Juana Bacallao: to live again

On May 31, Juana Bacallao turned 95 years old. A woman with a difficult life, punished since she was a child by lacerating loneliness —her parents died when she was a child and, apparently, she had no other close relatives—, harassed by many other shortcomings, she entered the world and adversity head-on. She worked with all her strength, she dreamed like a demon possessed of going up to the nightclub stage not so much to sing, but to impose her enigmatic power, to set herself up at a unique and crucial moment, to unleash her incalculable inner strength, to be a Different diva, transgressive, unrepentant, coarse and challenging.

But not from an elaborate perspective, but from the instinct that has been the main compass during his life and his more than 70 years of artistic activity. Juana Bacallao did what she really wanted with the melodic line of the numbers she performed: she improvised, she left it, she came back, she commented on something unimportant. And it was as if to say: Here I am. Nobody can more than me at the moment when this space and the whole world belong only to me.

It is very difficult to fully enter into his biography. She has taken it upon herself to keep it safe. Sometimes he has said this or that… He has more than one life story and none of it is entirely true. The first is the one that she herself has stitched together at intervals, with flagrant contradictions that prevent us from entering the realm of truth at all. On one occasion he told about the loss of his parents, the moments when he lived under some stairs. In another, she affirmed that when she was little her mother took her to take ballet classes or that her 15th birthday was an event in the neighborhood in which she grew up, which, in some cases, has been Ataré, in others El Vedado and, in many, that of the Calzada de Monte —which seems to be the most probable, based on the testimonies of some people who knew her in her younger years.

Germán Pinelli remembered her touring the amateur spaces that Cuban radio broadcast almost daily in the 1940s or 1950s, fighting to occupy a place in the competition whose prize was a can of tomato puree or toilet soap. The reason was only one: their material deficiencies. Presumed since always, she was a very careful woman with her physical appearance —I'm not black from inns or inns; ugly I can be, but dirty never, he used to affirm, even in the most difficult moments of his fateful existence he tried to compose his image as best as possible. She has been seen in a movie of those times or in the program of a Yoruba music concert, produced by Obdulio Morales, in which she appears with her first name: Amelia Martínez.

Obdulio Morales seems to have been its great discoverer. The man who endowed her with a number that, apparently, he had composed to be played by Rosita Fornés in a Mexican film with Tin Tan: Juana Bacallao was the title of the number. It is very likely that the distinguished teacher, having verified the undeniable virtues of the young aspiring singer —an ideal color of voice and tessitura for the son and other related rhythms— and her limitations when it came to memorizing complicated lyrics, decided on this piece whose lyrics are extremely simple: I am Juana Bacallao/ I am Juanita Bacallao/ the black woman who on the lot/ splashes so as not to get wet. And then the very catchy chorus that repeated the name of the protagonist: Juana, Juana Bacallao. It is almost certain that no one knows at what moment Amelia Martínez decided that her stage name would be the title of the small work orchestrated by whoever was, for a long time, her mentor. But that tasty composition became her war anthem and launched her onto theatrical stages and cabaret tracks.

For years Juana Bacallao was a figure in nightclubs. He was seen a lot in the small clubs —very humble— on the Marianao beach, he walked through provincial carnivals in his incessant battle to occupy a place in the national nightlife.

At the beginning of the '60s —a period of cabaret in Cuba little studied, with evident areas to discover—, Alberto Anido took her to the Red Room of the Hotel Capri to star, along with Dandy Crawford, Little hood has fun a show that enriched the tradition of cabaret shows treasured by the Cuban capital since the end of the '40s and that had been affected not only by the stampede of some of its main figures, but also by the absence of international stars who, before , they arrived practically every week to the Island to occupy the innumerable spaces that the Havana night offered them.

It was then that Juana Bacallao made the leap to a more exclusive line of work, she revived the hitherto cheap and second-rate glamor of her wardrobe, the splendor of her wigs, the shine of her very high-heeled shoes to elevate her small stature somewhat. , the length of her eyelashes and false nails, and the range of the aroma of her perfumes.

From that new throne he was totally faithful to his unique way of going over the silence that hung over his way of doing the show, of projecting himself beyond the stubborn classifications in his presumed vulgarity, in his much-hyped savagery, in how dangerous his outings were when his “curtain” reached its climax. And if before the Revolution he had suffered an almost natural discrimination, after 1959 he was allowed to reach the spaces where his presence was considered less pernicious.

Juana Bacallao lived then, and yet, a tragedy: television, the ideal medium to spread an artistic career on a large scale, did not call her, and she had to be present in some way. People had to know it existed, despite the silent but effective veto to which they were subjected. In order to make himself visible, he created the most amazing performances.

Then, when he was going to cross a wide avenue, he waited, somewhat hidden, for the traffic light to turn green. When this happened, she stood in a place that was clearly visible to the cars that passed swiftly and quickly, she greeted them with a wide smile —she didn't care if they looked at her or not: she greeted them in the pose of a diva who was admired by her fans. And when the traffic light turned from green to red, he waited for the cars to stop and walked across the street toward them. Thank you thank you very much, he told them with a smile, as if they had stopped to let him pass. In that peremptory need to be noticed, Juana Bacallao was a forerunner of mobile telephony. Whenever she got to a place where there were a lot of people, she would open her bag, pull out an earpiece, and say: I'm arriving. In a few minutes I'll be with you, put the headset back in the bag and continued on his way with the attitude of a diva.

Sometimes she would carry a stuffed puppy on her lap and promise that When we get home I'll give you your chip, darling… And they weren't crazy. It was part of the construction of her character, so that people would take her into account, because her image did not appear in the press or on the small screen, much less on the big one.

