The curse of the Diony

No freak gets as excited with the nine o'clock cannon shot as the one who attends, on the last Friday of the month, to the amphitheater of Old Havana. At that moment, the shouting of those waiting for the first song begins. Those who cannot get in because the place is crowded stay outside the walls to listen and sing from afar, at the risk that a policeman asks for their ID card or "invites" them to accompany him. What rarely happens is to see someone leave before the end, because a Venus concert is, for those who are not in the audience, an opportunity to listen and sing. rockers 86, as Easter Sunday for the Catholic faithful.

With the unloading of six strings, the nightly ritual begins. The atmosphere sounds like heavyfast guitar, fast guitar, intense drums. Five thousand souls are waiting for the skinny guy in the T-shirt to begin to fire, via microphone, the songs that everyone knows: speed metal with their own lyrics and always in Spanish. The front man of Venus approaches the audience and the sonorous assault begins. Message, Nuclear threat and Of the hardest metal pass like a flurry through the chanting audience. With infinite energy, the singer wears out the stage; he either lies on the floor or throws his clothes in the air. 

His name is Dionisio Arce, everyone calls him Diony. As he watches the crowd, seduced by the rock ecstasy, he suspects that his vocal cords are making history. He is not wrong. 

-When the group began to grow, they made life impossible for us," recalls the vocalist, three decades later, from his office as director of the Cuban Rock Agency. Venus had become a mass phenomenon and was attracting as large an audience as a salsa or guaracha artist. That bothered "those at the top". For them, the rocker was the scum, the antisocial, the delinquent, the homosexual... You were flirting with the music of the enemy, and no political or cultural leader cared about changing the mentality. If you talked about rock and roll, you fucked up, brother, you fucked up....

The birth of Venus

In the 1980s, Venus reached its peak of popularity. Photo: Metal World.

The eighties were times of incomprehension and censorship towards rock and metal. A yes but no, a "I chew you but I don't swallow you". Since the previous decade, classic rock combos such as Almas Vertiginosas and Dimensión Vertical enlivened the semi-clandestine parties of Havana with their versions of hits But once imitation turned into stagnation and the Mariel exodus left the area with a shortage of performers, young rockers felt the need to fill a void. When heavy metal arrived in Cuba and Venus began rehearsing in 1982, its members had a clear idea of where to direct their music: something different and original, with a defined identity.

Roberto Skippy Armada, the bass player and founder of the piquete, had a friend who wrote some lyrics and was eager to see rock bands defending their own creations. That is how Humberto Manduley - today a historian of the genre - became the piquete's lyricist. In its early stages, a couple of vocalists passed through the ranks but never really took off, and it wasn't until the arrival of Diony, whom Skippy knew from the neighborhood, that Venus assembled its core.

The first step for the band was to gain acceptance in Havana's cultural centers in order to be able to perform regularly in front of the public. Once the one located in Carlos III and Castillejo opened the doors to rock, the most difficult part remained: to conquer a skeptical audience accustomed to English versions. 

Fortunately for Venus, the situation improved within a couple of years. Diony was in the show business vein, thanks to her artist mother, Velia Maria, and became showman of rock and roll. He began to wear a T-shirt and tight striped pants, perfected his vocal technique and although he sang in front of fifty people, he imagined an auditorium with more than three thousand. 

The rockers of the new generation began to identify with this music, faster and more powerful than hard rock, and the band performed in Centro Habana, Marianao, Arroyo Naranjo and Alamar, covering almost every corner of the city.

-We were very eccentric and had a young audience that followed us everywhere," he recalls, lighting a cigarette. But we defended an original repertoire and that became a nuisance for the cover bands, especially Gens. They were a docile band tolerated by the government, with their Beatles "little songs", and Venus represented the rebellious and misunderstood young people, the ones from the street. We came out of nowhere and began to displace many groups. Over time, tensions arose between us and them, and many have never recognized our role in the development of national rock.

Despite the heated atmosphere, the entry of independent promoter Luis Kohly, in May '86, improved the outlook. El Plátano, as he is known in the underground Havana, took over the production of the group and helped to manage the concerts in places with larger crowds, among them, the amphitheater of the Avenida del Puerto. 

