World City Guide

Culture

Such a rich mixture of races has produced a truly amazing variety of artistic genres, particularly in the field of popular music. Cubans, by nature, are passionate people and no more so than when it comes to their music. Trova, from the Spanish for troubadour, is ballad-style singing to the accompaniment of a guitar. Most towns have at least one Casa de la Trova, where anybody of any age who can play a musical instrument can happily while away the evening with an impromptu jam session. Guajira is country-style music and the most famous song in this genre is the ubiquitous Guantanamera. Above all salsa, with its mesmerising rhythms, has taken the world by storm. Cuba has become internationally renowned for other well-known rhythms, such as the rhumba, a combination of Afro-Cuban music for voice and percussion, which is now accompanied by a passionate dance. The cha-cha-cha, originally popularised between the 1930s and 50s, is still popular. The state is keen to encourage all aspects of the arts and most towns have at least one theatre and a cinema. Standards are high and Cuban performers have achieved international fame. Details of performances can be found in the city listings magazine, Cartelera.

Music: Groups such as Los Van Van and The Buena Vista Social Club have long been established in Cuba, but now their reputation has spread worldwide and both frequently tour in the West. They perform regularly in different venues around the city, such as El Palacio de la Salsa in the Hotel Riviera, between Paseo and Malecon (tel: (7) 334 051). Classical music is performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, who regularly appear at the Teatro Nacional, between Paseo and Calle 39 (tel: (7) 796 011).

Theatre: The standard of theatre in Havana is, perhaps surprisingly, high. There are regular performances of local, modern plays and international classics. The most professional performances are at the Gran Teatro (tel: (7) 629 473), corner of Paseo del Prado and Calle San Rafael, Centro Habana, and the Teatro Nacional (see Music above).

Dance: The National Ballet of Cuba has gained international fame thanks in part to its founder Alicia Alonso. Cuban ballet has also been greatly influenced by the years of close association with the famous Russian ballet schools of the Bolshoi and Marinsky theatres. Ballet performances take place at the Gran Teatro (see above). Every night the Palacio de la Salsa in the Hotel Riviera (see Music above) pulsates to the sound of salsa with some exciting performances by local bands.

Film: Cinema is huge in Cuba, although homegrown films are few and most cinemas show dubbed or subtitled foreign movies. Many major international films do reach Havana but generally a couple of years after they have been released abroad. Havana can boast dozens of cinemas, including: Payret, opposite the Capotilio on Paseo de Marti; Yara, opposite the Habana Libre Hotel, Calle 23, and Charles Chaplin, Calle 23 between Calles 10 and 12.

The internationally acclaimed Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate), directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, and set near the Coppelia ice cream parlour in Havana, was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film in 1994. Buena Vista Social Club (1999), directed by Wim Wenders, is a documentary that chronicles the collaboration of Ry Cooder with these legendary Cuban musicians, all now aged between 70 and 90 years.

Cultural events: August brings the enormous street party of the Habana Carnaval every year. Biennially, May brings the International Guitar Festival and September the International Theatre Festival. Every October, many of the world’s best dancers travel to Havana for the annual Havana International Ballet Festival. The annual film festival in December, Festival del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, features the latest films from Latin America, as well as some international art films. There is a biennial International Jazz Festival, in December for 2002, but it is a much smaller event than when the late, great Ronnie Scott was involved.

Literary Notes
The romance of Havana has made it an attractive setting for many works of fiction by both Cuban and international writers. The most famous book featuring Havana as a backdrop has to be Graham Greene’s classic 1958 novel, Our Man in Havana. A vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana joins the British secret service, but sends in bogus reports and photographs of vacuum parts as supposed secret weapons and recruits imaginary agents. His description of the Tropicana is familiar to visitors today: ‘Stage and dance-floor were open to the sky. Chorus-girls paraded twenty feet up among the great palm-trees, while pink and mauve searchlights swept the floor. A man in bright blue evening clothes sang in Anglo-American about Paree. Then the piano was wheeled away into the undergrowth, and the dancers stepped down like awkward birds from among the branches.’

Ernest Hemingway’s 1952 novel, The Old Man and the Sea, won him the Nobel Prize for Literature for his simple tale of an old Cuban fisherman’s fight with a big fish. The prolific contemporary writer, James Michener, co-wrote a book with photographer John Kings in 1989 called Six Days in Havana. Their impressions of Castro’s Cuba gave a unique insight into the country and its people. Modern Cuba is depicted in Pico Iyer’s Cuba and the Night (1995), an in-depth, rather cynical, description of a Cuban woman’s relationship with an ex-pat. Cristina Garcia’s moving novel Dreaming in Cuban (1992) explores a family divided by the revolution, looking from both sides – the exiles in America and those who stayed behind in Cuba.