Let's say I'm talking about Laffita

Freddy lives in the dungeon of persistence (hopefully also in the dungeon of abstinence). He wears the fascinating look of the vanquished, with his weathered smile behind his little hat and a long-sleeved shirt over his black pullover. Under the orange moon he could be another man dancing with a stool to the rhythm of his guitar, but for the public he has a fourth heart and he wants it to beat all night long, until the rum kills it. 

Earlier, his fellow countryman Amaury del Río passed by. The rain passed and took us from the courtyard of the Provincial Library to the headquarters of La Trovuntivitis. Freddy says that he owes La Trovuntivitis what he is. At the beginning of the century, when he was relegated in Las Tunas, the troubadours of Santa Clara declared him an equal; those troubadours about whom, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the local poet Alexis Castañeda Pérez de Alejo had commented in a theoretical event held at the El Mejunje Cultural Center. His book and this paper La Trovuntivitis: a little more than 25 years of song history The following is a guide to how corn is scratched at the Casa de la Trova in central Cuba.

Once the activity was over we went to ask Joaquín Borges Triana to listen to him speak in the podcast Trovando. We sat at Teresita's Bar, my colleague Erik Mendez and I, and for a drink we asked Joaco to distill his alcohol accumulated over the years. He likes to study the Movement from the generations. He has well defined the promotions and has heard live or recorded, more and better than anyone else, all those who in this country have stood on a stage to sing with a guitar on his back. 

However, at Freddy Laffita it is difficult to place him in one of the many groups that have emerged since the 70s of the last century. He started in the trova in 1996 and has long reigned in the east with Fernando Cabreja but, as he himself says: "sometimes for the tuneros Havana is farther away than Paris". I wonder, with his friend José Luis Serrano, "if there will always be winners on the podium". 

Richard Gómez. Photo: Carmaux Pérez / Taken from social networks.

Also at the Luna Naranja (on Friday) was the manzanillero José Alberto Sánchez, who due to a problem with the acoustics of the place could hardly be enjoyed; the veteran enthusiast Richard Gómez, with a song for Sara, the director of In a certain waywhile the young minstrel of the Balcón del Oriente, Jesús Ricardo Pérez Cecilia, came out to sing a tune. It was already past one o'clock on Saturday morning and many "had reason to go to bed without eating", as if mocking Pedro Luis Ferrer's song that tells that you can't be on the moon without food. Freddy says that The Gordo is one of his main references because he is a perfect troubadour, even if it has no apparent relation to the work he does. 

From that day on I was one of Joaquín Borges Triana's many guide dogs. But he always ended up guiding me through the streets of Santa Clara that he knows better than me. Through the microphones of Trovando Also performing were Maikel Moral from Guantanamo, the duo Fábula and Freddy himself. 

Laffita started the early morning with Two words. The people chanted "to the old blacksmith who heard the horses sing". 

But in truth it was the "horse" of Achilles that entered the holy Troy after 8 p.m. that night. Eduardo Sosa was a distracting Ulysses so that the locals did not perceive the musical ambush of the warrior from Santiago de Cuba. The name José Aquiles, even for a sector of the trova-loving public, does not say much. However, he has two Adolfo Guzman Cuban song awards to his credit and is almost a founder of the old "new" movement. As well as Augusto Blanca, another of the guests of honor of this edition. 

Augusto Blanca. Photo: Carmaux Pérez / Taken from social networks.

By the way, Augusto and the Trio Palabras (although here there were always two) played the Greek chorus for Aquiles. The holguinero would have time on Saturday night, during the ceremony for the declaration of the Cuban Trova as Cultural Heritage of the Nation, to sing his "poblinas" and trovadas. The following day, Roly Berrío's peña would arrive so as not to forget that he was once the sun. 

My friend and colleague Miguel Ángel Castiñeira says that Roly Berrío is the trova santaclareña. And when you see him in the courtyard of the Museum of Decorative Arts, there is little doubt. On the concrete, he is either a spoiled child who doesn't know when to stop having fun, or a tireless lover: the stallion of trova. He doesn't know my name, but I've earned his leather since day one when he was wearing Modric's uniform with Croatia. 

Roly could be the 10 of La Trovuntivitis. He only went to the bench because he was replaced by the Argentine Adriana Martinez, I think the only international singer in this edition of the event. The Rioplatense opened with a song in Guarani (Roly told me when I was waiting for the bus to return to Havana that it is the first time it happens in the city) and included Backwater Prayer and some tangos in his repertoire. Roly, on the other hand, returned under the rain to the dismay of the venue's soundman.

