From Songo-La Maya, in conversation with Rogelio Ramos
A journalist for Tele Turquino, in the eastern region of the island, Rogelio Ramos Domínguez, a graduate in English language and literature, has devoted himself to disseminating the best of Cuban music, both in the media and through two blogs with notorious current information that circumvent the limitations of the Cuban Internet connection.
Awarded since early 2000 in various radio contests for the quality of his programs, among others with the recognition for the best report in the Festival "Félix B Caignet" in 2015; the provincial award for best radio report in 2016 and winner in the poetry contest "Miguel Domínguez Téllez" in 2006, Ramos has also been a reporter for the national radio stations Radio Rebelde and Radio Progreso, as well as a contributor to Prensa Latina, Sic magazine, Editorial Oriente, and Radio Nederland.
His passion for music does not come from family influences, nor from studies. About his childhood he warns that there were no professional musicians around him, and that not even his parents are intellectuals "but there was always a lot of music around me, and I remember the piles of records my father had: Gardel, Miguel Aceves Mejías, Benny Moré, Daniel Santos and even children's music, which, without a doubt, he bought for me".
When did you become aware of your particular taste in music?
"In pre-college. At that time, my mother sent me to Havana every summer, and on one of those trips I went to a huge store on the Boulevard, and I was fascinated. There were booths, where you went in with your chosen record to listen to it with headphones. They scolded me, because I had already heard two and I didn't buy them; I grabbed them and stayed there enjoying the sound, much better compared to the record player at home. I remember I bought Causa y azares by Silvio Rodríguez, for 11 pesos, can you imagine? My mother, who worked in a coffee shop, could then send me to the capital, and with enough money to buy my records. Today I couldn't do that, not even if I earned six times more than she did at that time. So, when the course began, I argued with the boys, because they didn't understand why I didn't prefer La Original de Manzanillo or another orchestra. I think that's when the need to give my opinion about music was born. The get-togethers began to talk about salsa, trova, rap. Poetry also arrived there and, well, when I entered the university that was already important, there I had a lot of criteria, some of them horrible, and they weighed, because I had read a couple of books and listened to specialized programs. I always laugh when I remember that, but I think it was a more or less advanced thought in those times. And there are people very well known today who joined me in these criteria, it was very intense and beautiful. That's why I can assure you that the Pedagogical Institutes need a separate study because of how much they have contributed to music in Cuba. In Santiago de Cuba, at Frank País, we had bands, septets, vocal groups. I used to write lyrics for songs to anyone.
"Rogelio Ramos. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee"
Tell me about the program Cable a tierra. What kind of music do you broadcast? Can you choose it without limitations, without the so-called "black lists"? How do you get the music, and what is the reach of the broadcasts?
Cable a tierra emerged as a section in Radio Mambí, the municipal radio station of Santiago de Cuba, and then in Songo-La Maya they extended the time of the local station, and Salvador Virgilí, a prestigious radio broadcaster from Santiago de Cuba, asked me to turn it into a program, and so we moved to Radio Sonido SM. From the moment it emerged it was very controversial. In Cuban radio there are many people who ignore almost everything about music or cultural matters, people with whom you cannot dialogue, because they only repeat formulas from the manual or from their superiors, without thinking of their own. So, if a program sheet says you have to speak for 20 minutes, you might get "passed the bill" for speaking for 30 minutes or so. I mean, I've faced a lot of problems because of that kind of situation. And, for its part, the Hermanos Saíz Association has come out to defend the project many times.
The lists? I prefer not to tell you if I saw them. I have always been against any prohibition. It doesn't make sense. There is no salsero more listened to in Cuba than Willy Chirino; rappers more followed than Los Aldeanos, although it is not the same with Celia Cruz. I make the remark to show that time changes. In my experience, Celia is not popular in Cuba today. And I suppose that censorship worked here. Celia had a discourse that did not fit in with that of the Island, much less with the one applauded by the majority. I am not talking about the officialdom, but about the common people, the butcher, the truck driver... many of whom supported the system. If she declared something, on the island there were also other important musicians who poeticized the opposite. And if you add that she was not on the radio at a time when it was possible to have control of it; without mp3, cell phones, without internet or computers, that weighed heavily to erase her. Celia has been listened to by a sector, but not as it happened with Willy Chirino's album Oxygen, which came at a difficult time in Cuba and was a real explosion.
