Cuba's rockers start to roll

Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:38:36 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.culture.cuba
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Cuba's rockers start to roll
Havana, Jul 12, 2003 (EFE via COMTEX) -- The island known for mambo, salsa
and most people's conformity with a one-party state is seeing a nascent rock
music movement take tentative steps, including revelers delighting over the
weekend at the Caiman Rock Festival.
Like their fellows around the world, Cuban rockers tend to sport long hair,
punk hairdos, a predominance of black clothing and T-shirts stamped with
pictures of their idols. They also jump and shake their heads to the music.
There are 62 rock groups on the island, more than 20 of them in Havana and
the rest in the provinces of Matanzas, Holguin, Pinar del Rio and Villa
Clara, the latter considered a stronghold of the movement.
According to experts on the genre taking part in a symposium featured as an
integral part of the festival, the island boasts a wide range of rock
styles, including hard rock, alternative rock and pop rock.
Musicologists Juan Camacho, Joaquin Borges Triana and Humberto Manduley, who
study the genre within the broad spectrum of Cuban music, maintain that the
serious analysis of rock on the island is "in diapers."
Though Cuban rockers "continue looking for guidelines abroad," and "are
marked by foreign influences," some homegrown innovations are evident, they
agreed.
Alpidio Alonso, chairman of the Saiz Bothers Association, the organization
officially designated to promote rock groups and sponsor the festival,
believes that "rock music in Cuba lacks maturity."
Alonso says that one of the challenges facing Cuban rock is its relation
with the media, even though rockers already have their own magazine, Jarock
de Cafe, jointly sponsored by the association and the Culture Ministry.
In its latest issue, Jarock de Cafe published an interview with Juan Carlos
Torrente, of the group Combat Noise, in which he says that he does not know
of "a single death metal band in the world that is not underground."
"Cuban rock is an underground movement because it is not primarily promoted
at the institutional level, by rather by word of mouth," he said
But rock has found a home in El Patio de Maria, "the most famous patio in
Havana," as a venue for rock rehearsals and concerts since 1987.
"It is our headquarters, our rehearsal space; it is something we love. Cuban
rock has developed in this patio, which has a rich tradition," said Aramis
Hernandez, leader of one of the island's oldest and best-known rock bands.
Maria Gattorno, founder of the patio at the Roberto Branly Cultural Center,
a large reconverted house in Havana's El Vedado neighborhood, said in an
interview with Jarock de Cafe that the Patio "has met its objectives" and
"transcended the borders of the community."
Gattorno recalls that the 1980s were "a particularly hard time for rock in
Cuba. It was very difficult to organize concerts." She now believes that
"every rock concert is a step forward in the long process of nurturing a
genre and its public."
Patio de Maria is also being used as a concert venue in this First
International Caiman Rock Festival, which draws to a close on Sunday after
showcasing more than a dozen local bands and two foreign groups: the Spanish
Basque region's Txapelpunk and Italy's Banda Bassoti. By Raquel Martori. rmo/dm/mp
By Raquel Martori.
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