The entire island as a music catwalk

At some point in the '90s, Antonio Martínez —of Galician origin, raised in Germany with the sones and boleros of another Antonio, Machín— had to decide: either architecture or the music business.

As an artist he never had a chance, but as a promoter he had been in the ring since he was 18 years old, when he had to ask his father to sign a permit to rent a theater for the first concert he prepared. Even then he had known the bitter taste of failure, but third time lucky, they say, and in 1997 he founded Endirecto, a German company that promotes concerts and tours focused on Latin music in central Europe. The circle was quickly closed: those songs that her grandmother loved followed her track, finding there what has been her work niche until today: Cuban music.

Two decades later, he has become one of the most enthusiastic actors in the Cuban musical ecosystem. If you ask him how much can be done to internationalize the work of Cuban artists, you can spend hours talking to him. This is the proof.

Do you remember what was the first Cuban music concert you organized?

Sure, how not!? It belonged to Caridad Hierrezuelo, in 1998. Through her I began to work with the Vieja Trova Santiaguera. With Caridad I recorded two albums, the first with his small trio, in Germany, and the second with a broader format, recalling the line of Conjunto Caney. The musical producer was Manolito Simonet. From that moment he and I began to have a business-professional relationship. Meanwhile, I was working in my original profession (architecture) and organizing trova concerts. Later I started working with the people of the Buena Vista Social Club (Rubén González, Ibrahim Ferrer), and I also accompanied the Afro-Cuban All Stars, before their total explosion in '99. 

Although the idea of the company was to work with Hispanic American or Latin music, even Lusophone, at the end of the year the 90% was handling Cuban music; it was what people asked for, what moved. So I began to go to the island at least once a year, to Cubadisco, and I increased my contacts. I have never stopped working with Cuba.  

The next step was to contact the agencies directly, I did not buy through intermediaries who brought the orchestras to Germany. I said to myself: for next year I don't wait to see who is on tour, I will look for the artist who is [coming] and I will schedule it for all of Europe; I will start in my area but then I will offer it to others. That's how it worked until I started working with the big orchestras: first it was Issac Delgado in 2001, then Los Van Van, from 2006-2007, obviously Manolito y su Trabuco, and other groups.

Let's get to the point. In your experience, what are the main strengths and weaknesses in the Cuban music industry?

For me, the talent in Cuba is unquestionable. Capacity and preparation also play a fundamental role, because an innate talent that has not been channeled is not enough, but it is a talent that has been worked hard. 

In Cuba, this fusion of influences and geographical, sociopolitical, economic and communication isolation come together. This isolation has led to the fact that in the last 50 years, while other territories have lost many roots, Cuba has had little exchange with foreigners, something that has disadvantages, but [its sound] has remained pure, very original, so to speak. 

One of the secrets of Cuban music is that it united two worlds: melodically and harmonically there is a clear influence from classical European music —I'm talking mainly about the son, why it worked so well—, but rhythmically it has that exotic African touch, achieving that conjunction of two cultures that for racial reasons were always separated.

Therefore, the potential of Cuban music for me is in its uniqueness, which is a reflection of the uniqueness of Cuba in everything, for better and for worse.

It is something that people in any part of the world recognize: that in Cuba there is good music, just as there is good tobacco and good rum. When we're talking about marketing potential, if I don't have to invest in letting people know that something exists, it saves me a lot of time and money because there is already knowledge that I can latch onto. Nor can we ignore the fact that it is dance music, and I am not telling you that [Europeans] take perfect casino steps, far from it, but it is music that moves the body, that provokes, that you have a good time, as they say the Spanish. It is not a sad, depressive music; there is the Caribbean, the heat. If you put up a “Cuban Music Night” poster in Europe in winter, people will go. 

One of the difficulties in Cuba is that —rightly so— they put a lot of emphasis on names, on the artist, what he has done, who he has worked with, what his new job is. Outside, many times we work more with these free connotations, “Cuban music, Caribbean”, because the artist itself, his name, is not a brand. Another of the shortcomings [of the internationalization of Cuban music] is that it clearly requires an investment. If I have to promote the artist, people have to see it, recognize it, listen to it and listen to it again... But how do you do that? With promotion, putting a ticket, there is no other option. 