However, today Daddy Yankee can be heard even in Jutinicú or San Benito, places far removed from the cultural elites. There it is difficult to find someone who knows who Thelonius Monk or Dafnis Prieto are. You don't even hear Justin Bieber, and it's amazing how many teenagers here don't know Bieber.
Anyway, doing a radio program like mine, in Cuba, will always cause controversy. Cable a tierra has been dedicated to bringing other music, that which we call alternative. We play William Vivanco, Interactivo, Frank Delgado, Diana Fuentes, Telmary, Danay Bautista, Gastón Joya, Gerardo Alfonso, Descemer Bueno, Niuver, Ariel Díaz, Buena Fe, Vanito, Barbería, Athanai, Alejandro Gutiérrez, José Luis Medina or Sara González. And we have interviewed people like Joaquín Borges Triana, Tony Pinelli, Bladimir Zamora, Humberto Manduley or the American musicologist Susan Thomas. That is what we have done. Trying to jump the fence of what they call media, which nobody knows for sure what it is, and put something different. Even now, most Cuban producers, if they find out that David Bisbal sings a song by Alex Cuba, they don't play the Cuban anymore, forget it... "if it comes from outside, it must be better", they will think.
Quite a while ago, about ten years ago, I was almost kicked out of the station for putting Rolando Laserie on. Luckily, there are valuable people and in the discussion, to which by the way I was not invited; someone defended the program and it is still alive. Then, bureaucrats appeared looking for one fault or another; they have changed the schedule, they have taken away time, they have lowered my salary, which in fact is very low, but when one feels love for the work one continues, and that is what I have done.
Tell me about your blog, where you have dumped a lot of information about young music in the eastern region.
Actually I have two blogs: Songo-La Maya alternativa and CUBATIENE, only in the latter is where I talk more about music. It was born in 2011 out of a need to put somewhere what I was doing. This country is very safe, but you are always in tension with the authorities if you want to do a decent job, and there is a lot of mediocrity in charge, people who have no idea what a good investigation is, who have never read Jorge Luis Borges or as Leonardo Padura would say, do not know what Pedro Páramo is, and they are the ones who say yes or no. I made my blog and there it is. I made my blog and there it is. Almost all the works come out of the program; and I was going to call it Cable a tierra, but there are already others and Google and WordPress did not allow it, so it ended up being called CUBATIENE. Sometimes I abandon it a bit, but I come back.
What about the situation of music creators in your area, so rich in the origins of different genres? What about the trova, old and current? What about the groups of different rhythms and their expectations of professional growth? Are there enough places to perform and live decently from their work?
Music in Cuba has a complicated diffusion, not even the new trova is saved. Silvio is listened to by intellectuals and those who make the acts. I have listened to Ojalá in an act commemorating the death of a martyr. And they play it because it is Silvio, who has been privileged in that sense, although in his albums almost all are love songs. That's why I try to warn my audience of that other music existing in Cuba, with the same commercial potential. Because today everything is commercial, we are not going to lie to ourselves, even the Bible is sold on the street corner. Christian music records are sold and they sell well. That's what I try to tell the people who listen to me, that there is not only Ricky Martin, that there is other music; and some stay to listen, whether they share my criteria or not, but they are there.
And yes, there are problems in the promotion of Cuban music. There is corruption. But I don't want to talk about a matter that is being investigated, I have already tried to do interviews and the musicians go away from the camera, they shy away. It happens in many places. To play in a carnival they have to pay cash and they get paid in checks. If they talk, then almost nobody schedules them. There's more, but it's a matter that awaits investigation. I don't think there is any way to stop such a thing at the moment. I recently tried to do a story on how musicians survive in the interior of the country; I'm still trying. I repeat, most of the interviewees drop out at the last minute. They ask not to be put in front of the camera.
