; she and Ana Maria both teach at New Jersey City University—Ana Maria, in fact, lives in Washington Heights, not three blocks from where I used to live!) The contrast from each guitarist to the next is striking indeed. Ricardo has a bright, steely sound, perfect for the modern angularity of the music he takes on. Ana Maria has a warmer, rounder tone. Eduardo Martín played his own pseudo-Bachian & Cuban-folk-flavored Preludio, Son y Allegro, a piece (and performance) brimming with romantic Latino passion. The other highlight of the final set was Chilean composer Edmundo Vázquez’s Mestizo, given its world premiere by Susana Frade. This might in fact be one of the strongest concerts beginning to end of the festival so far—but it’s long, and I’m a little damp from watching the waves and the air conditioner’s come on a bit too strong, and I’m hungry (I’ve eaten like shit for the last two days—after a couple of very decent paladar meals, I have to accept that food is not Cuba’s strong suit). When the concert finally ends, I’ve more than had my fill.
* * *
Later
in the evening, after scarfing down my leftover pizza from last night, cold, I
meet up with Ricardo, José Lezcano and his wife (whose name—Lezcanos, si estáis leyendo, disculpa—has escaped
me), and the Swiss flautist Antipe D’Stella at Sofia, an open air bar and
restaurant on the same block as La Zorra y
El Cuervo. The company is wonderful, as are the ron and cerveza. But the
music! There’s a band playing, and they set me on fire.