What began as a modest group of 400 rockers, managed to gather five thousand in just six concerts, without the slightest support from the media. The rock audience sang along to every song as if it were played daily on the radio, while the police officers at the nearby Cuba and Chacón station wondered where that battalion of hairy guys had come from.

The day I was killed

The problem with rock music and the taboos that surround it can be solved by changing leaders, putting in place qualified people who are informed about the genre.... risk-takers, too, because there are many who, because they don't take risks, don't do things," explains a 22-year-old Diony, with Beatle-style hair, earrings in his left lobe and a black T-shirt, in a 1987 filming for a documentary about rock music. At that time, the reality of Venus had changed drastically and their popularity was taking them not to Olympus, but to Tartarus.

On a date in the middle of the decade that the singer is unable to specify, the capital friction between the public and the police had been inaugurated. By then, an alleged planning error made Venus coincide in Guanabacoa with the Revé Orchestra, and the mutual booing between geeks and handsome guys became a major problem in moments. The amphitheater's peña also brought its conflicts and indiscipline from the audience, but Diony remembers above all an incident in San José de Las Lajas: in the middle of the presentation someone from the audience threw some flyers with Christian messages into the air, and that's where it all ended.

 -The police came in and sent us down from the stage. Although it was not our fault, we took the blame and were detained for four days in the Villa Marista jail, for promoting subversive propaganda. "Christ loves you" said the paper... subversive propaganda... of pinga....

The day they were released, Diony knew that Venus' fate was in the balance. Along with their stay behind bars, the persecution was unleashed: it was no longer about "cut your hair" and "dress like normal people"; nor about the visits of the UJC with surveys to evaluate their political-ideological status. As their legion of fans and convening power grew, the band's image deteriorated in the eyes of the political establishment. By the end of '86, Diony and Skippy heard that footage of their concerts began to be shown in schools as a den that young people should stay away from: long hair, loud music, unusual dancing and tight pants were still symptoms of ideological diversionism and political disaffection.

The next move, though straight to the chest, took no one by surprise: indefinite suspension of shows at the amphitheater. "Now," he thought, "they're shooting us dead". Months later, an unsigned directive stated that they could not continue as a group: alone they could do whatever they wanted, but together they were not going to play anymore. 

-In 1987, we were expelled from the rehearsal room by the management of the house of culture of Carlos III and Castillejo. When we asked why, the answer was the same as always: we were harmful elements and we summoned young people with negative attitudes towards the revolutionary process. They did not want us to make that music and there was no way to defend ourselves. That's why I always say that Venus was disintegrated. We wanted to continue.

Two years after that end, the writer Eduardo del Llano told in the pages of the magazine The Bearded CaymanVenus began to be regarded with distrust for certain attitudes of a fraction of her public, for dressing 'extravagantly', for her excessive fame (...) They were considered the axis of the problems sometimes created by her devotees and others imagined by certain individuals. They were not supported, but they were demanded for anything that did not go well".

-We were never able to record an album, nor was our advert published in the media, but there was not a single rocker in Havana who was not a member of the band," says Diony with conviction. Whoever likes it and whoever dislikes it, Venus marked a before and after for rock in Cuba. Almost everyone who came after us had some influence from us, and even the cover bands, who once criticized us so much, began to compose because the public demanded it. The era of covers was over and there was no longer any way they could block the development of national rock.

Dionisio live. Photo: Junior Hernández Castro.

I fight for my free dream

Although the band Sentencia never played in Havana, many geeks remember them from the 1990 Ciudad Metal. Santa Clara would host since that year the biggest rock festival in Cuba, and Diony did not miss the chance to show that he was still in shape. In June of that year, the singer and his picket line-up blew up the Liberation Theater in Villa Clara, with a heavy and power metal proposal, always with his own songs. Together with the hosts Alto Mando and Havana's Estirpe, Zeus and Gens, Sentencia completed one of the most memorable events of Cuban rock at the beginning of the decade, but disagreements among its members culminated in an early breakup.

