Sheila del Bosque's Cuba is born in her flute

It is not difficult to fall under the spell of a flute. Ethereal and soft. Evocative. Poetic. It depends on the hands that play it. It depends on what the one who blows it feels. 

The flute, if played by Cuban Sheila del Bosque, is a caress, a spell that envelops and takes you through an island morning, serene like those of her childhood, with the images of her father's record player and the radio. The cassette recorder where the tapes got tangled and had to be untangled with a pencil spinning on the reels. His colored celesta, where he learned his first notes, and the endless family celebrations where Los Van Van, Adalberto Álvarez, Orlando Vallejo and others of the old guard were always played..

Sheila has always lived music from the outside and from the inside; "however, it is one thing to have music incorporated unconsciously and quite another to take it as that power that will accompany you throughout your life. Another very different thing is that moment when you not only 'study' it, but when you 'fall in love with it'. In my case, that came later," she says. 
The flute is not easy, and for a nine-year-old girl starting at an academy means giving up, or at least postponing what is "normal" at that age: "Mainly leisure hours for play, although my natural interest was always more focused on reading, drawing, watching good movies or theater, and going to museums, even from a very early age. My friends find it fascinating that I learned to ride a bicycle at the age of 25 or that I never played sports for fear of injury. It's never too late to change narratives, and I did many of those things when I grew up and moved to Boston," says Sheila.

Photos courtesy of the artist.

"I don't feel like I've given things up; I've just experienced them at different times. To be perfectly honest, today I don't spend so much time studying the flute exclusively, but I'm always busy experimenting musically in many ways. I vary stages and priorities, but because of my intense pre-study, when I need to prepare for a concert, a few weeks beforehand is enough to get back in shape. Knowing how to study, knowing yourself and having a proper technical routine is critical." 

And all the effort makes sense when he looks at his instrument, because the flute has become an extension of himself, of his voice: "There is something very special about wind instruments: the breath and the connection with something that comes from within," he explains. The flute has been my voice when I have not been able to express myself with words, especially in the early years, when it was a means of communication and escape. 

"I believe that the instrument-performer relationship is evolving like life itself. Nowadays, I understand better that I am not what I do, and that has been a beautiful path of transformation. The flute is one of the resources that help me express who I am, along with composition, conducting and teaching. Sheila is not a flutist; Sheila expresses herself through the flute and music to connect with the world," she adds.
When he began his musical training at the Escuela Elemental de Música Alejandro García Caturla, his relationship with music was one of many mixed emotions. He felt that it was beautiful, but also that it could carry a lot of responsibility and pressure. As he grew older, he began to have more emotional tools to understand himself and learned to love music even more from his adult perspective.

"When I went to Berklee College of Music, it was like a new beginning. I went from a classical music environment to jazz, composition and conducting. It was a blank canvas where I could be and do anything I wanted with no limits beyond what my mind could draw. Feeling like you are playing at making music is an amazing feeling that I have been developing over the last few years. To not take myself so seriously and to recapture that inner child as if I were seeing a flute, a score or a baton for the first time."

Photos courtesy of the artist.

At school he grew up and learned important values as a human being. It was his community, his second home, a place to share with friends who would become family, passionate about music. "I met amazing teachers and mentors who helped and pushed me to achieve my dreams. School was a path of constant learning from the inside out. It was my path, but it doesn't necessarily have to be everyone's path," she says. 

Cuba's fate has always been migration. It touches us all closely: either we leave or someone close to us leaves. More than an island, we are a constellation, scattered and dispersed. And wherever there is a Cuban there will be a new Cuba, one that takes away the pains and builds with the beautiful, which is how things are built from nostalgia. 

Sheila also migrated. She also had to rebuild the island, the afternoons, the way to school. To release that country from her lungs and translate it into the flute, because "when you leave Cuba you start to be more Cuban than before".

"The migratory process is something evident for many people in Cuba and that brings with it very deep feelings that of course permeate your music. I have a song that I composed for a trio of flute, piano and percussion called If my Island were a child. It deals a bit with the utopia of imagining a Cuba with innocence and happiness through the lens of a child. It is a song that goes from a son to a guaguancó with irregular rhythms, nostalgic melodies and a tumbao to dance to, and I believe that Cuba is a bit like that beautiful ajiaco".

