A Cuban Folk Song Pioneer (Silvio Rodriguez, Carnegie Hall)

[Judi Lynn]

A Cuban Folk Song Pioneer
By JON PARELES
Published: June 6, 2010

Outside Carnegie Hall on Friday night were knots of demonstrators, for and against the Cuban government. Inside was an uproar of adulation: repeated standing ovations, eagerly shouted requests, Cuban flags and banners unfurled, fervent singalongs, roses hurled onstage. The object of it all was a bespectacled, casually dressed man with a gentle voice and an acoustic guitar: Silvio Rodríguez, the 63-year-old Cuban songwriter who is making his first tour of the United States since 1980.

Mr. Rodríguez was a pioneer of Cuban nueva trova, which was part of the folky, literary, socially conscious songwriting movement that spread from South America (where it was called nueva canción, or new song) through the Caribbean in the 1960s. Nueva canción often drew on local traditions but emphasized lyrics over dance rhythms. On Friday Mr. Rodríguez sang “Carta a Violeta Parra” (“Letter to Violeta Parra”), a song from his most recent album, “Segunda Cita” (Sony/BMG Argent/Zoom), that praises Parra, a leader in Chilean nueva canción.

In some countries, like Argentina and Chile, nueva canción was a force of resistance from the left and was suppressed by right-wing governments. Although it sometimes hints at criticism, nueva trova drew support from the Cuban government. Mr. Rodríguez belonged to the Cuban Parliament for 15 years. In recent interviews he has said that he still believes in “the Revolution,” but that Cuba now also needs “evolution.”

Through the decades Mr. Rodríguez has become more poet than propagandist.

He sang about dreams, uncertainties, disillusionment, death, love and willful hope in lyrics that offered more ambiguities and yearnings than slogans. The music was lean and nearly transparent, arranged for guitars (including the Cuban tres), electric bass, flute or clarinet, and a drummer with a light touch.

Sometimes brisk, sometimes elegiac, the arrangements had undercurrents of Cuban bolero and guajira, with Mr. Rodríguez’s reedy high tenor always in the foreground. Through two dozen songs in a set that lasted nearly two and a half hours, the word “Cuba” was barely mentioned.

Mr. Rodríguez didn’t steer clear of politics. There was a stir when he dedicated “Canción del Elegido” (“Song of the Chosen One”), about an extraterrestrial transformed into a soldier, to the Cuban Five. They are Cuban intelligence agents imprisoned in the United States for spying on right-wing Cuban-exile groups in Miami; in Cuba they are heroes.

Mr. Rodríguez also sang “Sinuhé,” a plaintive waltz that imagines legendary figures — Sinbad, Ali Baba, Aladdin — wandering Baghdad after the United States bombings: “1,001 nights of fire and greed/1,001 nights without God or forgiveness.”

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/arts/music/07silvio.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[Judi Lynn]

1. Reuters: Cuba singer Rodriguez wistful, polemical in U.S. show

Cuba singer Rodriguez wistful, polemical in U.S. show
Sat Jun 5, 2010 1:39pm IST

By Walker Simon

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cuban folk singer Silvio Rodriguez, a leading musical voice of the Cuban revolution, launched his first U.S. tour in 30 years in a concert blending wistful ballads with his criticism of the imprisonment of five Cubans convicted in the United States of spying.

He performed on Friday night before an adoring audience at sold-out Carnegie Hall. A small number of protesters gathered outside the famed music venue, some supporting and some opposing Cuba's government, under the watchful gaze of New York police in vans with silently flashing multicolored lights.

Rodriguez, 63, is the latest Cuban performer recently to be allowed into United States, which had routinely denied such visas under former President George W. Bush.

Many of Rodriguez's songs extol the Cuban revolution that brought Fidel Castro in power in 1959, but others also lightly criticize the communist-led society.

Some fans in the raucous, mainly Hispanic crowd draped leftist Latin American revolutionary symbols and Cuban flags over the horseshoe-shaped balcony balustrades. Scattered shouts of "Viva Fidel" resounded in praise of Fidel Castro, who two years ago handed over power in Cuba to his brother Raul.

Rodriguez sounded a humble note at the concert's outset, saying in Spanish, "I apologize that I don't speak English. ... This is a pity."

Most of his songs were lyrical meditations on longing for personal happiness and paeans to socially minded utopias. But midway through the concert, he dedicated a song to five Cuban men convicted in a Miami court in 2001 on spying charges.

Rodriguez said the men were "unjustly imprisoned for more than 10 years," and he proclaimed: "They are five heroes."

More:
http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-49065220100605?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=entertainmentNews&rpc=401

[flamingdem]

2. The signs are pointing towards the end of the bloqueo nt

[Judi Lynn]

3. That would be absolutely glorious. Can't wait for those first reports from the idiots

who go there hoping to get the goods on the "police state" for themselves.

That's going to be the second coolest part: seeing these clowns eat the lies they've been spreading all these years, once everyone can go there and find out what Cuba's all about for themselves!

Sure hope it will happen.