Poets of music

Abel Lescay
26.10.2022
7 minutes Reading

I feel that the Cuban music scene is like a forest, so thick that almost nothing can be seen, neither from the outside nor from the inside. Among many weeds that grow alike, and energies of ancient wisdom, it is impossible for us to measure the size of certain trees, which are more valuable because they are hidden.

If I speak of only three today, it is because I will refer to the family of Havana's performing musicians, of a skinny generation that has survived in the streets and in its caves, treating its life as a poetic act and showing it rarely, or in very specific places.

Juan Carlos Piñol has been a myth since Kelvis recorded his name in a historic song of Habana Abierta: Piñol phrasing yesterday's songs. As an old man, and accompanied by Alfred Artigas -guitarist who turns his magical harmonies into water, or into wind— and by Iran Farías The younger in the tombs, he formed a trio to perform his songs, which I imagine had been decades in the making. I was fortunate to be present at that cultural moment, which, although intimate, was of great importance. It was a unique phenomenon, given as a result of a flowering of art, especially in the branch of poetry brought to the stage. Piñol is a rumbero poet. Poet of the heart, he connects'or with the clean information of the universe, showing himself in a proud cry, but with the precise rhythm, knowing that "the rumba is very beautiful". He is a white man, very skinny and old, of comfortable life; you discover —upon meeting him— his ego suffers, as if no one has listened to him for 20 years. He is more like a mollusk in his shell, raising a lightning bolt that only speaks to him. What happens is that he sings things that say it all, and it's impossible not to feel them resonate inside you.

Wisdom is a complicated bug. For us, children of the West, it is nothing more than a conglomerate of complex information, found in the infinite books of some library burned down before our era. But for other cultures, wise information can be read in any element of Mother Nature, which encompasses everything. In Cuba, energies are seen with Yoruba eyes and Christian fears. The drums, it is known, speak, and they are wise. Listening to the drums can be the experience that shows you who you are, from another plane. Knowing how to listen can mark your survival in a jungle as harsh as the Cuban street. Piñol, hidden in his spacious house, sitting in front of the yoga blanket, marks the key, says one thing and you feel he read you from the inside. He never really looked at you, as if to say: I know what you are because we are the same.

Piñol's trio is no longer active, he wants to sing but there is nowhere, life has changed, things are hard. He is tired.

Other times were not so good either, but there was a movement that allowed to listen to these sensitive and fragile characters. The Longina was every year a party of songs. I remember an edition in which it was filled with impressive poets; there was Jorge García Prieto, displaying a very elegant oratory; José Luis Serrano, great poet of our times, and there was Piñol with his trio leaving everyone speechless. Also the Meeting of Poets and Singers was a perfect place to find him, where he participated three times and rumbated in the early morning of after party. He was a phenomenon, a unique rumba, a sensitive singing, an energy of love.

Fewer times I met the following character. After having glanced through a book of his, so difficult to understand because of the Zen simplicity he preaches, I knew he was standing there, in a corner of one of these Bejucaleño parties prepared by Noslen Porrúa. Suddenly he walked towards the stage. Many of us instantly shut up. We knew it was Omar Perez.

I really try to write about people who make art with their eyes. Filled with mystical power, they turn the energy of a space and change all beings who are receptive to their vibrations. Omar sang softly, with a strange drawl, and said things. I will not be able to remember his words to describe his poetics, because they were less important. After watching an interview in which he talked about the poetic act, I could understand. He is a poet who separates the poem from poetry, focusing on the latter and working all the edges that this ancient muse or goddess can show us. He is very clear about the power of the rhythm of words, and uses them as spells. The meanings of her words refer you to images capable of identifying you, judging you, trapping you, without having said anything. Another one who seems to suffer, imprisoned by his words, with a tired, old look, like the wisdom that possesses him.

Omar Perez has been an important theorist and translator in Cuba for decades. I suspect that his silence in the changing panorama of Havana is a personal decision, a vow of non-confrontation with the old that still holds. He professes a new path for the poetic being. Hidden like the narrow door, difficult, humbly aggressive. He knows that no one cares what he says, and yet the universe talks to him. Philosophy without words, theory of non-liberation, sample of a new breed of man, fucked up, locked against a society of insects incapable of evolving, on purpose.

These masters of the scene are marked by various stages of Cuban civilization. For me it is impossible to imagine them in the 1990s, young and with a force capable of shattering the most clumsy barriers of humanity. But they clearly did not succeed. Silent, they are among those who remained on the island after the Special Period. Those years were marked in their physiognomy as in almost all their generation, in the dark circles under their eyes, in the disinterest to impose their exceptional work.

In the first decade of the new millennium, when the art underground flourished and the performance The way was opening up, extremely important movements emerged, such as Giganteria, or Alamar Express. It is difficult to calculate how influential a living statue can be. Andres Perez Viciedo, the third protagonist of this column, can appear anywhere dressed as a Gentleman of Paris, with many papers hanging, or headphones that invite you to listen to poems. He lives the life of Old Havana, with dogs that teach him to be humble, and embodies characters of deep sadness, without ceasing to be him. A being so kind in his gesture, that he accepts and carries with him the misery and suffering of his race, without complaining, without bothering. Andres moves between what is real and what a dog feels, he stands because he decided to be made of bronze, with a soft and muscular heart.

One of his poetic edges is music. For a time he had a duo with Oscar Sanchez, another poet of the gaze, with whom he interpreted peculiar poems and songs. Worthy of placing among the sublime of Cuban art is his rock and roll interpretation of Vallejo's poem, The soul that suffered from being his bodyone of the most influential of the twentieth century for our culture and all others. Applause for Andrés, who actually seems to need something else.

No one can give back to the Cubans the dream they lost, it is too late. No academy or institution was interested in listening to those musical voices of poetry. The silence of the great ones says a lot, and now we only have to wait for another glow.