Pupy interview

I've started wading through Richard's Cuban music radio files at Mucho Swing, as I thought it would be a good way to hear new music straight from island. Taking his advice that MB Caribe and Todo Musica play the most timba, I'm just sticking with them - even with those two, it's a pretty time-consuming process. But it does yield rewards. I have uploaded a couple of songs to the player on the right - a song that the DJs I'm sure have said was Tumbao Habana song, but, it turns out (thanks Michelle, is Cuban expat Lesmer. It's quite PR-salsa-y, but is nevertheless quite appealing, and another called Ni flores ni detalles, by someone called Rene Suarez Zapata, who seems to be a former timbalero with Pupy, but apart from that I know absolutely nothing. But I like this song a lot - particularly the coro at the end, which is super catchy.
Last Saturday on Todo Musica, Pupy stopped by to have a chat about the new cantantes and the new, as yet unreleased album. It's very interesting, and a little saddening, to listen to he and the interviewer discuss new singer Michel Perez without once alluding to the reason for his arrival: Pepito's departure.
I've uploaded an edited version of the interview below. As many of the songs they played throughout can be heard at other sites online, I've only included the version of Olvídala que el viento lleve, with Michel's new vocals (Pepito can still be heard clearly in the coros), which comes right at the end.

boomp3.com

Havana snapshot, 2008

Alaín's farandula sports the hot Havana looks.

Like other visitors to Havana, when I get back the first question most people ask is: "Has it changed much?" Normally the answer is, "No, not really." And that's still the answer more or less, in spite of the recent changes to laws regarding mobile phones, hotels etc. I mean, what you're talking about here are changes that have affected a lot of people, and are visible, and apart from there being more mobile phones around - in Havana anyway - the others don't seem to have come into play. A couple of Habaneros I know who went into hotels still felt as uncomfortable as if they were not supposed to be there. Some of the mooted changes haven't actually happened yet, and some, like more land being made available to cultivate food, have been enacted too recently to be felt yet.
But there are two obvious visible changes.
One has already been noted: the dreaded camellos have been banished (apparently to the countryside) and in their place are sleek new articulated buses from China. These are not only a great deal more comfortable than the camellos, but there are now more routes and they run with much greater frequency. The price is still the same, but if you don't have to travel at peak hour, you should have room to breath while you travel. And you won't have to wait for hours till the next bus arrives. This is really great news as transport has been such a problem for so long.
The second obvious change is that Havana had, for the first time, immigrants (the first time in recent history, at least). Or if not immigrants exactly, groups of foreigners living there for extended periods who clearly were not tourists. Apparently out in the Playas del Este there were about 1000 Chinese studying Spanish in preparation for the Olympics. But closer to the city, in Centro Habana and Habana Vieja, there were suddenly a lot of young Chinese too - what they were doing there was a little more of a mystery. They shopped for their food at the local markets and cooked for themselves in their casas, and walked around the streets together.

I feel ridiculous writing about Chinese people walking around the streets together from a multicultural hub like Sydney. But this is Havana I'm talking about, a place where a person's foreigness is constantly noted, where you are continuously reminded that you are an outsider, and it really was unusual to suddenly see so many more foreigners in the streets.


And now onto the really important changes: what is de moda in Havana at the moment? Well, sadly, high-waisted jeans, neither appropriate for the climate nor, it should be said, for the common body type in Cuba (to be honest I don't think high-waisted jeans are really appropriate for any body type) have turned up. And not just high-waisted either, but those super high-waisted ones that seem to have a little waistcoat attached. Yuck. With any luck they won't stick around.
Alice bands also seem popular (cute) and the aforementioned sequinned bras - scary but glam - are popular at the gigs. There is a trend among very pale-skinned girls to dye their hair blue-black, and I saw more than one tiara. The glitter eyeliner I have seen for the last three years is still around, and I finally managed to get my hands on it myself (previous enquiries about its source had yielded nothing but "de una chica en la calle"). Of course on returning to Sydney I find it is finally available here.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, some people are adopting the indie look of longish unkempt hair, stovepipes - sorry, skinny jeans - t-shirts and sneakers. Mostly guys, it should be said. It's a nice contrast to the bling, which still holds pole position.
Also, Paris Hilton's influence is showing: there were a few people in the street carrying tiny dogs. I walked into my landlord's flat a few days after my arrival to find a mop of fur on the floor - it was a 45-day old Pekingese.
One of the odder trends is the arrival, finally, of house music. Oh it's been here and there in bits and pieces over the years, but now, taxi drivers are playing it - and I do mean drivers plural - and people are talking about it. So it is finally creeping into the mainstream. And I wonder, why now, after all this time?

