A Day Out in Havana

Cuba is like Jurassic Park. A surreal fun park that’s not so funny. All seems real yet when you put your hand out to touch, it’s not there. Like food for example. Free for all, but the ration shops are empty. Free transport, but no rides. Free health but no medication. Free housing too if you’re willing to wait for seven years. And 95% literacy rate boasted to the world. But you can’t read what you want.

Hey we’re talking about fun here. So where is it? Why did we come? Cos’ I’d promised my husband a holiday with one of the great loves of his life: music. So far so good. His heart seems to be humming, and the music is flowing everywhere at the moment like a river of wine. Thumping through our veins, and forcing the physical comforts of life back into the illusory world of the old man’s promises.

Our guide, Tatiana, is a beautiful Cuban woman. She is dark, sensual, and deeply intelligent. A practicing anaesthetist and professional photographer, she is forced to guide travellers like us to earn some hard currency to be able to afford the luxuries in life like antibiotics that most Cubans only dream about. Her double life is a perfect example of the “Jurassic” culture created by that ‘old man’. We’re frightened to mention his name here, but we all know the Creator of Jurassic Park is none other than the famous Fidel. He seems to thrive on the elements of contradiction, like a character straight out of a Garcia Marquez novel – small wonder that the novelist was his close friend.

Tatiana is also a big time party animal. She knows we’ve come to Cuba for the fun and music like most of those before us.. I’m a great believer in ‘guided tours’, particularly on the first day you land in a place but I’ve never been on a tour quite like this before.

It’s our first day out and we feel we’ve walked into a Hollywood film set, shot in 1940’s when movies were starting to roll. I can’t get the finger on the camera quick enough, so my pen must be my eyes. I need to drink in the colors, the detail, and the constant beat of the music filling every bone of our bodies. It’s Sunday afternoon and people are partying, like every other Sunday in town. We’re drawn into the pulsating crowd in Callejon de Hammel. It’s better known as ‘music street’ where locals come to “carrumba” or street party on their day off. Before we know it, we’re jigging along to the narcotic rumba rhythm, oblivious of the dust, debris and potholed pavement. No invitation is ever needed to join a party in Cuba.

“La vida te ama
la vida te escucha
la muerte es sorda”

We’re staring at the wall screaming out the soul of the city –

“life loves you
life listens to you
death has no ears”

Street art is overwhelming in music street. The local artist, Salvador Gonzalez Escalona, hosts this regular fiesta in his little alley every Sunday.

He has adorned the walls outside his studio with his poetic prose against an evocative background of sun drenched yellow, blazing red and the burnt orange of a sun not ready to set.

I hurriedly record one of his many messages.

“la religion es tan antigua come el arte
Y el arte tan antiguo come el hombre”

(religion is as old as art, and art is as old as mankind)

Religion and art have been inseparable partners for centuries in Cuba. Mostly because the art is inspired by ‘santeria” , meaning “the way of the saints”. But it’s more than that…

Santeria is a like an indigenous folk religion with deep roots in Western Africa culture. Brought to the Carribean world some 300 years ago with the first African slaves who came to work the sugar plantations, it cleverly hides behind the veneer of Catholicism today. The slaves dressed their ancient gods in Catholic garb in those days and prayed to them in disguise. Today these divine figures or guardian spirits called ‘orishas’ are worshipped quite openly in this street full of shrines, along with much chanting, singing and dancing.

They represent the major forces of nature such as Oshun who is the flirtatious god of love and water. She’s the popular one down here in Music Street this afternoon. She’s dressed in a long flowing sunflower yellow robe. A group of the Sunday crowd wearing yellow and black beads play rhythms on bata drums to please her. Complex musical rhythms form the heartbeat of this culture and we’re swept along in its hypnotic tide to the next party now.

Today is also “Dia de los Ninos’ says Tatiana. That’s “Children’s Day” in Cuba. It’s officially on April 4th, but since that falls on a week day, everyone’s decided to celebrate on Sunday instead. She leads us down the back streets of Havana Vieja, shaking her hips to the sound of the blaring music, instinctively sniffing out the trail to the next party scene. A Children’s Street Party is in full swing. Hard reggae stuff screams from the rooftops and barefoot teenagers are bopping madly under a criss-cross canopy of live wires. This is one of the poorest neighbourhoods where families are crowded six to a room. Yet another paradox in Disneyland. Layers of crumbling grey bricks lean on restored mansions, and narrow passageways open out onto spacious Plazas where much expense has been outlaid to restore public buildings of note, national museums and grand hotels as show pieces to the world. The ragged mini-skirts are partying in a dim light at the end of the alley where the walls cave inwards to almost touch each other. The Romeo and Juliet balconies reach out to each other from either side, shaking with the vibration of the rumbling beat.