That separation led Diony to try his luck in Zeus, one of the groups welcomed by the new "orphanage" of rock in Havana: the house of culture in Nuevo Vedado that geeks baptized as the Patio de María. However, the permanence of the vocalist was as brief as the life of Sentencia, as his strong character and desire for the limelight took him away in just a few months. At the beginning of '91, he rejoined the old band for a while, but his voice was no longer heard for the next six years. From a prison cell for a cause that today he prefers to keep silent, he questioned whether it was worth continuing in the world of rock after losing everything again and felt that this was the end of everything he had wanted in his life.

In December '96, he breathed again the airs of freedom and reunited with his old Zeus colleagues. The following April, he sang at the invitation of the band, and understood that the stage, like the priesthood, is a calling impossible to ignore. Today, when he sings Voltageit is impossible not to evoke those moments of doubt and discovery: 

Sometimes I think I don't feel, 

sometimes I feel like I don't believe anything. 

My faith is running out,

hoping for a better future. 

Even if they try to fool me, 

my voice lives inside me.

From silence, something violent, 

unleashing out of control. 

Today I claim my life.

Noooo I hide my wound. 

I fight for my free dream. 

Tensióooon!

Anything but rock

When Diony returned to Zeus in September 1997, times had changed for Cuban rock. The public, inclined towards the metal side, was looking for a faster and more aggressive sound than the one the front man he was used to. It was then when he gave free rein to a rough and serious style, close to thrash metal, and the new stamp was stamped on songs like Outside my property and Violent metrobus.

By the end of the nineties, the band was at the top of the Havana metal scene and their concerts captivated the interest of some Spanish producers, interested in Cuba's underground music. From that contact their first album was born, Hijos de San Lázaro (2000) and two musical tours in Spain. 

Diony was precisely there, in October 2003, when the Patio de Maria was closed by a government order and the freaks of Havana lost their space again. Doubts about what was going on in Cuba and the impotence of being absent took hold of the singer until he set foot on Cuban soil in April of the following year. But it was too late, or perhaps it was too late from the beginning. Letters, meetings and demands did not prevent him from going back on a decision whose wound has never fully healed:

-They cut off my wings, they left me without sight, they took away my life, they trampled on my faith, everything I had fought for... So much time rehearsing, preparing the stage, so much time fighting..." He slaps the table and switches to the second person grammar, as if the culprit could hear his complaint: You left me with nothing. You broke my existence, my heart... everything I devoted my life to, you threw it all away. You shut me down... And you never gave me an explanation.

Four years later, in July 2007, the Ministry of Culture approved the creation of the Cuban Rock Agency, and in July 2007, the Ministry of Culture approved the creation of the Cuban Rock Agency. Zeus became the top of the list of professional groups. The Maxim hall, an old movie theater in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality, became the Maxim Rock when it was transformed into a concert hall.

-The creation of the Agency was an important fact because it offered the groups the possibility of working and having a space to perform shows, it supported the management of recordings with Cuban record companies and contributed to increase the presence of the bands in the media," says Diony, who was appointed its director in 2019. But the Agency has not fulfilled its purpose, nor has it done all it could for Cuban rock because it has nothing to support the groups with, because there is no real international projection without adequate access to the Internet, and because a movement cannot be kept alive from a single physical space. There are still the same prejudices as always towards rockers, and every time we try to promote an artist of ours to other stages, they tell you that the billboard is full, that it is not profitable music or that they do not want to make a mess. They will accept anything but rock.

That's why when the Maxim closed three years for repairs (2015-2018), rock in Havana hit rock bottom, we went back to the beginning, we devolved: the groups had nowhere to play their music and the trend of covers took hold again, because the bands had to make profitable music to make a living in the nightclubs. And there they have stayed, accommodated: some in the Submarino Amarillo, others in Fábrica de Arte... New bands emerge, and many are inclined to follow that path. Every day there are more covers and fewer original songs, and that is killing rock and roll-he stops to smoke for a moment and continues in a serious tone: I cannot conceive of a musician, a good musician, without a work that supports his career, nor a Cuban rock movement without the existence of creation. Those groups that play covers don't have a identity... -he breathes from the dying cigar. And without identity -he squeezes it in the ashtray-, there is no national rock.

