Cuba Libre

     . . . . . Hey there! Maybe . . . you were fortunate missing this expedition, for an expedition is more accurate a description than 'vacation' for the exertion, lack of sleep, constant moving and the misery of spending so many hours in the bus's bad seats and the worse chairs. None of we women avoided the dreaded edema of ankles and calves, and some of the men suffered it too. I'm guessing only one person managed not to get sick in some way or other during this expedition, though  only for a day -- she is tiny, and an old Cuba hand, which may have something to do with it.

In Baracoa, oldest ville in Cuba and first capital, located in Guantánamo province, we stayed in Casas Particulars, as the single hotels still isn't open for business since Hurricane Matthew tore off the roof.  Baracoa is my favorite place in Cuba. If I lived in Cuba, this is where I want to live. Baracoa is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Most likely the constant movement and lack of sleep did it. The food was of high quality ingredients and well prepared. Still, I quit eating about the last four days because of gippy tum.  I wasn't really sick, just felt awful. Still do, generally.

I got bitten by something the first or second night in. Due to having to move so fast and the dimness of the light in the hotel rooms (hotels very nice!), I didn't notice the big bruise on my neck until my fingers encountered a series of large bumps radiating from my throat and around to the spinal bump below the skull.  I got scared, thinking of eggs laid, etc. But it was a rash (which in Cuban Spanish comes out as 'herpes' thereby scaring me even more) I was told by the clinician I was taken to see, irritated by sweat and my long dangling earrings. Soap and water. I used mouthwash as a disinfectant too, washing it frequently with a cotton swab, since sweat was unavoidable. I put cortisone on it too, though first neosporan.

Our Lady of Assumption Church in Baracoa.  It houses what remains of the Sacred Cross of Parra. planted by Christopher Columbus in 1492 -- but it is made of native Cuban wood, thus not from Europe.  This bit of material history honestly gave me shivers when I viewed it.

This is what remains of a much larger cross.  Over the centuries pieces were taken as holy and material history relics. Now what is left remains on public display but behind a glass enclosure.

My own ankles swelled long before we ever got of the Holguín airport and to the hotel -- recall we arose at 3 AM and then didn't get to the hotel until around 4 PM. This was followed almost immediately by dinner -- with scheduled music at the lovely restaurant, not a group assigned by the state -- and then to another music event -- with those terrible seats. The circulation is cut off for the entire time. This may be where I got bitten, since the tables were on a (beautiful) patio.

By the time we did the reverse trek and B and I got back to Thompson Street -- I've never been so depleted in my life. Not only physically, but mentally. There was never any time to process what we were seeing and hearing. B commented to me on the way home that maybe this time "even el Vaqueor gets it, that he was over-programmed." I was too worn out, hurting and sick to sleep the night we got back. So up at 6 AM -- another night of less than 5 hours of sleep. But by 6:30 PM Wednesday I was O-U-T.  Slowly my bedtime has been inching a little later, every night now.  I may make it to 10 PM tonight!

However, as on the January 2016 Western Cuban music tour,  this was a most splendid and intrepid group of Travelers. They took everything in stride and they loved the music. Their only criticism, if they had any, was, they'd have liked some time off and not such a rigorous and relentless schedule. They were wonderful and they are what made the trip work all the way down the line. I loved them all and enjoyed getting to know them so much. One has tended to forget that our nation is filled with kind, intelligent, decent, generous people who are also fun to hang out with. Just this alone was good for us all.

Nevertheless, I was still astounded at how quickly "the bus" bonded with each other, our guides and the driver -- guide and driver this time calm, patient, cheerful, cooperative and eager about our activities, the opposite of the driver and guide on the January 2016 tour.

B also mentioned during the trek back home that the inability to spend much if any time online with the devices also incited people to interact with each other, the landscapes and experiences much more than if there was constant internet service. I'm not sure, as though not music professionals, (which so many in the January 2016 expedition were).

That we weren't predominately professional music people didn't matter -- as they loved the music and had so much experience traveling in places that aren't always comfy. All have specialties and professions, and whatever was needed at a moment, one of  would probably be able to provide. Some of us are essentially introverts that can find spending every waking moment with other people not always easy, but we all managed that splendidly too, and that has to do with who these people are. We understood each other.