And there we go to the current situation. We are in a very interesting moment for Cuban music. In pre-Internet times, to develop an international career you needed a network of branches, an office in France, another in such a place, and those who had those networks were the multinationals. The competition was brutal. Today [if you have] a suggestive, interesting offer, you can reach the last corner of the world from your home; and for two years in Cuba, with mobile data, from the same boardwalk. This is a completely different scenario, because you can go [far] without having to go through those filters that, more than opportunities, were often bottlenecks, or even stoppers, because if you weren't there, you weren't there.

And do you think that this change of scenery, of greater access (not only for artists but for industry players in general) to communication technologies, is going to change the rules of the game in the medium term, in terms of visibility and commercialization of Cuban music on a global level?

Yes, definitely, they are already changing. The question is who will be the beneficiaries. Until now, the Cuban music industry was an industry that produces and expects someone to buy from you — I speak internationally. You produced but you didn't promote, you simply exhibited as much, and you waited for someone to come and buy from you. I think a more proactive attitude is needed. Before, the most you could do with a very large investment was to go to fairs like South by Southwest (SXSW), WOMEX, Midem, and have a booth, a deployment for which there were neither financial means, nor visas, nor anything.

It is at this point, furthermore, that Cuba's isolation —in all senses— played tricks on him, because there was no other market than the local one. Germany, for example, has 85 million inhabitants, but in about 100 kilometers around we are in contact with 200 million people, there are eight neighboring countries. I don't need to have a career on other continents to become a millionaire as a German musician. But the circumstances in Cuba are different: the internal market, surrounded by water, does not give you more than 11 million people with a purchasing power that is what it is. So I need to make the trampoline; because today it is possible to overcome this analogical difficulty.

That is where, today, networks give you the possibility to expand your market without having to physically move. But not only the industry has to be proactive, but the artist himself. This change is not only for the Cuban musician, only that everything now comes to him at once. The musicians of Europe have gradually learned how to move on social networks, they grew up with it. Cuba suddenly entered a fairly developed environment. It went from zero to a thousand. 

The industry, for its part, has changed in such a way that the big players that were the plugs in the bottlenecks (the multinationals, the record companies) lost their role as big regulators of the market. Nowadays YouTube is much more important than Universal. Something completely unthinkable 15 years ago. At the level of the music industry and broadcasting, Spotify is a recently created company, it is only a few years old and has a market value as large as that of the multinationals, with all their catalogues, with everything behind them. 

Before, the big decision of an artist with international potential was who he signed with for the next three albums and, from that moment, with a signing, he had fixed five, eight years of his life. Because there was a fixed payment, every two years I had to release an album but also the record company wrote down the release of the phonogram, with it the tours, the promotion... and they sent you and they didn't ask you anything else, you couldn't decide. 

Today as an artist you have to make decisions on a daily basis. To do? How to do it? Because that macrostructure disappeared, and suddenly you are the one who speaks directly with your fans. And how is that done? What I tell them? I am here today, where do I want to be in two years? What are the steps to take? Those are decisions that have to be made. There, I think, is the greatest lack of the Cuban music industry. That is where the artist is asked for knowledge, a capacity for maneuver, and where a very important figure enters and who was not recognized in Cuba, which is that of the representative, the manager.

Here the issue is aggravated, since the local companies worked in the closed ecosystem of Cuba, with their own rules of the game that were not transferable outside the country. Outside it never worked like it did on the Island, not even in the most analogical times. Therefore now the challenge is not double, but triple; because in addition, the artists are no longer satisfied, they know that their album has to be [on digital platforms]: "They are writing to me from Peru, that the album is not on Spotify." And you've probably never listened to Spotify because it's blocked in Cuba, but they write to you saying, and who has an answer for that? 

We are talking about an industry that, with very few exceptions, cannot provide answers, or does not know how to provide them, it has neither the mechanisms, nor the knowledge, nor the capacity... And if something is required today in the music industry, it is a high flexibility and speed. 

