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The notes of the trumpet are braying in one of Varadero\'s beach bars, sounding thru the warm sparkling tones of the guitar and the sharp slaps on the bongo. The doublebassplayer beats on the sides of his instrument. "El Cuarto de Tula". The blond singer of Septeto Son del Caiman Mariano Leyva sings this song of the Buena Vista Social Club with passion. Honking in the rhythm "We\'re playing here for the tourists to earn some money"he tells me after the performance. "Only the best musicians can play here. Maybe we can play once abroad". The group originally comes from Santiago de Cuba. They play son, traditional music from Cuba. ,the most influential style in the country. It originated from the clash between warm Spanish guitar melodies and African rhythms. |
Rhythm of the clave
When I tell Mariano that I am a percussionist, he gives me immediately two small wooden sticks: the clave.
"The rhythm of the clave is essential in Cuban music. It\'s the soul of Cuban music. Even cars are honking in the clave"he says.
I know that and it\'s a great shame if you beat it out of rhythm. It happens one time to me during the quickening of the tempo . The bongoplayer sings it directly for me: taktaktak tak tak . Meanwhile two couples started to dance salsa. Also salsa dancing belong to the Cuban life.
Between salsa and revolution
The statue of Che Guevara rises above the city of Santa Clara, 250 kilometers east of Varadero. Santa Clara lays inland. In 1997 he is reburied here. In 1959 he fought the decisive battle against the troops of Batista in this small town of 200.000 inhabitants.
Two days after my departure from Varadero, I walk with hundreds of Cubans to the monument to listen to a speech of Fidel Castro. The speech of Castro takes only one and a half hour and that\'s short compared to the seven hours he spoke often in the past. Every time he interrupts his speech for a short break, I hear the sound from the speakers. I hear a softly spoken " Fidel, Fidel" and the people take this over , waving with Cuban flags. The evening in Santa Clara is a nice contrast wth the revolutionary rhetoric in the morning. The local salsaband La Pegada brings the dancing crowd together in another happy gathering. They play timba, a modern salsa style, very popular among young people. With influences from pop, funk and rap. A Spanish rap resounds over the Calle Rafael Trista.
Tankers, loaded with beer, are standing at the corners of some streets. One beer costs one dollar.
Some women like my way of dancing. I tell them that I did in a course in Cuban salsa. "Chica, yo tu chica" they whisper this sentence in my ear. I will hear it may times. When they marry with a man from the West , from Europe, they may leave the country , it\'s the only way to get out. When they dance with me, they don\'t take any distance.
Congas in the park
The day after the evening carnaval I walk along the Parquesino del Carmen along a white Spanish church. Before the church I see a memorial stone in honour of immigrants from the Canarian Islands.
On my way from the little park to the bigger Parque Vidal some men try to sell me a cigar for one dollar. "H? amigo, good price".
Parque Vidal looks like a park in a small Spanish town. In the nearby bar La Marquesina I drink mojitos, a typical Cuban cocktail, a mix of rum, lemon juice, sugar, soda and mint. I meet Mariano, a black Cuban guy. He is a mechanic.
"I earn twenty dollars a month, that\'s 400 pesos" , he tells me. "And a Cd-player costs 250 dollar". "On Cuba everybody wants to work in the growing tourist industry", he adds. " A waiter in a hotel earns more than a doctor."
We leave together the bar. On a red couch in Parque Vidal some congadrummers and trumpetplayers are gathering. Behind them some young female dancers are waiting . On a sign of one of the drummers the group starts to move just like the dancers. A strange figure, dressed in a suit of blue and white shreds, symbolizes the African past of a lot of Cubans by dancing on the rhythms of the congas.
A group of old son musicians is waiting at the same time at the veranda of Hotel Santa Clara Libre. The saxophone player in his red shirt is exercising his notes. When the congadrummers disappear around the corner, the old men start to play. On the street but also near the entrance of the hotel young and old couples are dancing closely to each other. An old man is dancing with a young lady.
"Cha cha cha que rico cha cha cha". This song sounds some moments later. "I noticed that the dancers made a sound like zga-zga-zga while shifting their feet. When 200 people do that at the same time, it\'s clearly audible", Enrique Jorrin, inventor of the chachacha around 1940 once said.
Santiago de Cuba
After a bus trip of twelve hours over largely empty roads thru a green flat landscape of palmtrees and sugarcane fields, I reach Santiago, 600 kilometers from Santa Clara. I see many Cuban hitchhikers along the road, it\'s the only way of public transport for most Cubans.
