Dolores Hall: olfactory memory

It is easy to say. For many it is part of who we are, the history of life and faith of those of us who have grown up among its sounds, its famous acoustics, the rehearsals and concerts, the collective and individual projects. There are so many traces on its small board and piano, on the music stands where generations of musicians from here and there have passed through, passing through or in permanence. Sala Dolores offers a concert that transcends any program: that of its daily music, the hustle and bustle of the morning, when the protagonists tune, talk, laugh before rehearsal; that of the rhythm and gait of the institution's workers.

La Sala has smells that its inhabitants have registered under the pores, mysticism and legend; a little piece of the many beings that coexist in it. The afternoon of Saturday, September 23, for example, was a gift for the memory, one of those that make you get a lump in your throat and support you in the embrace of those who share the dream. Thank you, Orquesta Sinfónica de Oriente, this is your home.

II

The former Church of Our Lady of Sorrows began to be built in 1723, and on several occasions suffered the onslaught of small earthquakes typical of this geography. In 1975 a fire plunged the temple into ashes.

In the 1980s, the ecclesiastical authorities donated the building in order to create a concert hall that would house the headquarters of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Oriente, a musical institution created in 1962 that did not have a house at that time. From the Symphony Orchestra, several chamber music groups were created, which, at the same time, marked a period of splendor for concert music in Santiago de Cuba.

Another important page of Dolores was written by the lyrical singers with masters such as Sergio Trujillo, Cristina Delisle and young figures among which in a quick review I name María Isabel Prado, Vilma Ramírez, Edgar Sanfiel. We already know that the passage of time and the diaspora take their toll.

III

I don't remember the first time I set foot on the grounds. I grew up on the road between the Dolores and the Esteban Salas Conservatory; shuttling from one place to the other was built into my schedule.

La Dolores was inaugurated in the early days of 1989. I was five years old, my parents were crossing the road from Granma to Santiago to, probably by chance, declare themselves citizens of the artistic and musical life of Santiago at that time. The nineties came and they found shelter in the Conservatory: she at the head of the student boarding school; he, in the administration of the campus.

Talking about the Dolores, in that decade and a little more, entails a parallel narrative to that of musical education at the middle level in Santiago de Cuba. Those were the days of the crowded editions of the Choir Festival. The city buzzed with music, from its entrails came out a choral sound with the essence of the world, of Santiago, and the Hall was the navel, at least for seven days.

On several occasions I dressed in black and mingled among the girls of the Siren Choir of the Conservatory. I didn't sing, but it was my license to get a good seat in a hall of impressive architecture, with room for 295 people in its seats and a large crowd.

I had studied the elementary level of viola, and although as an instrumentalist I would have had a very bad bread, affective and parental ties and the genetics of friends of music remained interwoven. In each edition of the festival I saw Cuba's consecrated masters and I saw the consecration of several young people like Daria Abreu, Magalis Sánchez or my friend Sonia Colombat. From the Conservatory also came the new jazz explosion with David Virelles and Neysi Wilson; its Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Concert Band under the baton of Victor Vargas; in more recent times another important wave of young jazz players breathed the heyday of the genre in the city, unfortunately in decline now.

It was here in 1999 that I enjoyed Camerata Romeu for the first time. I had admired his work since I was a child in front of the TV. That night I wore for the first time a long white dress, tight to my slim silhouette, my hair was loose, just like dreams at that time. I went hand in hand with a young man, a railroad security agent, who, as a proof of love, wore his usual jeans, tennis shoes and a long-sleeved shirt with arabesques. At some point, the groom allowed himself to be cradled by the armchair, while I surrendered my whole existence to each piece, to the sound, the silences, the walk of the bow, the gestures of Zenaida Romeu in the air.

One afternoon Yaquelin Estacio, later cellist of the Symphony Orchestra, another friend and I went to listen to José María Vitier's prodigy. I remember that at the end we approached him in the crowd to greet him and ask him to sign the program. God knows what place in my house hides such a historic document!

There are things that do not require the testimony on a white sheet of paper but in the spiritual memory. That's how the guitars and songs of Postrova, that groundbreaking and brilliant duet that took Dolores in their pocket in a nocturnal encounter in 1998, still pulsate in my mind. What was that, Miguel? Matamoros to the sound of another hill and, at the same time, the essence was there, in the voices and the youth with its unheard of gifts. I did not imagine that years later the trova would build a cathedral in my professional universe; in my personal universe it always was.

IV

I entered professional life on September 11, 2006 through the doors of the institution facing Aguilera Street. I did not intend to, the location of the ballot as a recent graduate said Centro Provincial de la Música and there, in the human resources department, they told me the exact location. The truth is that I was scared, I had not become a musician but a graduate in Sociocultural Studies from the University of Holguin; I wanted like almost all recent graduates to eat the handkerchief, the one they call the world, and here they had no idea what to do with an extraterrestrial.

I started as a trainee in the now defunct Pablo Hernández Balaguer Music Research Area.. From my time in the modest space that the site occupied there is history for a loom. Afterwards, other events took place that led me to the direction of the space and its artistic life. I could not dwell on this aspect because it is strange to act as judge and party.

One day, the sky began to fall and the king was slow to know... It was the musicians and the most loyal public who supported the reason, those who moved the earth and the blue sky. It seems that every few turns of the clock the Hall succumbs to the chimes of destruction; a building with its constructive characteristics demands the execution of assiduous repairs, a matter not satisfied in years. The pillars of the earth announced in crescendo the symphony of goodbye, until 2020, when the underhanded closure took place amidst the silences of all cultural institutions in times of pandemic. When at the end of 2021 theaters and theaters began to recover their activity in the country, the silence of our own was resounding. An element detonated in the social networks: from the central Aguilera street and from some points of the boulevard or Dolores square, it could be clearly appreciated how in its main cover grew a deep-rooted plant, with branches and leaves in gothic ascent. The matica sounded on Facebook like a hit which placed the institution in the public eye.

However, it took some time to put the bell on the bell and even to find the cat to this story. It was in 2023 that repair work began. Fortunately, a team of restorers belonging to the City Conservator's Office was in charge of the interior and exterior of the Main Hall, respecting and preserving the architectural and structural elements that guarantee the always admired acoustics of the space. Since last September, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Oriente has returned to its domicile with daily rehearsals from Monday to Friday and the presentation of programs twice a month. The lobby is once again the place for chamber music, while the patio awaits the return of the peñas. The first leaves of November will bring with them the 35th edition of the International Choir Festival and with it the return to life, for as Maestro Electo Silva said, "singing is life".

I have the habit of registering smells and sounds as a cartography of being, everything that sounds in me carries a parallel aroma in the cerebral register, let's say a code whose translation demands testimony, actualization and transcendence. I have the smells and sounds of the Sala tattooed in my bloodstream, the springboard jump generated by the chords prior to the concert. Let's hope there will be Sala for a while, because if I ever lost my olfactory memory, my maps would be broken. Fortunately, my memory is starting to activate.