Yissy García

Since I was little I played a lot in the neighborhood, I went to Callejón de Hamel, to Parque Trillo. My mother left work at five in the afternoon, and at that time my grandmother would stop at the door and make me pssssssss and forget about it; wherever I was, I listened to the pssssssss and I knew it was time to go home, take a shower and get decent so my mom could take me to dance class.

I went through everything: ballet, gymnastics, anything related to dance, but my thing was the cast, Trillo Park, selling balls at five for one peso... My family didn't know anything about that, but the children came and knocked on the door: Is Yissy there to buy her five balls? It's not for nothing, but I was shows playing balls, and when he had a lump, he sold it and so on...

Preschool through fourth grade mataperrié a lot, but one day a teacher had the idea of starting a musical group in the neighborhood elementary school, and I said "I want to be the one to play the bongo drum", and it was hilarious, because then the boys would sing and dance and the girls would play the drum, another the maracas, another the keys. We had costumes and everything, and so we went to play in a bunch of places, even to the Embassy of Spain, we hardly gave classes.

One day I found a beat-up electric piano in the trash and took it home. My mom fought me a lot, and I told her "I want to study piano!" (This I had never told, really). He told me "well, that's fine"; She took me to a teacher who gave private music lessons when she dubbed the house, but she was too old to study piano at school, and she asked if there was another instrument that I liked and I answered “well, percussion”; and after a year of preparation I presented myself at the Manuel Saumell Conservatory.

I knew a little bit that I wanted drums, but when I entered the school only classical percussion was taught. The next day I told my mom "get me out of there because I don't want to spend all day with that boring box", because I thought I was going to start playing drums, and it never was like that. But finally I stayed studying classical percussion. Then a teacher had the idea of making a jazz-band and that's how I started on the drums for real. The level pass for the Amadeo Roldán was a huge battle, every day a different exam. I wanted to quit, but my mom gave me strength, and I did.

I was awesome, really. One day it occurred to me to say to my friends “gentleman, we are going to take the M1, we get off at the last stop and then we return…”. But when we got off at the stop we realized that it was Bacuranao. The next day we told everyone: "gentleman, we get on the M1 and it takes us to a beach!". In high school, "schooling" was in one school and music in another, so, before going to music, we would bathe on the boardwalk and then we would wash off the salt in a Cupet sink, so that the director of the school did not discover us.

Around that time we made a group called Pentajazz. Alfredito Rodríguez, Papucho —of Manana Club—, Jorgito Aragón and Julio Valdés, for example, passed by. Once we went to play La Zorra y el Cuervo and they wouldn't let us in because we were minors, and the concert was ours. I learned a lot and I studied a lot, they made me study and try hard.

My social service? Imagine that they placed him all year long on the Isle of Youth, in Sancti Spíritus and in Guantánamo, to teach. And I didn't want to go far. I was lucky that Anacaona asked me, and there, in the orchestra, I spent my social service.

I came from playing jazz, I didn't know anything about timba, but when they asked me «do you play timba?, do you play drums with timbal?». He always answered "yes, yes...". They tested me in a rehearsal and there more or less cacharrée. A week after graduating we went to Pinar del Río to a concert. And all wrong. After a while, when we were in confidence, they confessed to me that several of them had told Georgia that I didn't fit in, that I wasn't going to put up with the two-hour shows without stopping. And Georgia replied «we are going to give her a vote of confidence, you will see that she is going to achieve it, because jazz players are like that. If in three concerts he doesn't catch, then we'll see».

That day I ended up crying. I got home and said that I wasn't going to go to the orchestra anymore, that I wouldn't put it in the timba… We had returned to Havana on a Tuesday, and on Friday we already had another concert at a carnival, I don't remember where. What did I do? I began to study: Van Van complete, Manolito Simonet, the Salsa Doctor, timba, timba pa' bajo in those two days, and then I began to play on top of the Anacaona songs, to put things on them, and already in the concert on Friday I did a tremendous show, and everyone was "what happened to her in two days?". That's how I fit in.

Today I remember those student times spectacularly well. And I miss a lot of things: the shenanigans we used to do, bathing on the boardwalk, the groups with friends… We have one on WhatsApp called “We are old”, where we remember those days with great emotion.

The truth is that I still feel like a girl and in some way that has been reflected in my career. And when I'm playing drums, when I'm on stage, I feel so fulfilled, like a girl who can't let go of her toy. And I still love games, when I see children out there I go straight to them. I think I will always be a naughty teenage artis