In May 2016 OnCuba magazine published me a work titled Bolero, which alludes to the phenomenon and when it came out, they called some just on suspicion. It's very bad for musicians, because sometimes they don't work. Many have to plant crops, work in carpentry, do whatever it takes to survive, and yet there is money, although there is less budget, but local musicians can still be paid for peñas and parties.Most of the time, the locals are left behind. You don't create efficient mechanisms for them to get paid and survive. It is really complicated for them. Maybe there is not much, but well distributed it could be enough to keep local musicians more or less alive. Add that those from the East do not have the possibility of going regularly to the national media, because going to Havana implies lodging, transportation, food for 15 or 20 people, and if they do not work, evidently everything is complicated for them; and if they do not go to the national radio or television, how can they be seen elsewhere?
Your chronicle in OnCuba narrates a painful situation, and addresses a sensitive issue, with that musician who tells you about his shortcomings in a bar. I reproduce an excerpt: "I'm looking for something to leave the orchestra. I say it to my drinking companion and they look me in the eye to say, "We are all in the same thing." And he tells me about a changüí septet whose members earned only a hundred pesos a month. "Some born changüiseros," he tells me, with a pain visible from ten meters away (...) We both know it, since things changed in the 90's people have to like them, fill spaces, pay payola to survive. "They say that to be in some national programs you have to pay up to 100 dollars". I listen to him and the Caribbean rum, already refined, gets stuck in my throat. How much?! "Ci- én". I let him go on. "To play in carnivals you have to loosen at least two thousand pesos". I have heard that, I tell him, and from the soviet speakers Rolando Laserie now comes down, as if put on purpose by a half-curda radio director: "I learned all the good, I learned all the bad...".
In Havana, in recent trips, the work options for musicians did not seem to be much better. I have been told by singers that there are fewer and fewer quality spaces, and many of them are permeated by the interests of a cliché tourism of "rumba, meneo and fast tastiness".
The trova always suffers, or almost always, and now it is no less. The old ones lived the Buena Vista Social Club effect, they became fashionable and went everywhere. That has passed and there is little left. They play in one place or another, but there are no big profits, nor big spaces for them. Fortunately, in Santiago de Cuba new trova houses are opening, no longer in the cities, but in the remote places you can see those houses opening where troubadours perform from time to time. And the younger trovadores are in the middle of a nebula, nobody knows what will happen to them. The record companies sometimes record and do not promote the phonograms. They make bad deals or deny licenses to international record companies. Cuba has had a strange process with the troubadours of recent years. There was a rupture in 1996 when those of 13 and 8 left, that generation went almost completely to Spain or other countries, and there was a vacuum in the peñas, theaters, the media.
Rogelio Ramos. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.
Are there recording possibilities, or are there already more alternatives among young people, private studios, broadcasting through the Internet? How does that behave in your context?
I have answered you in some way this question before. It is a difficult road for a young person and in Cuba there is no subway, as in other places. I myself once had the plan to experiment playing in the subway, with a young Argentine musician. I owe it to myself, we wanted to play a couple of sones and go down to see how it was. I'm not a guitarist or anything like that, but I play my thing, I do something. If it were in Cuba, I wouldn't even think about it.
Julio Fowler has the theory that when the trova became contestatory, the government stopped caring. The truth is that seen from a broad prism, every thinking song is contestataria. The song usually lashes out against its moment, analyzes it, disengages with it and then society, those who lead that society, come to where the singers are, because the dream comes before reality. Silvio and Pablo were not understood at the time, they were vilified, expelled, mistreated... and then they were props. The so-called "moles", people like Frank Delgado, Santiago Feliú, Carlos Varela and Gerardo Alfonso, Adrián Morales, Donato Poveda, Alberto Tosca, José Antonio Quesada, Anabel López, Xiomara Laugart, Polito Ibáñez, Ireno García, Marta Campos, Pepe Ordás and Juan Carlos Pérez did not record. They began to see the spots and the light, but some decision-makers were bothered by this vision of shadows and postponed them.
Today it happens that there is no need to queue at EGREM. I say this as a possibility for those who have money. That way, any kid can get a record. I know very young troubadours who play three gigs in Old Havana and then pay for their record. They don't depend on someone to record them. Of course, then comes a complex process, the promotion, and the commercialization of the record does not arrive at all or arrives badly. Some, like Rubén Lester from Santiago, record an album and it is not released anywhere. I'm talking about an album recorded by a major label in Cuba. The same with Felipón, another santiaguero. I am talking about phonograms that even enter Cubadisco. There is no promotion, or there is for other types of music. The media prefer what is pasted, which is understandable in part, but there a lot of music is lost and, sometimes, of quality.
