By means of Fabiana del Valle
HAVANA TIMES – Two teenage women headed up Pinar del Rio’s primary side road against the Pista Rita (amphitheater). They had been slightly distinguishable amid the mass of black and gray. Certainly one of them was once making an attempt exhausting to cover her newbie glance by way of stretching the borrowed get dressed that saved mountaineering up on her thighs, revealing greater than what was once allowed.
The yr was once 1999, and at 6 pm the gang known as “Zeus” was once going to play. The streets had been flooded with long-haired formative years with their tattoos and piercings. They sported t-shirts, tight denims, studded belts, footwear or top boots, and sleeveless jackets with a couple of patches.
The 2 women had been going to peer their first reside live performance. When the hardcore tune started, they ran to take shelter close to the degree, for worry of finishing up beaten towards the partitions of the amphitheater. The development’s organizer attempted to expel them from there, however the youngster within the borrowed get dressed stood her floor.
“You simply try to get us down from her, as a result of there’s no method I’m going to enroll in that horde.”
That massive lout gave the impression so imply! She realized from her buddy that he directed Tendencia, on the time the best-known band within the Pinar del Rio province.
Who may just bet that 12 months later she’d be showing in one among Tendencia’s movies doing headbanging, and that “Kiko” will be the one to arrange her first Artwork Display within the gallery run by way of the Asociacion Hermanos Saiz (Formative years cultural affiliation”. Or that later nonetheless, she’d be a privileged witness to the name of the game exodus of the band in 2022.
The band Tendencia
However it was once 1999, and she or he made her legitimate access as a Cuban rock follower with a borrowed get dressed and by way of status as much as a man who anxious her. That stance gained her a spot within the first row, proper beside the band’s drummer, the place she may just benefit from the sight of Dionisio’s naked spherical butt when the lead singer for Zeus, without a reticence in any way, decreased his pants to the rhythm of “Violento Metrobus.”
Rock tune in Cuba has a historical past of ups and downs, at all times restricted and semi-clandestine because of the legitimate disapproval.
In a speech he gave in 1963 at the steps of Havana College, Fidel Castro obviously expressed his scorn for the ones manifestations of overseas developments, just like the tune of Elvis Presley, tight denims, or the blue denims we known as pitusas.
“Lots of the ones good-for-nothing youngsters, kids of the bourgeoise, are going round with some pants which can be method too tight. (laughter); a few of them with their little guitars putting Elvis Presley poses, and who’ve taken their over the top freedoms to the extraordinary of short of to visit the general public accumulating puts to arrange their wimpy presentations on their very own.”
In newer years, the regime’s perspective against rock tune has softened, now not simplest against native and Latin American artists, but additionally against a few of English beginning. RickWakeman, Sepultura,Audioslave, and the Rolling Stones have all presented large concert events in Havana that drew in fanatics from in every single place the rustic.
However in recent times, a brand new phenomenon has turn out to be visual. A number of bands have begun emigrating to america. It’s now not the primary time that Cuban rock has suffered the scars of financial disaster or emigration – it’s simply that this time pessimism reigns.
The blows of the 90s demonstrated the style’s power and the general public’s unconditional fortify. The present scenario comes to a brand new wave of bands which can be looking to subsist in a rustic with scarcities and an international the place rock and heavy steel tune have misplaced floor.
For the instant, within the face of this landscape, the one factor left is taking note of the tune of all the ones bands I as soon as loved listening to reside. Recalling tales: that Tendencia live performance the place I suffered my first fainting assault; the commute we took with Medula and l. a. Comision Depuradora; the pictures with Aldo of Los Aldeanos; or my surreptitious commute into the Nationwide Resort to get footage of the Sepultura band participants.
I’m going to hold directly to the reminiscence of each and every second lived, and pass ahead like that first time – when in a borrowed get dressed, and along side my buddy, I came upon the price of Cuban rock tune and the tenderness of its fans.
Learn extra from the diary of Fabiana del Valle right here on Havana Instances.