Yes tomorrow Artist X from Cuba is invited to South by Southwest —taking him completely to the institutional territory—, he will have to go with the director of his representation agency, because the artist himself does not have legal personality. Let's also say that someone from the development vice-presidency of the Cuban Institute of Music is going. They go to that fair, the artist presents his showcase, makes a great show with the press, with everything. The next day, someone comes to the booth from Cuba and says: “I loved the concert. How much? Three thousand dollars, perfect. How many people? What are the conditions? Very well, look, we are in October, I am closing my program for next year; I will pay you double. Here's the contract, sign me." 

With all that, not just the artist or his representative —who in Cuba appears as a producer, prop or whatever on the template, because that figure is not recognized—, but the director of the representation agency or that person from the Institute of la Música, replies: “send me a letter, a request, then that goes to commission, then to evaluation”… “What evaluation? You have appeared here on this international stage and you have given me your purchase price and I want to buy here”. "No, but it's just that in Cuba it doesn't work like that." And that's where the interest died. It is an example of how an environment opens up to you with possibilities, but you have no response capacity.

It is very complicated to handle something as dynamic as culture in that way...

Impossible! Exactly, it is a matter of flexibility, of the dynamics [required] today by social networks, of the frequency with which decisions have to be made. Statewide [in Cuba], there is no framework that can keep up with [this rhythm]. With the best will, even if you have all the knowledge; Legally, the systems are too rigid and slow to keep up with this frenetic pace. 

However, it is in this new scenario where I believe that Cuba has possibilities. The country may not have foreign currency, [but] the “Cuba” brand has a value that can function as a counterweight in marketing and internationalization actions. We have the example of the Jazz Plaza Festival. In recent years it has become the highest international level festival in the country, the most visible, without a doubt. Many foreign artists want to play on the Island, in a festival that has been going on for 30 years. Because the myth of Cuba, of its music, is not only in the consumers, it is in the artists as well. And that is where events that have a track record and the ability to attract international attention can play a fundamental role in the internationalization [of music as a commercial product]. If I can't take my artists to all the events, fairs and agents, then I bring international musicians who want to play in Cuba. An artist of a certain level is going to bring his manager of level. One thing goes together with the other. 

So, if one of the biggest attractions for people is to see Cuban music in Cuba, we are going to promote that. It is necessary to cause that the professionals of the industry who can contribute really see the talent, because there is talent. We have to turn this into a catwalk, the entire island as a showcase. 

There are many state-owned companies that clearly see what their shortcomings are, but they have no margin [of action]. On the other hand, the artist is pressing more and more, he is aware of whether his video is uploaded, if he has comments, if he has promotion. Before, the record company could tell the artist “your album came out in Japan”, “ah, yes, that's great”. If it was sold or in stores, how was the artist going to check it out? There was no way. 

Today you can. The pace of decisions and opportunities has increased. I am convinced that at the moment only 10 or 15 % of the commercial potential of Cuban music at an international level is being used. I am optimistic, because the artists and the creation are first class, but the rest of us are in the third to fourth division. The business environment, whether state or private, is not at the same level because it has not been developed. 

That is the focus of my company Endirecto at a festival like Jazz Plaza. [For us] it's not about bringing in another artist; The proposal is to create a fabric so that Cuban creation has a greater economic impact. 

In this sense, what is, let's say, your role or intention in the context of music events in Cuba? What is the objective behind a project like Primera Línea?

Primera Línea is a joint creation between Endirecto and the WOMEX fair (owned by a German company, Piranha Arts). And it should have an effect, let's say “call”, which needs to be developed. Since things [in Cuba] work very slowly, the association or inclusion of Primera Línea within the framework of an event such as the Jazz Plaza Festival, for all that it means at an international level and in terms of visibility, has seemed to me to be a way of not having to build everything from scratch.

There is a very simple scheme, which is where I want to work [with Primera Línea], which identifies a circle with commercial value and another with artistic, cultural value. They are not separate circles, but at some point they overlap; that is where my company and I want to work, because we are not an NGO. There is a difference between being commercial and being marketable, it seems the same but it is not, and there is a lot of Cuban music of the highest cultural and artistic value that also has marketable potential. This perspective is increasingly accepted, assumed, not as a contradiction, but as a complement. 