Sheila feels that her music definitely changed when she left the country. "I feel that when you are in Cuba you don't need to prove to anyone that you are Cuban, or how Cuban your music is. The identity issues are not as evident as when you leave," she says. 

"For my master's thesis at Berklee College of Music I did a very interesting compositional project touching on social issues in Cuba, inspired by my own experiences and through my critical lens. They are a series of compositions that mix the European tradition with the African, with jazz, electronic music and other more recent compositional searches. It was very interesting for me to question myself during the whole process: does this sound Cuban enough? An incredible professor told me: Sheila, what more Cuba in your music than you? You don't have to prove or explain to anyone how Cuban your music is".

Photos courtesy of the artist.

From that moment on, she no longer questioned how Cuban what she was doing, or what she herself was. Her thesis closes with Fernando Ortiz: "Said in current terms, Cubanness is a condition of the soul, it is a complex of feelings, ideas and attitudes (...). The full Cubanness does not consist merely in being Cuban by any of the environmental contingencies that have surrounded the individual personality and have forged its conditions; it is also necessary the conscience of being Cuban and the will of wanting it to be".

How do you transmit then the cubanness in your concerts? 

"Being myself, defending my truth, being consistent and challenging the molds of what is considered Cuban music." 

Sheila does not believe in pre-established forms, "for history has shown time and time again that they are meant to be broken". 

"Every artist should feel the freedom to be able to break molds whenever they want and that art asks for it. I believe that human beings have invented [those] structures to understand the infinite world that surrounds us. They are like symbols that mark a path for us [that] is often a well-trodden path, with stones polished by so much walking on it, but at some point, if you know how to listen to the signs, that path ends and in the abyss there is only flying." 

Photos courtesy of the artist.

Sheila moves between teaching and studying, conducting and composing for film, chamber music and popular music. I ask her how she does it, she wonders too: "I think the flute is one of the things I feel most comfortable with. All my training was in classical music and with that I experienced chamber music and orchestral playing, but then when I went to Berklee College of Music, what I studied was film composition, jazz performance and conducting. Then my master's degree was in jazz-focused performance. So composition and conducting are relatively new to me, but then when I went to Berklee College of Music, what I studied was film composition, jazz performance and conducting.I have never had anything new in my life, but I think that everything I did before somehow prepared me for it. And well, teaching, since I was 15 years old I studied a double degree at the Amadeo Roldan Conservatory with flute performance and theoretical subjects, with a very strong component in pedagogy and teaching. I love teaching and have taught in the United States at prestigious institutions such as Wellesley College or Interlochen Center for The Arts".

She is also currently head of the Jazz Department of the National Flute Association of America. She also works as assistant program manager for the Hollywood Youth Orchestra in Los Angeles. And all that effort, all that talent, shows in a long list of awards and achievements, of which only the most recent are the Music Direction Scholarship Carlos Miguel Prieto 2024 Academy; the Wayne Shorter Award for creativity and innovationBerklee Global Jazz Institute, 2023; or the first prize in the International Jazz Competition, Berklee Global Jazz Institute, 2023. Keep an Eye, Netherlands, 2023.

Photos courtesy of the artist.

Achievements like this are achieved with hard work, but also with love and passion, putting body and soul into what you do: "when you are truly passionate about something, beautiful things happen as a result," she says.

And she doesn't stop working, the projects, neither her, nor her music, stop. "I just finished the Carlos Miguel Prieto Conducting Fellowshipwhich has been an incredible experience in my life and from which I received the Exceptional Achievement Award. A few weeks ago I was assistant conductor for a concert of the Orchestra of the Americas with first class soloists such as Yo-Yo Ma and Kayhan Kalhor. I am also developing two courses on-line flute courses for the prestigious Interlochen Center for the Arts, which are coming out for the next semester in October of this year. It has been a super nice project to be able to create your own course with your vision of things that are important and how to approach them. They have given me all the freedom in the world to do it and that makes me happy." 

And, writing this, without having met Sheila, but knowing her music, I understand what that is. Cuba never leaves you and, on the contrary, it becomes a major force, a necessity. If you can't live it then you talk about it, you sing about it, you take it to any corner of the world, subtly, ethereally, like the sound of a flute, like Sheila's flute.