The eastern part of Cuba has been having a terrible drought. Santiago had seen no rain for year. I arrived, however -- and the rains began! Just as on my trip in January 2016, it rained and rained, almost all the time. While on Ned's other two trips with Travelers, during which I stayed home, there was not a drop of rain. So Santiago owes me . . . and it is indeed, by its lights, repaying -- see further down . . .

How quickly the trees, flowers, crops and other botanicals, the whole countryside, responded to even a little rain. The dried out trees began perking immediately, so much so that it was visible at least to me, who recalls what this part of the world usually looks like. By the time we left, the sides of the mountains that were brown as we flew from Ft. Lauderdale into the airport of Holguín, were turning green. Maybe I could hire myself out to drought-ravaged places? But wait! What about my own city and state?

The eastern province, Oriente, has changed enormously. It's still the poorest part of of Cuba, and Guantánamo the poorest of the poor parts. I have been there before though, and to my eyes, it too looked enormously perked up, materially. Additionally, there were things I wanted to buy as gifts, which I've never had the least interest in doing in Havana, and in Holguín particularly, the center of the diversified agricultural region, the airport tiendas were a thousand thousand times nicer -- the departure lounge in every way was nicer -- than Havana's Jose Martí's. Good place to get duty-free. The things I bought outside of the airport are still in Ned's suitcase, as I swapped such things out in exchange for taking all his dirty laundry home -- mountains and mountains of dirty laundry from both of us -- an expedition in a hot, sweaty and rainy-to-monsooning period will do that.

I was so happy finding things for gifts even more, maybe, than my other favorite totally personal bit -- when a brilliant woman from Alabama, who was raised a good deal in San Antonio, and now, among other things runs white water rafting expeditions down the Grand Canyon for challenged people who would otherwise never be able to have such an experience -- blind people, people who can't walk, autistic -- and imagine what kind of organization and back-up there is for this! -- well, Martha and I broke protocol and went and peed in the monte instead of standing in line for the baño, standing guard for each other. We felt like such outlaws. 🚽 Then A bought us beers, applauding our pluck, beers since we'd peed we now dared drink before getting back on the bus -- and the beers were -- Heineken, not the national Bucanero or Crystal. 🍺

El V left us early on Tuesday, the day the rest of us flew back to the US. He's still in Havana; yesterday he had lunch with Pablo Milanés -- a very big deal.

Wednesday, el V and CD were summoned to a meeting with the two women who run the Casas de Cultura of Cuba, and Culture policies and activities in general. These officials are 1000% behind what he and CD are doing with these Postmamboist Music seminars and want more -- he called me from habana vieja's casa de los abanicos where he was replacing my worked-to-death fan. They were laughing, and I would even describe Cd as giddy -- something one doesn't see often. Again as Ben observed on our flights back to NYC we didn't get to see her brilliant, beautiful smile and laugh much this round -- she was far too busy (she's also organizing Cuba Disco, the annual Cuban international music festival in Havana, which is coming right up) and anxious that everything go right -- working working, working, every minute.

I had told them both I was never going back to Cuba -- it's just too physically hard, but from casa de los abanicos Ned chortled, "O yes you are!" Both el V and I are officially invited to a cultural and history conference in Santiago early in July. The conference is going to pay for our airfare and hotel !!!!!!! -- Cuba!!!!! paying for somebody!!!!! -- to do a presentation of Slave Coast.

Well, it will be good preparation for what we will have do for the Vera Cruz performance in October -- in Spanish. And if I didn't go, it would be a dis to those who invited us, and that wouldn't be good for el V. I can't do that. Also, I . . . don't . . . think . . . I have to ride a bus for hundreds of miles . . . . and never get any sleep.

The breadth of music and culture the Travelers experienced -- is not to be compared with anything others get out of going to Cuba, at least in a group. And much of what the Travelers experienced could not be set up for an individual. Without el V and CD, this can't happen. No one can copy his tours. Nobody else knows all the ground, the people and have the connections and experience -- and the trust of everyone involved.

It was so good to be away from everything here.

We all felt that way. While in Cuba no one was impatient to connect when connection was possible. People checked in on their kids and so on when opportunity arrived (kids basically adults, of course, not little kids or infants), but otherwise didn't bother.  Had no interest in the news outside of learning that back home it was snow and deep freeze, while where we were was beautiful and warm.

