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Cuba's going for a song
Music and rum are the
city's heart and soul - a medley of bittersweet
tales and sweet memories, writes Oakland
Ross
The
Star, Canada, February 5, 2005.
HAVANA-No matter where you wander in Cuba,
chances are that sooner or later you'll
wind up sipping rum in some fine old place,
reminiscing about past loves and former
days, while a woman sings.
Might as well face it now, before you board
that southbound plane.
Consider Bar Dos Hermanos, a well-aged,
wood-panelled haunt on the Avenida del Puerto,
down by the harbour in Old Havana, right
between a pair of slender, crumbling streets,
one called Sun and the other Light.
Just now, it's a sunlit Saturday morning
- elevenish - and a few, mostly Cuban patrons,
huddle at several chipped wooden tables
scattered on the dark, tiled floor, as a
sexagenarian seductress named Xiomara Sánchez
Lombillo eases her flowered blouse provocatively
off her shoulders and starts to sing.
She coaxes one bittersweet old melody after
another through the filter of her rich,
smoky soprano - Dos Gardenias, Lágrimas
Negras, Quizás - all the while cradling
the audience in the palms of her slender
hands. She is ably accompanied on accordion
by one Alberto Reysin Faval.
Later, during a break in her performance,
Sánchez invites you to her table,
where she announces that her 68th birthday
is less than a week away.
She graciously accepts your offer of a
celebratory mojito - Cuba's national cocktail,
a liquid rhapsody of rum, lime juice, sugar,
fresh mint, and soda.
"You could write a novel about my
life," she confides before returning
to her feet to conjure another song out
of the morning air.
"It has been long and sad.
"But here I am."
And here are you, comfortably ensconced
in your first Cuban bar of the day, sipping
rum and reminiscing, while a woman sings.
This is Havana, after all, where every
city block seems to offer up another singer
and another song. You simply have to follow
your ears.
Of course, it doesn't hurt to know the
names of a few places in advance. With that
in mind, here is an admittedly idiosyncratic
guide to living the louche life a la habanera
- a selection of fine old places in the
Cuban capital to have another drink, listen
to some more wonderful music, and forget
that Paul Martin or Stephen Harper ever
existed, if indeed they ever did.
Bar Dos Hermanos is an excellent place
to begin.
Established in 1894, the place is said
to be the oldest tavern in Cuba and once
counted Federico García Lorca among
its more illustrious patrons.
The great Spanish poet spent several months
on the island in 1930, lubricating his muse
at the Dos Hermanos, before returning to
his homeland, where he was soon to be assassinated
by right-wing forces at the outset of the
Spanish Civil War.
Seven decades later, the Dos Hermanos remains
largely unchanged. Now as then, several
ceiling fans whirl lazily overhead, while
horse-drawn carriages and motorcycles with
sidecars clatter or rattle past on the street
outside, beyond the tatty potted plants
and the wide-open windows.
"I used to work in a tobacco factory,"
Sánchez tells you before gently launching
another bolero onto the humid, tropical
air. "But, even in the tobacco factory,
I sang. I worked, but I sang."
You, meanwhile, are engaged in a performance
of your own, a medley of Havana's drinking
spots. It is time to move on.
The best-known purveyors of tropical cocktails
in the capital of Cuba are probably La Bodeguita
del Medio, an antique bar just off the Plaza
de la Catedral in the old city, and El Floridita,
a study in worn scarlet elegance not far
from the city's Central Park.
Both places are pleasant enough in their
ways, but also very touristy and therefore
expensive.
So make your way instead along Calle Obispo,
a long, lively pedestrian street that runs
the breadth of Old Havana, where you will
find two unpretentious clubs - Café
Paris and La Lluvia de Oro - both of which
feature unremarkable food and inexpensive
drink, along with frequent live music, usually
of a style known as son, a precursor of
contemporary salsa.
Or veer north a few blocks from Obispo
to the corner of O'Reilly and Compostela,
where there's a great alfresco spot for
a pleasant lunch, an afternoon drink, or
preferably both.
It's called Bar-Restaurant Viñales,
and it's an airy, inviting place with a
lofty ceiling and an attractive green-walled
interior, punctuated by clay-coloured Romanesque
pillars.
Chicken breasts sizzle on a large grill,
while a breeze wafts through the open-air
dining room, with its white tablecloths,
white tiled floor, and miscellaneous potted
plants.
There's musical accompaniment, of course,
and just now it is being provided by Amaranto
y Su Grupo, a lively five-piece son band.
The afternoon drifts along on waves of
music and cold beer, until you find yourself
once again contemplating the immortal words
of José Martí, Cuba's great
national hero, who once wrote that he had
two countries - Cuba and the night.
Currently, the night approaches.