Alexander's cosas

Alexander Abreu y Havana D'Primera
Uploaded by Yemayas_Verse

OK, after much mucking around with conversions that didn't work, Rumba Barry came to the party and suggested iSquint, which has done a pretty good job. The next task was to find a video hosting site that didn't further trash the quality. That's a bit trickier. Daily motion seems marginally better than youtube, though the video is there too, just cause it gets so much traffic. Now that I have resolved these difficulties - or as best as I can for now - I will upload some more of the video I have. This is one of Alexander's kickarse songs, called something like Hay cosas.

I still have more photos and a long post about the cambios in La Havana to go, not to mention another muso interview to upload.

Entrevista con Alexander Abreu

One day a few weeks ago, Cuban music legend Alexander Abreu climbed the 57 stairs from the street up to my flat in Centro Habana, so I (with help from my friend Paulina Vidal) could grill him about his awesome new group Havana D'Primera. Outside in busy Belascoain, the fancy new articulated buses were roaring, as usual, so we closed the shutters and sat in the gloom, so it would be quiet enough for the recorder to actually record Alexander's words, rather than the cacophony in the calle.
I'll be honest: I was a bit awestruck. It wasn't just that he is one of Cuba's most highly regarded musos - and that even other musos have nothing but respect for him. It was that Havana D'Primera's concerts had totally knocked my socks off (as you can see from all the reviews I posted while I was there). So to have him right there in my house was exciting (when I used to work on the teen mags, we used to call it "interview fixation"). And on top of that, every time I met Alexander - both before and after - he was always courteous and likeable.
Now, finally, after coming back home, and resuming my normal life, I have finished the translation, and the interview is up, in both Spanish and English, at timba.com.
I still have some good video of Havana D'Primera to upload, but I'm having trouble reducing the file sizes without losing the quality (I'm trying to improve on the recent clips that have gone up at youtube). If anyone who has a Mac has any ideas, can you please let me know. I have had no luck with Quicktime Pro, ffmpegx, nor D-Vision - each of those either gives me too big a loss in quality, if not actually a complete loss of the audio track or terrible pixelation.
Anyone ... anyone... Bueller?

Novedades

Muchoswing.com has video of Alaín Daniel doing a cute little song called La Micky. He announces Jacob Forever, from Gente de Zona as the rapper - that's who did it on the demo, but the menor who slouches to the microphone is actually his trombonista - he is miming here, but he does it with the band live (when Jacob isn't in the audience) and doesn't do a bad job. I had video of this song, but as the spots down the front at Alaín's Salon Rojo gigs are always taken, this video is a much better deal. It won't be on Mucho Swing forever, so if you're reading this in the future and you want to see it, look for it at youtube - I'm sure someone will have posted it by then (if not actually me).

Dany's timba blog has a live version of the Manolito song sung by El Noro called Soy una bomba, that I wrote about and posted video of a while back (look for it in his web player). As I noted, it gets off to a slow start, but it's quite appealing in a very unManolito-like way.

Klimax's new album Solo tú y yo has turned up at Prodland. It has a bunch of really good songs on it, the stand out being, I think, Adios amor, which reminds me of Piloto's early work with Kalunga. But there is some more good timba/salsa there too, among the quasi-reggaeton-cumbia-Latin-jazz-n-tropical-pop stuff that Piloto has always had a penchant for. So far, I like it a lot more than the last album, Nadie se parece a ti. Too bad I didn't get a chance to see them this time around.