Cuba, the Beatles and Me
By Barbara Dane
In 1966, Barbara Dane was the first U.S. singer to tour Cuba after the revolution. That first gesture of international artistic solidarity blossomed into a lifelong musical and personal relationship with the Island -- her son, Pablo Menendez, has lived in Cuba since 1966, and is the leader of the Cuban roots-jazz fusion band "Mezcla." Her grandson, Osamu Menendez is a founder of the Cuban rock band "Havana," which won the "Cubadisco" prize for best recording in the rock category. Because of the debate that arose around the December 2000 dedication of the Lennon statue in Havana -- Was Beatles music ever banned in Cuba? -- Barbara wrote this article for Cubamigo to set the record straight. Barbara's article is followed by comments from son Pablo, whose band, Mezcla, played at the concert the that took place the night of the dedication of the Lennon statue and park.
In the summer of 1966, a major turning point in my life came when I was invited to perform a month-long concert tour in Cuba. The invitation came by way of an emissary direct from the Presidency, but the idea had started with a group of cultural organizers there who saw the tour as a way to reinforce the ties of friendship and family between North Americans and Cubans which had historically been close and positive.
Those same close ties, however, had in the past also brought foreign cultural influences not always seen as healthy for a young nation still struggling to establish its sovereignty after centuries of economic domination by both Spain and the U.S. Until the 1959 revolution, only seven years before my trip, the Cuba airwaves had been awash in U.S. Hit Parade music, commercials and TV shows.
This is why for some zealous Cuban bureaucrats during the '60s, the Beatles and other internationally popular rock groups were looked at simply as products of the transnational monopolies and therefore, albeit unwittingly, tools of cultural penetration and a threat to the national culture. They felt compelled to prevent Cuban youth from being "contaminated" by this foreign music, and for a time the Beatles were even banned from the radio.
Barbara and John have a chat in Lennon Park in the Vedado section of Havana.
In our own country we can see the way the marketing of music by transnationals like Sony, EMI, Time-Warner and Bertelsman (BMG) almost completely blot out local artists and culture. If you are not "signed" with a music monopoly label, chances are your music will never be heard on the airwaves. We are familiar with the poisonous competitiveness and the opportunism, not to mention the problems with drugs and corruption that seem to go with the music business: the higher the stakes, the worse these problems. And of course there has always been a race factor in the marketing, one that still distorts how we see ourselves as a nation. These are a few of the problems some Cuban cultural leadership hoped to keep out by minimizing foreign influence.
On the other hand some of the more progressive leadership saw my tour as a way to demonstrate that foreign music could also have a positive purpose. They saw that genuine popular expression everywhere comes from the real lives of the people who create it, their needs, their joy and pain, their hope and their strength, regardless of the objectives of those who simply market it. Songs from outside could demystify the "other" and help to build new relations based on mutual respect and human solidarity. They saw to it that I was written up by every publication, interviewed by every radio station, and my Saturday night Havana concert at the Amadeo Roldan Theater was nationally televised.
Whether or not there was cause and effect after my concert tour, around that time attitudes toward foreign popular music opened up considerably. In 1967 Cuba invited singers from all over the world, as far away as Vietnam, Japan and Australia, from Italy, Spain and the UK, from Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. I returned with my husband Irwin Silber to represent the U.S. in the profoundly influential Encuentro de Cancion Protesta. We all sang for each other and for the people of Havana and then we split into cultural brigades that carried our music to the furthest reaches of Cuba, to the Sierra Maestra and the Isle of Youth.
As for the Beatles, censorship (as in every case) proved both self-defeating and futile. The music seeped in anyway and Cuban youth loved them all the more. Since those days there have been several important celebrations marking Beatles anniversaries, with compositions based on their work offered by many great Cuban artists. In the year 2000 a bronze figure of John Lennon has come to sit on a park bench, in a new park especially dedicated to the kinds of things young people like to do on warm evenings, an event important enough for Fidel himself to attend and offer his blessing.
Four generations evidence that music can transcend the blockade: Osamu Menendez Santana (Barbara's grandson), of the Cuban rock group "Havana"; Osamu's son Mauro Menendez Mujica; Pablo Menendez (Barbara's son), leader of the Cuban roots-jazz fusion group "Mezcla"; and Barbara Dane
Barbara's great-grandson Mauro and and husband music folklorist and publisher Irwin Silber enjoying Lennon Park.
When the revolution first triumphed, Cuba's new position in the hemisphere, and in the world, led logically to the understanding that Cuba wasn't the only nation suffering from cultural invasion. The most positive manifestation of this was a recognition of the need to establish and reconfirm ties with progressive and revolutionary cultural currents around the world, an idea gloriously expressed by the historic Cultural Congress of Havana in January, 1968 which brought together leading intellectuals from all over the world in support of the Cuban Revolution.
Even more importantly, the '68 Congress helped to unite these opinion-makers in a network of mutual support, and in a common understanding of the need to resist cultural penetration and domination of national cultures in whatever country while at the same time uniting in the culture of resistance which began to flourish in the '60s and '70s all over the world and in every art form.
With time, the conservatives have mostly been won over, as we can see by the sponsoring of such events as last year's Music Bridges, when masses of US pop, rock and rap recording artists including Bonnie Raitt, Michael Franti, Woody Harrelson (actor/rocker) and Joan Osborne went to Cuba and worked for a week writing songs with many of the most popular Cuban musicians, performing them at the end together at a packed gala in the Carlos Marx Theater.
December 2000 saw the 19th annual Havana Jazz Festival celebrated, and such US artists as Roy Hargrove, David Sanchez and Dave Valentin have been regulars. Even the 60-odd members of the Alan Temple Baptist Choir from Oakland visited the International Choir Festival in Havana in 2000.
This is just the beginning of a long list. Musicians and singers, as well as every type of artist, from every genre and every corner of the earth have been welcomed to perform in Cuba, in huge festivals as well as in individual concerts and tours. And this is a two-way street. Contrary to the impression given by a few famous "defectors," Cuban musicians go to perform in nearly every country, and the great majority of them come back home to share their new musical growth with the Cuban people. Marti's hope that the roots would stay deep in Cuba while the branches of the tree reach everywhere is being richly fulfilled.
Barbara Dane in concert with Cuban singer Amaury Perez.
For Pablo Menendez on the Beatles & Cuba:
Text (c) 2002 Barbara Dane
Photos courtesy of Barbara Dane