And if we weren’t so worried about the web of wires overhead, we’d be transfixed to the spot all night simply staring at the poorest of poor hooked on pleasure.

We walk one block west up to Plaza Vieja. Once upon a time it was a 16th century square where peasants sold their produce at market. Today it’s one of those natural squares, perfectly designed for strolling at sunset, and watching the passing trade.
Tatiana knows every cobbled stone of Old Havana, and with her professional photographer’s eye, she’s chosen the best table for us at the local Taberna to sit and catch a bird’s eye view of Cuban life drift by.

Taberna de la Muralla is housed in an old brewery set up by an Austrian company. Long benches and tables fill two large halls inside but we choose a prime spot outside in the plaza in the midst of the buzz.   Live bands play at most bars and cafes like this with a repertoire ranging from romantic ballads to pacey cha-cha. The guitarist smiles charmingly at our table of three and asks Tatiana if we have a special request. I’m rendered a heartwarming version of “La Historia de un Amor” personally delivered. Next the bands cook up a lively chachacha which swiftly brings memories of my own parents’ parties of the late 50’s when the land of the Long White Cloud was caught up in music mania. I suddenly see my father holding my mother on a rippling coloured dance floor in one of their happiest moments.

That was in the early 1950’s when Cuban music was invading the world, well before the “Revolution”. Chachacha swept into the United States in 1953, and then right across Europe to the far reaches of cosmopolitan centres such as Shanghai where Tony was born. He, too, remembers the craze of Cuban jazz and mambo at the Russian Club where his parents partied. The musical nostalgia binds us all.

There are many different genres of music which Cuba has given the world. The salsa which is well and truly part of international mainstream now, made its beginnings in the turbulent times of the 60’s. Other types such as “Nueva Trova” (new ballads) and ‘son’ , translated politics into beautiful songs of love and loss, at a time when Cuban music represented a glimmer of hope in a polarised world of left and right ‘cold war’ extremes.

Tatiana, is a living product of those times herself. Her name attests to that. She explains the words to all the songs she knows off by heart. By the end of the day we have a better feel for Cuba’s history and yearnings, in a way than no museum or academic could possibly provide.

It’s the best of time of day to sit in the Plaza Vieja now, between the afternoon and evening hours when the light is changing at this magic hour. The shadows dance gently on the yellow and blue facades of the buildings. I snapshot vignettes of Cuban life with my digital. A white robed santero wanders down Inquisidor street past the Viennese Palace humming to the gentle strum of the guitar. A group of old men sit hunched over a wooden table playing dominos together. Chuckling under their breath. A baby boxer chills out in the doorway surveying the scene with a droopy grin…It’s tempting to stay and become a full time photographer here in Havana.

Tony waits for the right moment to discreetly catch a young girl on film, fresh out of dance school, skipping down the street clutching a red rose behind her ear. We share an urgent need to permanently preserve these images of this gorgeous rusty old time warp, before they disappear down the throat of cosmic memory faster than a waterfall.

There are a wealth of music venues in Havana. From hotel lobbies to the popular “casas de trova”. . Yet real entertainment is at the grassroots level mixing with the locals. Even the shabbiest bar in Havana has a live band. Our night winds up at Café de Paris in Calle Obispo, just blocks from our hotel. At the table behind us an orange-robed model sits with her mother and sister, sipping a long mojito . She unwinds her crocheted head scarf, takes off her glasses, and tosses us a big warm smile. Her feet tap impatiently to the warming beat.

As the drums quicken she pulls first the women, one by one, onto the dance floor,
with a kind of irrestible spirit. The men are itching to follow and soon all the tables are cleared and every mojito sipper is caught up in the sensory mood of the moment, moving from partner to partner like old Latin lovers.

Another irony in Jurassic Park. Against a backdrop of fear, communism never killed the city’s zest for life for one minute. We party like teenagers in a hole-in-the wall with our newly found friends till the wee hours of the dawn.

As I pause for a moment to reflect on the intoxicating joie de vivre which Cubans exuberate, I’m reminded of the words in a letter which the Spanish poet Frederica Garcia wrote to his parents, “If I get lost, look for me in Cuba.”