We regained equilibrium, perspective, sanity and dignity, despite the grueling aspects of the expedition.

Nor could it have happened without such a prepared and passionately involved group of people. I miss them.

El V gets back on Tuesday -- direct flight, no 3 hour layover, only a single security and customs line instead of two, and he's had a week of being able to sleep and not travel, so he'll be rarin' to go.

In the meantime I'm curious about what el V's been up to in Havana.  They -- he and CD -- apparently are doing a smaller group thing for the Rumba Festival in October.  He cannot let this one pass him by as CD got Rumba categorized as a UNESCO world heritage patrimony this year, and she got to rumba via el V.  This will be casas particulars not a hotel -- the rooms are exhorbitant in the hotels -- but also a bus for transport. This would be self-selected set of rumba heads, so it may well work.

That Wednesday meeting with the Directors de Casas de Cultura and Patrimony -- whatever it / they are called -- I can't keep these agencies and the people who run them straight -- seems to be directed toward more actitivies.  Other potential Cuba projects are being thrown at him as well. Who knows?  But unless things go entirely off track in the USA -- always possible -- more Cuba in the future, it looks like.  Nothing could make el V happier.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr + The Whitney Plantation + Daily Life a/k/a We're Still Busy

In an article for the Daily Beast, noted investigative journalist, Jason Berry, explores:

"Removal of Confederate Monuments Compared to ISIS: Facing comparisons to ISIS militants, the Nazis, and a random white guy complaining about urban crime, the New Orleans city council voted to remove Confederate statues deemed offensive. But the fight is far from over."

Berry begins his piece with the Whitney Plantation Slave Memorial Museum created and financed by local New Orleans attorney, John J. Cummings III, with which to discuss monumental sites, and whom they honor and memorialize.  In every way, located in Louisiana, Cumming's Whitney project to memorialize the slaves -- children, women and men -- who worked and died there, is the anti-Lee Circle monument.

Toward the conclusion of Berry's article, cites The American Slave Coast about certain information concerning antebellum slavery.

As well, Friday, Counterpunch listed The American Slave Coast as one of the top ten best books of 2015.  It opened the reasoning behind placing the book on a top ten list that includes not only Greg Grandin's Kissenger book (GG shared the Bancroft History Prize for 2014) and Mary Beard's history of Ancient Rome, with this statement:

"This sprawling and unsparing history of the American slave-breeding industry may be the most important book of the last decade."

That's a Christmas gift that warms the heart, after all these years of work to make The American Slave Coast!

Last night the winds were so high night that the They Say People warned us other people to have food and water and heat sources in case the power lines went down. Where we are though, our wires are below ground. But it's cold enough all right. Which is reassuring, as it is the Winter Solstice. Do not like climate change!

Currently however, I'm wearing wool sox and the Icelandic reindeer sweater el V brought me last summer. (Meaning the traditional woven design of the sweater not that, you know, real reindeer were harmed in the course of the mission to keep mz constancia warm in winter NYC, of course.) Though by the time we go uptown for Christmas Eve (same day biz meeting uptown re upcoming event for Slave Coast -- bad scheduling, MEN -- I have things to do for Christmas dinner, which you MEN never think about because your wives do these things). But today, as per usual every year for D's Christmas party, it's going to be a cold trek to her place.

So chilly in the apartment this morning that as soon as we'd emerged from warm, comfy fluffy bed, I asked el V to put on some hot Cuban music to at least warm up the audio atmosphere.

Cold as yesterday was I needed to shop. I managed to bargain down the price for a backpack I need for the Cuban trip. Pick pocketing has gotten so rife in Havana I don't dare use the comfortable-to-carry-in-the-heat open top cloth bags (temps there will be ranging into the 80's it looks like, and not getting much cooler at night). I'm certainly not taking my very expensive, exquisitely fabricated handbag, purchased for the book tour -- which, btw, has stood up beautifully to being dragged all over the place, stuffed with everything from books, a raincoat and another pair of shoes, sitting for weeks on end on the dirty floor of The Car, dragged through the rain, etc.