On the other hand, the troubadours themselves show that they have an audience and, sometimes, the kind that pays well. I went to see Kelvis Ochoa at Don Cangrejo, a discotheque where they paid more than a hundred CUC to get in, and it was packed. Except for Radio Taíno, the others may have some programs on a difficult schedule. If you want to more or less understand where Cuban music is going, you have to listen to Radio Taíno.
Although Cubadisco is nominating Cubans living abroad, however, it is not embracing the fullness, richness and diversity of Cuban music...
Cubadisco has nominated Danay Bautista, Descemer Bueno, Julio Fowler or Niuver. Some of them are artists who even disagree with the system in Cuba. I believe that a bridge is being built, even though there are big gaps. But there is a generation that totally lost contact with their favorite singers. Many people came to ask me if Mirtha Medina had really gone crazy, or they asked me about Osvaldo Rodriguez or Annia Linares. That was a very hard blow, both for those figures and for their public. None of them was in other places what they were here, and their public had to make do with substitutes. But that is changing on both sides, at least if we focus the diaspora on the opposite shores, that is, Miami-Cuba.
For example, reguetoneros have done what figures like Pancho Céspedes could not. They have entered the local media. They have made a radio station abroad to place their music. We have reached a point where nobody talks about or questions the place where Gente de Zona or Jacob Forever live. And in Cuba, they are placed on the radio. I play Vanito a lot and nobody comes to ask me.
Speaking of the much debated reggaeton, what do you think about its huge boom and popularity in Cuba?
I think it was Leonardo Acosta who defended the theory that musical success comes when you give the public what they expect. Reggaeton comes at a difficult time for Cuba. A time of two television channels, blackouts of four, five, six hours; impossible lunches, no transportation, very few newspapers, in short, a terrible crisis. It has been going on for about 15 years now and it is still going on, I think because of many factors; the first one is how easy it is to assimilate and create. With an old computer, a chorus and two boys, a piece is made that can have an impact on multitudes. Those guys, in principle, had little to lose and they jumped in en masse. Most of them, without any preparation, but with some talent and they swept the crowds, especially because there was an audience that needed to "poeticize" their reality. If you stop to read what they write on the wagons, tractors or trucks, many times they directly quote phrases like "quality is quality, the gold is mine, share the silver and bronze, fuácata"... There you realize that there is a living language in many sectors of Cuban society, a need to show off, to justify material possession, sometimes outside the legal framework.
Reggaeton is just that: the ostentation, the sex, the hedonism that our society seems to have denied in the name of sacrifice. This is a great dilemma. A society that aspires to a collectivity that works for itself and, at the same time, flees from phallic glitter, from sensuality, from hedonism. There comes a time when there is a crisis and the neighborhood finds a discourse that speaks of the opposite, a way to say and, at the same time, to dance and get so much energy out of the body. Not everything is that. But today, it seems to me, it is the majority. We should have at hand a study of cultural consumption, not only in Havana, but in all of Cuba. But I tell you, I work in very intricate places and there they dance reggaeton and cast. I don't know a young person who listens to Celina Gonzalez in the mountains.
What about the genres that are still relevant in the repertoire of young composers and/or authors?
-There is everything in Cuba, fortunately, and if I tell you that the institutions may be doing badly in one point, in another their role is essential. There are the festivals of choirs, old music, rock, rap, son, trova. There are several of them and they are gaining importance every day. The troubadours manage to get some press in festivals such as the Longina, the Pepe Sanchez or the Romerías de Mayo. They also perform in various parts of the country. If you go to the repertoire of a troubadour like William Vivanco you will find a tremendous richness; Haitian music, conga, son. He is a musician who studies all the time and that comes into his work. Ray Fernandez does a lot of son and guaracha, while Kelvis has the essence of sucu sucu. I give you just three examples of troubadours who have become very well known in Cuba. There is a lot of music in Cuba, although the media and informal broadcasters privilege reggaeton. I recently traveled to Varadero with the Viazul bus company, and they play that music and Dominican movies. Terrible Dominican movies, with so much good music in Cuba. I don't know who told them that people came from Canada to see those things or to listen to Romeo Santos.