Camagüey will miss us

The year of their 25th anniversary, the musicians of Zeus understood that the geek era was over in Cuba. When they boarded the plane for Guantánamo - the first destination of their first national tour (2013) - Diony was predicting success and was intoxicated by the idea of singing in front of an audience that had perhaps waited half a lifetime to see his band live. Nothing, not even an unforeseen blackout, was going to stop that concert in the east. An electrical cable tie and the enthusiasm of a group of local rockers were enough to bring the concert to a happy ending.. In Santa Clara, one of the most important places of the genre in Cuba, Zeus lived his second triumphant night, but in Ciego de Avila, the third destination, Diony would have a dejà vu of his years of career at Venus. 

-No, no, I refuse to play there," he protested when he saw that the stage where Zeus was to perform was occupied by a timba orchestra and some reggaeton singers. The opening acts of the show, apparently, had not been able to perform that night, and some authoritative brainiac thought that reggaeton and metal were as good a mix as peas and coffee. 

As a result, the audience waiting for Zeus went from a bunch of long-haired men in boots to a troupe of flip-flops and hips. The only thing we're going to get here is trouble," he told the tour producer. From the first chord these people are going to hit us with bottles. This is not an environment for us.

-Look... you guys go and play... and at the very least, you start up with your musicians and...

-No, no, no, no, I do not risk that," replied the singer, and at the insistence, he asserted: "I do not understand this position, and as artists we are, we reserve the right to play - "at least", he thought, "Camagüey is waiting for us".

But that city, although nobody knew it, did not expect their presence either. An empty stage and a ghostly audience made the group debate between the question of what that was and the complaints of "what a lack of respect, asere!" and "what kind of shit, compadre!". From the provincial music center, they were informed that the truck with the equipment would arrive a little late, and then, that some of the audio equipment was broken and would not work.

-There is nothing more to do," Diony lamented. From here, we're going to Havana... It's over... -he got on the bus with the others and looked out the window. While the driver started the engine, he thought that times for rock had changed, but the problems remained the same: "Nobody cares about anything," he concluded. He looked at his companions, who did not stop talking about the fiasco, and understood that perhaps the problem was not accepting that rockers were fewer and fewer. Camagüey is going to miss us... - he finally said in a low voice, and repeated: it is going to miss us.

Diony confesses

Among so many things that have happened in his life, Dionisio considers among the most curious his awarding, in 2002, of the Distinction for National Culture. It was the sixteenth anniversary of the Asociación Hermanos Saíz (AHS) and the front manonce criticized for his noxious and diversionary music, ended up wearing a medal for his valuable contributions to the country's artistic heritage.

-I never in my life expected that they would give me that recognition... as I never expected those that came later: the Raúl Gómez García medal, the XX and XXV Anniversary of the AHS, the Gitana Tropical distinction, the condition of Member of Honor of the Association... That is, I have about six or seven decorations at the government level .... -He pauses and changes to a jovial tone: "I didn't understand anything," he smiles. After they gave me so many knocks, they gave me a bit of a gift, didn't they...? I believe that, if the intention was to rectify, more could and can be done than a tribute to John Lennon and a Rock Agency. Even today there are still thousands of obstacles, prejudices, bureaucracy... 

-If you ask me why the Cuban rock movement has not gone further, I have several answers," he says and begins to number with his fingers: one of them is that never, not even now, there was a real unity among rockers, both for material issues, as well as for competition and way of thinking. That idea of "take off you to put on me", was a constant for many groups. But one stick does not make a mountain, and in the end life has taught us that the scene belongs to everyone, and only together we can assume the problems and try to solve them.

It is also a fact that awareness was lacking and is still lacking today: many musicians maintain the mentality of asking for things, instead of demanding them. You are an artist, and as you have a trajectory, you have the right to demand from your company. What happens is that, as for a long time that right did not exist, it is forgotten. Rock fans also have certain preferences and consider some bands and genres as authentic and others not. Then, within the movement, there are those who discriminate against certain groups or styles. It also happens that before there was more desire: in the nineties concerts were held in any municipality, the groups moved everywhere and many doors were open. 