Sensing I'm going to use this backpack thing only once -- I'm not the sort who does backpacks -- I didn't want to Spend Money. $25 tops. I went up and down Canal Street this week twice, looking at what is available, getting prices. Everybody wanted between $45 and $80. Almost all of them looked to be what they are: cheap Asian / African knockoffs. As well, they mostly looked as though they'd fall apart within a day or two of being on the floor of the bus, shoved behind me to support my back, etc. There was a single exception to all of these. The guy insisted he had to have $50.  No, too much for something I'm using only once. But I got him down to $30, which from checking out up and down Canal, I understood I wasn't going to get under, not in December, with hordes of foreign tourists handing out U.S. cash as if they were USians in Iraq back in 2003.  But still, $30 was better than $50 and higher.

In the meantime have the retailers on Canal Street changed, aggressive in the way Middle Eastern souk vendors are, or those in Southeast Asia, almost, though this being USA, not quite physically grabbing you and pulling you into their holes-in-the- wall. Interesting experiences. This is the first time in my life I've set out with the idea that I wasn't going to pay asking price and bargained. With African trips scheduled for 2017 I'd better practice.

Via Da List - Rumba Para Bebo

Concerning el V's latest Afropop Worldwide program; materials recorded in Barcelona, at the end of October this year.

Tell your friends:

My one-hour Afropop Worldwide episode based on the Rumba Para Bebo is available now on Soundcloud. It came out good. Described in the [nedslist] post of November 3, this concert-memorial-Cuban-jazz-jam-rumba-Kongo-ceremony honoring Bebo Valdés (produced by Joan Anton Cararach) was held on October 29 in Barcelona as part of this year's Voll-Damm Barcelona International Jazz Festival. Starring Chucho Valdés (whose powers continue to increase) and the Afro Cuban Messengers (Gastón Joya, Yaroldy Abreu, Dreiser Durruthy, Rodney Barretto), and featuring Jerry González, Omar Sosa and Malongo, Mayra Caridad Valdés, Lázara Cachao, Javier Massó “Caramelo,” Javier Colina, Mauricio Vallina, Paloma Manfugás, Eladio Reinón, David Pastor, and more! With the voices of Chucho Valdés and Omar Sosa.

I had ridiculously more material than I needed to make this show. There were almost two and a half hours of music, and Afropop Worldwide is only an hour, so it was painful deciding what great music and which interviews to leave out, but I think I did a good job of getting every featured performer into the show. Just click here to stream.

For those who prefer ether charm, the program will air on the radio this week wherever Afropop Worldwide is heard. In New York, that's WNYE, 91.5 FM, at 11 p.m. Saturday.

There's a beautifully shot video version of two hours of the Rumba Para Bebo available streaming on arte live web, well worth watching, but it omits two substantial numbers that are central to our Afropop episode: Jerry González's interpretation of "Bésame Mucho" and Omar Sosa and Malongo's spine-tingling "Invocación," a palo monte call to Bebo. You gotta go to Soundcloud for that. (You can also get there through the Afropop website.)

Happy Holidaze.  

*Remembering Coco Robicheaux* -- Mark Folse in The Gambit

"Mark Folse talks to friends of the late Frenchmen Street bluesman and artist ...."

When news of the death of local blues and spiritual icon Coco Robicheaux went viral on the Internet Nov. 25, some said his last words were, "I'm home." Bartender Sara Shaw at the Apple Barrel bar on Frenchmen Street, who attended to him in his last moments, as well as the patrons seated next to him when he collapsed, remember them as "The next round is on me."

Full story in the Gambit here.

Tomorrow, Coco Robicheaux, 2 Memorial Parades

In the Times-Pic:

[ " At least three events in the coming days will memorialize Curtis Arceneaux, aka Coco Robicheaux, the popular local hoodoo blues guitarist, singer and vocalist. Robicheaux died of a suspected heart attack after collapsing at the Apple Barrel Bar on Nov. 25. He was 64.

Relatives and friends of the family are invited to attend the memorial service at DW Rhodes Chapel, 3933 Washington on Saturday, December 3 at 3:30 pm. Visitation will begin at 3:00 pm. Interment is private.

Also on Dec. 3, friends have organized another event at Marie’s Bar (2843 Burgundy), starting at 5 p.m. A second-line will depart from Marie’s, bound for the Apple Barrel on Frenchmen Street, one of Robicheaux’s favorite haunts.

