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CUBA
NEWS
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"Good Bye Lenin", from Germany,
a hit in Havana
HAVANA, 8 (AFP) - Wolfgang Becker's "Good
Bye Lenin" has found an enthusiastic
following in Cuba where the Havana Film
Festival is under way, and four showings
have not been enough for crowds that keep
coming.
Nobody in Havana seems to want to miss
the German import -- including visiting
1982 Nobel literature laureate Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, who made it in the first packed
showing that left hundreds out waiting for
another chance.
The film, a blend of satire and social
criticism, tells the tale of a resident
of East Berlin who has a heart attack and
falls into a coma just before the reunification
of Germany. When he comes to, his family
tries not to alarm him and goes out on a
strange limb to pretend nothing has happened.
The screenplay by Bernd Lichtenberg and
Becker takes a wry look at the trauma many
former east Germans went through reuniting
with the West after decades of communism.
Cuba is the only one-party communist state
in the Americas.
"Good Bye Lenin" is being shown
outside the competition, as part of a simultaneous
German mini-film festival here.
Fans Mourn Cuban Pianist Ruben Gonzalez
By Andrea Rodriguez, Associated
Press Writer
HAVANA - Pianist Ruben Gonzalez, who charmed
fans the world over as part of the Buena
Vista Social Club band, was remembered for
the Cuban essence of his music Tuesday,
one day after succumbing to respiratory
and kidney failure. He was 84.
Gonzalez "represented a synthesis
of what is Cuban in all of its expressions,
as well as mastery on the piano," said
Maria Elena Vinueza, director of music for
Casa de las Americas, Cuba's center of Latin
American culture.
"He has been appreciated not only
on the island, but in the entire world,"
Vinueza said, adding that "he will
always live on in the culture of this continent."
More than 100 of Gonzalez's family members
and friends traveled to Havana's historic
Colon Cemetery late Tuesday afternoon for
his funeral.
"Although his hands are now quiet
on the keyboard, we will not stop listening
to the music that Ruben Gonzalez left us,"
musicologist Lino Betancourt said during
the final words at graveside. "We will
not forget Ruben Gonzalez as long as there
are lovers of music."
Singer Omara Portuondo, who performed with
Gonzalez during his Buena Vista days, threw
a bunch of white mariposas - Cuba's fragrant
national flower - onto the grey casket before
it was lowered into the ground.
Although Gonzalez gained international
fame in recent years for his work with the
"Buena Vista Social Club" series
of albums and movie, "his work was
much more than that," said Cuban musicologist
Daniel Orozco.
"He had in is style a way of phrasing
and rhythm-making ... that was truly singular,"
Orozco said.
In person, the smallish man with white
hair was quite unassuming. But when he placed
his gnarled hands on the keyboard he could
capture an audience with his forceful tropical
rhythms.
He gained fame as a solo musician with
his albums "Introducing ... Ruben Gonzalez"
in 1997 and "Chanchullo," three
years later.
Born in the central province of Santa Clara
in 1919, Gonzalez had originally wanted
to be a doctor but wound up studying piano
at a conservatory in eastern city of Cienfuegos
in 1934.
He moved to Havana to become a full-time
musician in 1941, first recording with Arsenio
Rodriguez, a pioneer in Cuban-rhythm orchestras
of the time, then joining the Orquestra
de Los Hermanos.
Beginning in the early 1960s Gonzalez played
with the band led by Enrique Jorrin, the
man who popularized the cha-cha. They stayed
together until Jorrin's death in the mid-1980s,
and Gonzalez retired shortly thereafter.
Gonzalez had a chance meeting in 1996 in
Havana with Ry Cooder, the man who produced
the "Buena Vista Social Club"
records of traditional Cuban "son"
rhythms, and his career was reborn.
The best-known "Buena Vista"
figure, Compay Segundo, died at age 95 in
July. Born Maximo Francisco Repilado Munoz,
Compay Segundo was a guitarist and the band's
lead singer.
Cuban pianist Ruben Gonzalez, of Buena
Vista Social Club fame, is buried in Havana
HAVANA, 9 (AFP) - Friends, fans and family
bade farewell to Cuban pianist Ruben Gonzalez,
a pillar of the Grammy-winning Buena Vista
Social Club.
Gonzalez died Monday in Havana, his wife
told AFP. He was 84 and had battled bone
disease and other ailments. He was buried
in Colon cemetery in Havana.
Born in Santa Clara, Cuba, in 1919, Gonzalez
studied music and medicine before moving
to Havana in 1940. He played with a series
of groups including Arsenio Rodriguez and
Enrique Jorrin, the father of the cha-cha-cha.
Then his later life took an unexpected
twist when, in 1997, he joined the Buena
Vista Social Club, whose members have becoms
ambassadors of Cuban culture. Their album
sold four million copies worldwide and took
home a Grammy. German filmmaker Wim Wenders
captured their work in his "Buena Vista
Social Club" (1999).
US guitarist Ry Cooder called Gonzalez
the greatest pianist he had known, describing
him as a "cross between Thelonious
Monk and Felix the Cat."
At the ripe old age of 78, Gonzalez released
his first album under his own name, the
tongue-in-cheeky "Introducing ... Ruben
Gonzalez."
Perhaps the Buena Vista Social Club's best-known
member, singer Compay Segundo, died in July
at 95.
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