Already, it is dusk, and so you stroll
past a statue of Martí himself that
stands in the Parque Central at the western
edge of Old Havana, where the oldest hotel
in Cuba - the Inglaterra - presides above
the ficus trees and the royal palms.
The hotel's ground-floor terrace overlooks
the plaza and is an excellent location from
which to greet the advent of darkness as
you sip a restorative Cubanito - tomato
juice and rum - while listening to yet another
live band.
Now your real dilemma begins - what to
do in Havana after night falls. You face
a surfeit of choices. To keep things simple,
you might simply wander back across the
Parque Central and along Calle Bélgica
to the Café Monserrate, a large,
well-lit room with a long bar and a selection
of wooden tables - as crowded and lively
and frenetic a place as you could wish.
There is always an excellent electrified
son band playing at night.
Or you might venture farther afield.
For contemporary salsa - currently the
most popular musical form on the island
- you should certainly consider a lively,
subterranean spot called Café Cantante,
tucked away in the basement beneath the
Teatro Nacional de Cuba at the edge of the
Plaza de la Revolución in the Vedado
section of town.
The doors don't open until 10 p.m., and
there is usually at least a modest lineup
outside. The bands rarely hit the stage
much before midnight, but there's recorded
music until then.
The elite of the island's salsa performers
- acts such as La Charanga Habanera or Paulo
F.G. or Adalberto Alvarez - regularly perform
at several venues around town, including
La Casa de la Música, a large music
hall in the eastern suburb of Miramar. It
has a proscenium stage and lots of room
to dance. The cover charge usually runs
around $15 U.S. per person, but it's worth
the price - a great place to hear great
live music.
There is much less space at Havana Café
in the Melía Cohiba Hotel in Vedado,
partly because this particular nightclub's
furnishings also include a couple of vintage
American automobiles, not to mention a small
airplane, but the club does book excellent
musicians.
On the downside, the cover at Havana Café
is expensive, you have to show up very early
to ensure you get a good seat, and there
is a pretentious, inauthentic quality to
the place.
If it is authenticity you crave, you might
be better advised to make a pilgrimage to
a somewhat musty shrine dedicated to the
leading deity in the pantheon of Cuban music.
Born Bartolomé Maximiliano Moré
in 1919 , the man generally regarded as
Cuba's greatest interpreter of song is better
known as Beny Moré. More than 40
years after his death in 1963 from liver
disease, he's a legend still.
During his short life, Moré was
to Cuban music what Frank Sinatra is to
American song, and a boxy little club called
Ali Bar on Avenida Dolores in a Havana suburb
called Arroyo Naranjo was his favourite
stage.
Nowadays, the place is in somewhat dowdy
condition, but it presents a nightly homage
to Moré and his music. The food is
pretty bad, but the drinks are cheap, and
the show - featuring a retrospective of
Moré's greatest songs, performed
by a trio of men in double-breasted suits
- is surprisingly enjoyable, considering
that it's produced on a miniscule budget.
The clientele is almost entirely Cuban.
Make sure to ask your taxi driver to come
back for you at midnight or so, because
there are few taxis in this part of town,
and Ali Bar claims not to have a functioning
telephone.
If you're interested in the glories of
Cuba's musical history, you might also consider
visiting a grand old colonial mansion that
houses a small network of clubs and restaurants,
known collectively as Dos Gardenias.
Located in the western suburb of Miramar,
Dos Gardenias includes an intimate little
boite called El Rincón del Bolero,
or the Bolero Corner.
Every night, a different lineup of venerable
singers take turns performing romantic ballads
from the 1950s, the golden age of Cuban
music. They are accompanied by a three-piece
band.
On this particular evening, the final singer
on the bill is Ela Calvo - also known as
La Vieja or The Old Woman. Now in her 80s,
she can still pour out a love song as though
she had been decanting bottles of dark tears
all her long life, which she has.
She can also work an audience like a pro.
Squinting out from the stage, she addresses
a trio of men, asks them where they are
from.
"Colombia," they reply.
She and the band promptly perform a spirited
cumbia, which is Colombia's national musical
form.
Next, she asks another audience member
to identify his homeland.
"Italy," he declares.
Calvo nods at the band. At once, they strike
up an exuberant rendition of Volare.
Finally, Calvo asks you to name your country.
"Canada," you mumble, with your
customary diffidence.
Calvo's face goes blank. The band is silent.
At last, the pianist comes to the rescue.
He soldiers alone through a truncated version
of My Heart Will Go On, from the Hollywood
blockbuster Titanic.
At first, you fail to recognize the song's
relevance to your northern homeland, but
then you remember. Ah, yes. Celine Dion.
Never mind. By now, Ela Calvo is crooning
another sad Cuban bolero into the darkened
room. It is midnight in Havana, and there's
just you, a glass of rum, and a woman singing.
This is where you belong.
Oakland Ross is a feature
writer with the Star.
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