It is clear that it is also a generational problem, but if they continue to keep us in specific places and do not let us grow... -he shrugs- imagine you! Finally, it seems to me that the biggest obstacle has been and continues to be ideology, because until those who run the organizations and institutions assume that we have nothing to do with the enemy... or with the Cuban political system... until they understand that we rockers are not a social problem, that having long hair and dressing in a certain way does not determine who you are, they will continue to put obstacles in our way. The first thing is to change this -he taps his temple with his index finger-, and from there, we'll see what happens.

Cuban rock still has a long way to go, but if these crises are not overcome, it will continue to decline until it disappears. And when that happens, only the bands that have their own work will remain in the memory. The rest will have gone down in history without anyone remembering their name. I prefer to think that Zeus' work has not been in vain, that we will be in the first group. That we will transcend.

Dionisio live. Photo: Junior Hernández Castro.

The song of the outlaws

Dressed in a black sweater, stretch pants and impeccably shiny boots, Dionisio Arce waits in the dark for the drum kit to be set up. It is Saturday night and you can sense, because Maxim Rock is full, that Zeus is the one closing the show. While it is true that the rock audience has dwindled in recent years, some groups retain their number of followers, at least in the capital. Diony knows that his is one of them, and he knows the script to perfection.

His repertoire is almost invariable: to the initial songs and the album recorded in Spain, he adds a few songs from the latest album, The forbidden truth (2014). Fourteen years separated both releases; not for lack of material, but because of the lack of interest of the state record companies. After many demands, meetings with Culture directors and even AHS congresses, the Colibrí label took over the production and Zeus entered the studio to record. The CD - two songs were discarded due to production censorship - won the Cubadisco award the following year in the rock/metal category, but it was never physically released. The reason: there was no raw material. 

From time to time, Diony fantasizes about recording a Zeus album of pure rock ballads. While he waits for the dream to come true, he continues to sing about rock pride and old scars, censorship and hypocrisy, money and corruption; always from heavy metal. Rock was born to be rebellious and rebellious, he assures, although he recognizes that there are limits: "You can criticize up to a certain point what is wrong, but you can't go too far, you know what I mean? 

After all, that place where Longa's cymbals and Hansel and Ivan's guitars clatter, where the singer works not only as a musician but also as a civil servant, belongs to a state institution. Even so, when the spark ignites in the room and the audience shouts and applauds, the 54-year-old, shoulder-length Diony doesn't skimp on demonstrating his old lineage of indomitable geek. 

-Don't criticize me anymore," she sings, "you don't let me think. I only long to live, without seeing you beside me. Your soul will imprison me. Your blood will drown me. Your breath will come, damaging my goodness. OUT! -he shouts- FROM MY PROPERTY! -answers the audience in chorus- -GET OUT! NO MORE FUCKING!

Diony abandons the sweater and shows his bare torso before singing again. His arms are covered with tattoos, some of them with tribal motifs. On his left forearm is his nickname, along with the words "blood, pain and tears"and when he turns his back to the audience he shows a pair of engraved wings. Whenever he finishes a song, he asks his fans what others they want to hear, and the cries of "¡!Brother!", "¡The chair!", "¡Free me!" y "¡Confesa,!" flood the auditorium. Every now and then, in between requests, someone growls, in a drunken tone, "DIONISIO, TE AMOOOOOO". He smiles and blows a kiss to the audience. 

Downstairs, next to the stage, rockers of all ages coexist: from teenagers with Rammstein pullovers, to "dinosaurs" of five or six decades, who surely lived the beginnings of Cuban heavy metal. Perhaps, among the crowd, there is someone who met Diony as a teenager, listening to rock on the Anglo-Saxon radio on a bridge on the Malecon. 

You may even have seen him jump into the water, along with other geeks, when he saw a patrol car or a police officer approaching. If someone asked him "what are you doing there?", the answer was a no-brainer:

-Refreshing a little, agent, it's hot as hell.