And in this panorama, how about bolero and jazz?
It seems to me that the bolero goes on, it all depends on how it is treated inside and outside. Ciego amor, the bolero by Descemer Bueno and Gema Corredera, shows well what I am trying to expose. Suddenly, this song was played by many on several radio stations, perhaps because of the Victrola flavor of the piece. Here the mistake was made of ignoring singers like Orlando Contreras, Rolando Laserie or Ñico Membiela and people ended up wanting that music. The truth is that with a certain amount of wisdom, the bolero met again with an audience and made others fall in love with it. Of course, the bolero became stagnant. In the Boleros de Oro festivals they work with a sonority that I don't think is related to what young people listen to today, and that distances the genre.
Jazz is on a different path. There are figures who manage to insert themselves in international circuits, which allows them to survive. Harold López-Nussa, Alfredo Rodríguez Salicio, Dafnis Prieto and many others have that luck, they live from their music and persist for our good fortune.
Timba has stagnated, it is obvious. But Alexander Abreu brings a new air. He is a man who understands the current sound and knows how to assimilate it. His proposals are somewhat risky, but this understanding has helped him to make an impact in the midst of a reggaeton and almost massive distribution, while groups like La Charanga Habanera have had to make almost suicidal concessions to what they originally proposed.
Alexander Abreu has been able to adapt genres to a very personal sound. He is one of the best today, I don't think anyone doubts it.
What about your musical preferences, with so many options?
I like all authentic music, that proposes change and novelty. But, above all, the thoughtful, authorial, human song, the one with poetry inside.
Now a somewhat humorous question. After everything you've said about your experiences in the media... What would you do if you were appointed as the head of all music broadcasting in the country?
Taking it seriously, first, I would make a study of cultural consumption. Then I would place each music in its place, in the discotheque, in the restaurants, in the dancing areas. Today they play reggaeton at a meal with your partner, whether you are 20, 40 or 60 years old. I think I would try to invest more, take more risks with young projects, although we know that there is a commercial circumstance that does not allow many freedoms. Look, not even Juan Formell achieved a real international hit, and Formell is Formell ....
And in the future, how do you value the possibilities for the development of our music?
In the east of the country I feel a little fear. There are orchestras like Los Karachi, which do not even renew their repertoire, they live fossilized in a time that allows them to survive, and it is one of the orchestras that works the most in the region, together with Cándido Fabré and La Original de Manzanillo. To that, add what I said before. There are musicians who don't get paid for a year and they get upset, they go to do something else. I don't know to what extent the number of groups has decreased, what I do see is that they are suffering from the lack of money. I want to have faith that good work and opportunities will come for these creators. La Conga de los Hoyos, for example, survives with their work and recordings; even the troubadours come to record with them; and that is alive and is being taken care of in some way. In other words, there is, and will continue to be, conga.
On the other hand, the Septeto Santiaguero has won a Grammy without leaving its province and the Casa de la Trova is home to an unstoppable tradition. Some time ago I interviewed Elíades Ochoa in the place where he was born, Loma de la Avispa, in Alto Songo. There his house was opened as a center for the singers and the public, and, very close by, a Casa de la Trova. In short, there is pain, but there is hope and talent, and schools to train musicians. That is why I have faith in a future with Cuban music, with boleros and songs, with rumba and son.
Besides, the door has opened a little bit to Cuban musicians: Buena Vista Social Club, Orishas, Gente de Zona, Descemer Bueno... There is Chucho Valdés, in short, I think that if there is something we Cubans have, it is our own music. I'm not afraid to say that we are a power in that area. You would have to go to the mountains, to places like Los Reynaldo, in Songo-La Maya, to listen to the changüí that these people make, just for love. They don't record, they don't do television, sometimes someone takes them to the radio... And they continue, because music is part of their lives, as it is for many of us. That's why I will be defending them, even if it sometimes brings me pain. These people work to make others happy. After all, the sorrows... are so many that they run over each other.
*The original version of this interview appeared in the book Todo por amor a la música cubana, Amazon Publishing, 2020.