The saddest thing about this story is that the woman who walked through Havana just to make herself present, who devoured the track of a nightclub, who vibrated to the spell of bongos and maracas, who never lowered the tone of her performances, always ended up alone — at most with an occasional lover—without close people to give her even a second of friendly company.

All the Juanas

There are many Juanas that people have invented. They all have a touch of madness. Juana is the one who, when Alicia Alonso attended a cabaret where she performed, thanked the Prima Ballerina Assoluta and promised her: at your next show I'll be in the front row, Alicia. Although no one could really vouch for this incident or another, much commented by the way: a political leader promised to go see her at a cabaret and asked her to put on a number of the so-called Protest Song for him. She brought a photo of the current president of the United States to the cabaret, asked for it to be illuminated, and sang: That one who is there ... is the culprit of all my agony… None of this is accredited by anyone. Nor is he the time they told him: Juana be careful with what you say that in the public there are some very influential North American politicians, and she was singing all the time Cuba yes, Cuba yes, Cuba yes, Yankees no. Or the time when she was warned that there were Italian businessmen in the audience and she came out on the floor yelling: Here are the mob people, Vito Corleone's henchmen. Or when he paid homage to Martí with The pink shoes and that of...The hoop is for free and the bucket for the notebook. That is a Juana imagined and told over and over again as true, but never confirmed, present in the juglaresque memory that has always accompanied a figure as peculiar as her.

There is another more real, marked by his undeniable low level of education, as when he greeted those in the audience who came from new york sister or affirmed that she was going to act affected, because she had done an eclipse on the right foot. There is also the repetition that he had acted in Venice without you (he never just said Venice, he always added the “without you”). Esther Borja, who hosted a Cuban music classic on television, the mythical Cuban album, recounted on one occasion how Juana offered to interpret something traditional in the Cuban tree. In his last days, when he announced the place where he would perform, he commented: there I am, with the fallen sisters, alluding to the old Cuban joke referring to the deterioration of female breasts over time. And there is the anecdote of one of his last trips to the United States, when he discovered that the mattress in his room was made of water and went out into the corridor asking for help: The Yankees want to drown me! This, of course, may not be true, but it is very close to all his immense anecdotes.

And then we find another very real Juana in the parades for the first of May, loaded with flags, in the block of the artists' union where —they say— she greeted the actress Odalys Fuentes, then married to a well-known army officer, who invariably asked: And the commander? And the commanders?

https://youtu.be/JdLccVfEcBE

That Joan

I remember a very different Juana. They called me to write the script for a recital of his for television. The director was the late Omero Pérez. Both he and I decided to take care of her so that people would laugh with Joan and not by Joan. He arrived very early. She brought with her a huge briefcase with clothes, shoes, wigs and several bottles of perfume bought for the occasion. That day I found out that Juana Bacallao didn't like swear words or fights.

There were, on that occasion, two incidents related to their costume designers. The one designated to serve her in the program had not arrived. Then another, very quiet—for a week ago she had lost her life partner—offered to assist her. I introduced the artist and her assistant in the dressing room and sat down to wait in the make-up room, in front of Juana's dressing room. Suddenly, Bacallao entered the makeup salon like a shot: Take that woman next door away from me! Get it off me now! That woman walks with a dead man next to her. The spirit of her husband of all life is with her and that can spoil the program for me. Take out that dead man who is still green next to me.

Luckily, the designated costume designer arrived and we didn't have to go through the trouble of telling the troubled volunteer that Juana didn't want her around, because the poor woman —without a doubt— had told her about her unfortunate and very recent widowhood situation. But the official costume designer had arrived drunk, and constantly caused Juana painful discomfort with pins, zippers and other components. La Bacallao, very worried about what would be her first recital on the small screen, was outraged. It bothered him tremendously that this woman had come to work drunk. It's just that I'm nervous about a problem in my house, Juana, please. And, with the sincerity that characterized her, the diva blurted out: What nerves or what problem? What has you like this is the fart you've fucked before coming to the prick, my sister. And that is not done. Just at that moment, Juana realized that the woman who was tormenting her was, like her, black. Then he settled the matter with a lapidary phrase: Not because we're colleagues, damn it.

That other Juana, that other woman for whom there was a professional ethic, a position of integrity and solidarity between like-minded people, was, yes, picturesque. But it awakened in me a very special admiration for her, who took care of her own with zeal, who valued the meaning of an opportunity that had been denied her for so long.

Only Juana and Pinelli acted in the program, who also treated her with great care. But his efforts, the concern of Omero Pérez and me for everything to turn out well, were of no use. That recital never aired. And the reasons for this turned out to be the same as always: who could possibly be interested in this woman with her vulgarity, her old-fashioned art, her tacky grace, and her crude, elemental language?

Luckily that position changed. But Juana told me one day: They're calling me now that I'm almost off. I remember that, before doing that ill-fated job, Omero and I went to see her at a cabaret in Playas del Este. At the end of his presentation we went through the dressing room. She was exhausted, physically broken, while an assistant wiped away the sweat that had bathed her entire body with large rolls of toilet paper and a scented sponge. Juana was trying to recover from the enormous physical effort she had just made. It is the life of the artist. You leave everything every night on the track. But it doesn't matter, after you recover and live again.

That has been the story of this woman: a good part of her 95 years leaving life at every step, within art and outside of it, with the ultimate goal of living again, to give us a good part of her existence in her incessant pilgrimage for this world.