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Freddy Laffita doesn't know when to stop either. He affirms from the Moon that to overdo it is bad but not to overdo it is worse. Thanks to the management of José Aquiles, some of the emblematic themes of the tunero are recorded and circulating in the networks. Freddy has never published a phonogram with an official Cuban record label. That is not an impediment for those present to water his Iron flowers: 

"Pleasure's shadows are no worse / But before lightening they've already left you / And they say they regret what's lost / If I look back I'm terrified / Of how this song has awakened you." 

A Vallejian theme with every intention and that Laffita was first going to leave as a sonnet until he modified the tercets and set it to music. Then he dedicates to it AlinaAriel Barreiros and his wife, who are in the front row of uncomfortable seats. 

The Aguada native would perform almost 24 hours later on the same stage, accompanied as usual by Nelson Valdés and Kíkiri de Cisneros. Nelson would pay tribute to Lázaro García (to whom the Longina is dedicated) with a version of Palms and Reeds and, to continue in the rural area, the Kíkiri —between militant verses or verses of respect for the event— dedicates an emotional tenth to the late troubadour from Cienfuegos every time he finds a chance. As Castiñeira pointed out on the AHS website, although some classics by the author of CarretónWhile Joaquín Borges Triana gave a theoretical event on Friday afternoon about his work, there was no official concert dedicated to him, as was the case last year with María Elena Walsh. 

Ariel Barreiros. Photo: Carmaux Pérez / Taken from social networks.

Ariel Barreiros is something else. Ariel must have swallowed a piece of a watch or its mechanism whole. Every time he releases a song it is better than the previous one. His projection is that of a quantum leap. 

I take this opportunity to say that Freddy has a degree in Mathematical Physics. In his now of Saturday morning, he puts him with Carmen a bell to the silence. Between shouts, people ask him for more songs and he confesses that he loves it. Every time he finishes one he smiles softly even with his missing teeth. Freddy looks happy. So does Joaco, who once confessed to Freddy that he was going to be a great and so he shoots it over the murmur. 

But where Borges Triana exalts itself the most is in the final unloading on Sunday. After the crowd squeezed out Yatsel Rodriguez, Yeni Turiño, Círculo de Tiza and Juan Pablo Palmero went to the moon until Leodanys Castellon arrived, the young troubadour-painter-tattoo artist from Santo Domingo who inaugurated the festival with a concert on Thursday at five in the afternoon and exhibited several of his ink drawings on Cuban troubadours at the headquarters of the provincial AHS. On the last day he closed the download (not literally) because "I don't want history to change/ I don't want to find a desert on the ground/ Consignments, victories/ I don't want to sing to love, nor write verses of butterflies/ What I want is to feel the pain/ The color of this beautiful land".

 At that moment Joaquín stood up, went to the stage and took a pick out of his wallet. He wanted to play guitar with Leodanys because he loves what he does. But although he tried for several minutes, at that time a ship did not appear to look for another instrument. 

This could be the synthesis of the event: emotional, with very valuable presentations and guests, but with some organizational problems accentuated by the rain. Nevertheless, in the face of the total crisis in which we are dying, the Longina and the Santa Clara trova movement is an oasis and not the desert that Freddy sings in Milonga in Low Tonethat everyone loves as a The preacher. I, here, lower the tone to place a fragment: "Lower the tone preacher / There's always wolf in the thicket / A desert is this place / Shut that ominous mouth because if not / The future will come". 

Laffita stops the chords at the beginning of the last song to sharpen a nail with his mouth. He says that Roly Berrío taught him that. He asks for a round of applause for the bar because it gives him the power to do what he would not dare to do under normal conditions. 

The decision makers must have been very drunk, by the way, to make coins in industrial quantities for the 50th anniversary of the Nueva Trova Movement. They gave them to most of the troubadours and institutions that participated in the festival, an excess that ends up leaving the recognition empty. Or perhaps too sober and in tune with the country's inflation. The only one they could not give it to was Levis Aliaga. —according to Yatsel— for being out of the country. His Ana and It looks like a downpour are sung as hymns in Santa Clara, and in almost every download of any troubadour in any region of the country.Another emblematic song of the Longinas could be the slight glare of the tunero minstrel. 

There is no more door. This is the big one for the author's song. A festival that still does not kill the thirst of the country's troubadours. Just as rum does not kill Freddy Laffita.