Does Havana sound like the Jazz Plaza?

"One day it ended at four o'clock, then at five o'clock, and since then we have always closed after five in the morning", says Marta Ramos about the concerts of the Jazz Plaza 2024 International Jazz Festival. At 59 years of age, Marta continues to work as security personnel on the grounds of the event's founding venue, the Casa de La Cultura de Plaza; however, there is no hint of fatigue in her voice, only clean, genuine emotion. Before that, before even walking from one end to the other through the impossible mire of the space, the blonde ticket girl would tell me at the entrance that the concerts here were great, as they are every year. And I would be left with the enigma of not knowing what that means in a country haunted by change, year after year.

And even though it's after nine o'clock and the closing concert should be playing, the Casa de la Cultura still looks like a giant half-assembled stage. People are buzzing all over the place. "This is crazy, many groups, very little time, the weather conditions worsened," hurriedly confesses José Antonio Rodríguez, the event's technician.

The atmosphere is drowned in promises. Today it's all over, the night is going to be good. And the public that arrives is a heterogeneous mass. According to Patricia Jiménez, one of the attendees, this year she found out about the concert schedule by hearsay and saw almost no promotional movement in the networks. She also says that the festival option continues to be the effective balm for the musical yearnings of her generation, in the midst of a scenario where - Patricia assures - most artists move at levels very difficult to afford, while a reserved table in a bar offering live music could represent 30,000 Cuban pesos.

A few meters away, above the set, a musician in a hat and bone-colored suit sings caressing the lyrics with rage "My city is burning". Daniel Riera arrived alone from California, without a backing band. "But I found [these] guys here and after a short time playing together I feel like we have a good vibe," he says. Although he came with little, or almost nothing, he will return to the United States with the impression made on him by the performers of the new generations: the show of the Abreu Brothers, so young, with skills of a very high level. "The energy with which Cubans play is very strong. I think music and culture is so alive here," he confesses, before losing himself among the audience.

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Hernán Cortés Jr., the drummer who descends from the stage with Daniel, soaks up the intensity of this Jazz Plaza experience. Unlike other editions, the music has bridged him to deeper connections with the musicians with whom he has shared the stage. He explains that the festival's stamp is so powerful that it is able to save them from the challenging nature of performing jazz in front of an audience that mostly comes here to listen to timba or salsa. From this week he will be left with the certainty that the other artists, the foreigners, have understood that Cuban musicians can also speak their own code. "We have the skill and joy of playing jazz mixed with our Latin and Afro roots and culture," he explains.

Concert intermissions take a long time. The minutes stretch like rubber bands and the audience fills the open-air space more and more. "It's good to always come back here, to the iconic place of the festival," says Anahí Saura, one of the people in charge of the organization and logistics of the concerts. The idea is that after the concerts in the theaters, the musicians can come and share with the audience, she explains. In 2024, Anahí perceives that Jazz Plaza has been constituted on a different scale, due to the greater number of concerts that have been organized and the parallel function of other areas of art (collaborations with dance companies and art exhibitions). She appreciates, above all, this interactive phenomenon of all forms of creation with music.

Now on stage is Sintergia Jazz Collective, a group of young students from the University of the Arts, which was formed in April of last year. A musician explains to me that Sintergia's merit is the versatility with which it covers many parts of the jazz spectrum. On stage, the notes spin something beautiful. Gabriela Muriedas, one of its members, recognizes that she has found in the event a platform to perform and share with great artists. When the music is projected on the speakers It gives the sensation that each theme is a conjuration made by the young people to move. 

We are right at the precipice of dawn. Soon the Casa de la Cultura will close for capacity. But it is not yet the new day and the audience is squeezed within suffocating limits. They listen expectantly, says Yamila Delgado, who is the vocalist and in charge of the choirs, the flute and the güiro in the presentation of Cuban artist Issac Delgado Jr. "The jazz that is shown lately in the festivals has a multitude of influences from around the world and, each time, more and more elements of Cuban music are being incorporated. There used to be a lot of foreigners here but the presence of the Cuban audience was not so strong". Yamila believes that "this festival was the framework to offer freer proposals, experimentation, to show other ways and a softer jazz, closer to the feeling Cuban". 

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Issac Delgado Jr. gives way to Future Band DC. The North Americans are perched on the set with the delirious airs of the go-gothe fusion of the funk genre with Latin jazz. James Woodert, one of the band's artists, is at a loss for words when it comes to describing his vision of the event. From the contact with the Cuban performers, he says that they have been able to get together in jam sessionsThey bring to them the techniques and inner workings of our music and so they experience together the approaches to the art. "In the end what we do is the same, but with a different language", James assures. Hardly anyone, probably no one, expects the North Americans, who seem possessed by energy, to start playing the first chords of the Guantanamera in Spanish. Feeling the musicality of Cuba is always intoxicating.

"When this kind of event happens, a very nice energy is created through the variety of music, jazz, folklore, timba; the guild comes together. The essence of the festival is maintained," says José Julián Morejón, percussionist with Havana D'Primera. However, Morejón has been part of Jazz Plaza since 2010 and those accumulated years bring back memories: "There is very little representation here of the jazz players who made up my generation and the nextꓼ most have emigrated," he says. The void that Morejon induces us to explore is one more piece in the debt of Cuban absences.

On the other hand, renowned musicians who were away, such as Michel Herrera, have returned to join the event, says Marcos Perdomo, guitarist in the popular music format presented by artist Eduardo Sandoval. For Marcos, as for many, the beauty of coming together, of facing the public, overshadows the difficulties and the tremendous effort involved in building it with few resources.

Music has that quality of numbing the thoughts for a while. And while Brenda Navarrete takes over the stage with her microphone, a man dressed as Bob Marley burns a bunch of incense.

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Each concert should last between half an hour and forty-five minutes, explains Anahí Saura. However, for Brenda, time melts away, time is like an anomaly in the midst of the trance of her music. The festival has to compress many concerts into a few days, says Óscar Martínez, who accompanies Brenda on percussion. Dance artists tend to lengthen the chorus and their movements are constant interactions with the audience. In thirty minutes," says Oscar, "it's difficult to get an audience to break into dance. 

Meanwhile, the horns do not yield to the truce of silence. The songs at the festival are consumed very fast and people are moving and smiling and there are tables overflowing with cans and alcohol.

It's half past four in the morning; the audience, on the other side of the stage, is pouring and bubbling like the foam of warm beer. "I went to find Yemayá and to love her all my life," chants a gentleman in the crowd. He is short, wears a sweaty shirt and, when he sings, we know he has stolen the Havana D'Primera soundtrack to perform the musical of his own life. 

No one seems to care that in a little while it will start to dawn. The sky and the sweat and the musical notes are falling on us. For those of us who are here, Havana is silent and only Jazz Plaza can be heard.