Cuba: reflections #1

 

"The Absolute Monster Gentlemen are on a mission - an international mission, no less.

That in itself will come as no surprise; regular readers are already familiar with these missives of the road. Every time my band of traveling Troubadours trundle the tote bags off airport Carousels, I trot out a few lines - but this time it’s a little different, a bit special.

Our presence has been requested in Communist Cuba. It would appear that the music-loving masses of that enigmatic island to the south would be appreciative of the New Orleans groove so we’ve been summoned to perform our brand of funk at the prestigious Jazz Plaza Festival in Havana.

I love Cuba. I’ve been in love with the idea of Cuba since I first saw it on a map as child, sitting there in between Africa and New Orleans, in between Spain and New Orleans, France and New Orleans. I knew then that New Orleans was cool. My Uncle lived there and he knew a man called Professor Longhair - does it get any cooler than that? Seemed to me, if New Orleans was cool, then Cuba probably was too and I had a notion that perhaps one day I’d find out for myself.

I didn’t waste any time getting to New Orleans; just long enough to leave school and grab the flight that would take me far away from a sleepy country village, friends and family. A leap into the unknown from everything familiar to a brave new planet and a preposterous dream that somehow, against the odds, a ‘head in the clouds’ eighteen-year-old with a hundred and forty dollars in his pocket and a spare shirt, might find some way of surviving and make a go of being a musician in the land of music.

Getting to Cuba though was a bit more complicated - because it was forbidden. Well, we all know what happens to forbidden fruit, and though it took a further twelve years, I finally made it down to take a bite, landing in the middle of a power cut on a blacked-out island, knowing not a single soul and speaking no Spanish.

I fell immediately in love with Cuba. But it’s one of those despairing love affairs, heart-breaking. What I love most about it is what upsets me most about it and somehow the two have to be reconciled and they never are. It’s maddening, it’s enchanting. I always find I can’t wait to leave and having left, I can’t wait to go back.

So, now, more than thirty years since my first foray with countless times to and fro in-between, I’m going back, except this time with a killer funk band of New Orleans heavies. We’re to join forces with a select group of some of Havana’s top session Funkeros for two concerts, and perhaps, if the opportunity arises there’ll be some Rum testing on the side.

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Back then, direct European flights to Cuba went from the Soviet bloc Moscow, East Berlin. I'd boarded mine in Caracas, Venezuela where I’d spent a few nights staying with a music-loving acupuncturist in El Hatillo while waiting for my connection. 

I’d been in rough parts of Guatemala and Honduras and had travelled the length of Mexico by bus; I’d seen slums in the Caribbean, ghettoes in Venezuela, and Favelas in Brazil but poverty in Cuba felt different. All the little children had shoes to wear and they went to school in smart uniforms, they smiled and giggled. There wasn’t the sense of hostility and danger in the neighbourhoods of the have-nots that was so palpable in my hometown of New Orleans; you weren’t taking your life in your hands by casually strolling into unknown neighbourhoods. But it was still obvious that aside from the superficial, things at the time weren’t good.

The Soviet experiment had evaporated into thin air, and Germany’s wall had come down, Cuba’s life support system was suddenly unplugged and flat-lining, everything going into a fast, free-form downward spiral. It took a year for the remaining energy reserves to run dry and for the gas tanks of the nation's few industrial engines to fully deplete - but they did - and by the time I first landed in Cuba, the place was running on fumes.

It was January of '93. many people were hungry, and their ribs were starting to show. Meat was in short supply and small dogs and cats had started to disappear from the streets, protein more important than companionship. Castro called it the 'special period’ and demanded extra resilience on the part of his subjects as he deflected, directing their ire towards the Yanquis and their blockade, El Bloqueo, as the culprits. There was unspoken and tacit acknowledgement of bullshit. No one could speak up but his bluster wasn’t filling their sails and everyone knew that the whole plan was unravelling.

My friend, Ivan, said ‘We are the last ones - us and North Korea’. The experiment had failed but there was no sign of anything letting up as Fidel carried on furiously waving his fist on the black and white screens of out-of-date Russian televisions that spluttered as much as the out-of-date American cars.

Thirty years later and it’s happened again. Except this time it’s Venezuela that’s stopped paying Cuba’s bills. No more Hugo Chavez sitting atop the oil reserves and piles of petro-dollars. The Knight in shining olive-green military fatigues that popped round, stopped in and propped up the country as it precariously turned the corner of the new century is dead and gone and when his successor, Maduro, inherited the captaincy of Venezuela's sinking ship, the writing was on the wall. Cuba’s President has been spending what little is left in the savings account on a furious round of new hotel constructions just as the tourists have decided not to come… and now there’s no money coming in from anywhere. ‘This is like the nineties ’Special Period’ all over again’, I say. ‘No’, they reply, ’It’s worse’.

Our driver didn’t look very happy. The Malecon, Havana’s seafront road, was blocked off for a Communist-party candle-lit parade and we were taking a night-time detour. He only perked up when I asked him about his magnificent, antique car. The drivers of these old gas-guzzling, diesel-exhaust-smoke-pumping Dinosaurs of the road are very proud of their Cabs and boastfully proclaim the make and vintage: 'Fifty-one Studebaker’. This handsome beast had been swerving around Havana’s pot-holes for over seventy years and was now all shiny and fixed up and sporting a South - Korean Hyundai engine under the hood. As the traffic ground to a halt at a red light, several similar mechanical metal Mastodons on either side and back and front idled loud. Not so much ticking over as chugging, the exhaust pipes pumped out a collective smog that hovered and lingered in and around our respiratory tracts.

As my lungs start to fail, he glances cautiously left and right. Despite there being no evidence of any state mechanisms of coercive control and the fact that no one could hear anything anyway over the din of the car motors, he turns conspiratorially towards Reed and me and says in a hushed tone: “What we have now isn’t poverty - it’s misery”." (c) joncleary.com