In this sense, Primera Línea did not come to supplant Cubadisco nor does it want to eat up the colloquium [at the Jazz Plaza Festival]; it is simply the contribution of a project that has an interest in the Island and that it can exploit to market its artists.

There are receiving countries and sending countries for music. Cuba is an issuing country; if you succeed here, you can convince and succeed practically anywhere in the world. With the current tools you do not have to wait for an intermediary to raise his finger up or down and give a sentence. But that activation has to have starting points.

Added to this is the fact that there are Cuban musicians who are writing songs for the most listened to in pop, I think of Descemer Bueno, Leoni Torres, in Gente de Zona. Latin urban music is having some rating brutal listening, unseating the Anglo-Saxon stars. And in the collective unconscious —at least in Central Europe— people associate Latin music or reggaeton more with Cuba than with Puerto Rico or Colombia; associate the Island with a sound workshop.

Last year I made a very simple proposal: if all the credentials of the foreign participants are VIP, make a PRO credential, for the professionals, and make them a different offer. It means that if I say Primavera Sound Pro, everyone knows that we are talking about complementary activities to Primavera Sound, which do not last all the time, but are alternatives for a professional sector that comes to that event. With the same idea, I propose to hold a Jazz Pro Festival, with their respective credentials for that sector. So if you are at an open-air concert at the Casa de Cultura, at three in the morning, all packed, and next to you there is an international delegate with a VIP credential, you don't say anything to him; but if it says PRO, you are going to try to start a conversation with that person, surely. It is to identify a space to provoke meetings between Cuban professionals and artists, and those of the international industry. 

And if tomorrow there is the possibility that that fair or that meeting will become a fair for the entire Caribbean —because the Caribbean has a high musical appeal, but has difficulties in articulating itself—, where are you going to do it? Cuba is one of the few places, not only because of its music, where an event of this type can exist, where you don't have to do it in a resort closed, because security is a guarantee. 

As a professional in the sector, what experiences have you drawn from the last year, from the impact of COVID-19 in our lives and in the music industry in particular? 

COVID-19 has had a double impact on the music industry. Before, the old owners and cashiers that were the multinationals, the record companies, had already disappeared, and in recent years live music has been for many the rescue, the future or the prevailing economic reality. With the pandemic, precisely, the goose that lays the golden eggs was completely screwed up, and the reaction in many cases was to do free concerts from home, so that people "see me", even if it did not circulate commercially. 

I understand the desire and the need of artists to be present; After a whole artistic life, it's the first time you've been without concerts, without tours... it's been a disastrous year. The routine stopped. That total braking changed things. 

I think we have to bet on that hybrid world, in which there are events on-line —That is here to stay, it is not going to disappear, there is a strong digitization movement. That experience is very good, but I don't see it as an alternative, but as one more complement, for the day that I can't travel, that I'm sick and can't go to a concert or whatever. I think we have to return to the physical presence; If Cuban music has something, it is that contact with the live public. 

Therefore, now my focus is to work on that part of the digital ecosystem, to see what the possibilities are. And I tell you that the big names don't know either, no one in the industry knows how it's going to work, right now there is great uncertainty. What is indeed active is the digital part, which can be developed; in Cuba, above all, knowledge can be greatly improved. 

Well, we have been reinventing ourselves as an industry for years, so what we have to do is continue.

You just said something important, and that is that Cubans are already in that dynamic, but the world is over for others, they don't know where to go. And I am sure that precisely in the Cuban industry, with the economic restructuring and so many changes, the talent will come out, it will find its way; especially from creative solutions, because you cannot copy and implement a model, you have to make it your own. Cubans are used to reinventing themselves and turning it around, and if it's not here, it's on the other side, that's what you are trained in. In the medium term, for me, it is about taking advantage of the Cuba brand in all the good senses of the word, the connotations it has in culture and music, to increase the commercialization and potential of existing Cuban music.