His family and musicians with whom he played have orchestrated a more involved event nine days later, on Dec. 12. A procession starts on Frenchmen Street at 3:30 p.m. and ends at the House of Blues, 225 Decatur St. Starting at 6 p.m., a host of musicians will perform at the HOB in honor of Robicheaux. " ]

We're playing Spiritlands tonight, up here in the cold crisp Saturday night pasta ritual, giving up the traditional Saturday night Phil Schaap's Traditions in Swing, for Coco instead.

So many people are so upset.  It took a while for it to become real, irrevocable, that Coco was really gone.

El V's interview with Coco for Bomb Magazine here.

Let The (Cuban) Stars In!

Larry Blumenfeld reports in the Village Voice re the Afro-Cuban All Stars and our activist activities to change the ridiculous laws that rule our face-to-face relationships and visits with Cubans, both here and there:

"When Juan de Marcos González brings his 14-piece Afro-Cuban All-Stars to Town Hall on March 28, they'll include residents of eight countries, from Mexico to Sweden, Spain to the United States. But none from Cuba. No musician living there (and planning to return) has played here since December 2003, when pianist Chucho Valdés headlined the Village Vanguard. After that, the Bush administration effectively shut down all U.S.-Cuba cultural exchanges.

González has contributed mightily to that cut-short exchange. Best known as the architect of the Buena Vista Social Club, he assembled that band with musicians drawn from the first edition of his All-Stars. (Their debut CD, A Toda Cuba Le Gusta, released simultaneously with Buena Vista's, was the better recording.) But he soon went his own way, turning down offers for more retro-styled recordings, or what he called "la onda de los viejitos" ("the fad of the old-timers"). He's been cleverly crossing stylistic boundaries with his latest batch of All-Stars ever since, blending traditional and contemporary Cuban sounds. His 40-city tour is equally resourceful in terms of border crossings: The band's members, all with roots in Cuba, have passports in other nations, thus sidestepping the rules that exclude Cuban musicians.

"This band is bringing a message," he says. "Cuba is here, independent of any politician or policy. Our music and our influence cannot be stopped. And it's time for the policy to catch up with the reality."

Such change may be afoot. Tucked into the recently approved Omnibus Appropriations Bill, despite vociferous objection by such hard-liners as New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, are provisions that liberalize travel for Americans to visit relatives in Cuba. However, the bill does so essentially by defunding the Treasury Department agencies that police such activity, which is different from legal sanction—besides, it expires in six months.

"But Mr. Obama is a smart guy," González adds. "He's going to open the doors wider, at least to cultural exchange."

To that end, the President's inbox holds the urging of more than a thousand noted artists, educators, and cultural leaders via signatures on a letter calling for, among other measures, the elimination of restrictions that prevent Americans from traveling to Cuba, and Cuban artists from performing in the United States. (See it at cubaresearch.info/cubaletter2009.) "I shouldn't have to ask permission of my government to travel anywhere," says Louis Head, co-founder of the U.S.-Cuba Cultural Exchange, which orchestrated the letter campaign. "Historically, cultural expression in the U.S. and Cuba are joined at the hip, and it's time to respect that vital connection."

"The letter is very important," Grammy-winning pianist Arturo O'Farrill told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! "For us to be denied access to this source of cultural sustenance is absolutely insane."

The "Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act" (H.R. 874 in the House and S. 428 in the Senate), a more effective and lasting option than the Omnibus add-on, is attracting a growing list of co-sponsors and, if passed, would permit all U.S. citizens unrestricted travel rights. That should allow, for instance, O'Farrill to realize his dream of bringing his Afro-Latin Orchestra to Cuba to perform the music composed by his father, Chico, in the home Chico left in 1958, for good.

Still, we need the door to swing open both ways, so that, as Alicia Alonso, director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, wrote in a 2007 open letter to American artists, "a song, a book, a scientific study, or a choreographic work are not considered, in an irrational way, a crime." González envisions bringing a 30-piece band to the U.S., adding such musicians as pianist David Alfaro, who lives in Cuba. No one should stop him.

Juan de Marcos González and the Afro-Cuban All-Stars play Town Hall March 28"