Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I’d like to believe the same is true with music: that every shit song has an equal and opposite brilliant song, although the statistics will probably prove that the ratio is slightly skewed. So, as a counterweight to the Kesha song I wrote about, I’d like to write about a song I find simply stunning; ‘yo no tanto como el’ by Pedro Luis Ferrer.
The beauty of this song comes not only from Ferrer’s huge talent, his professional delivery, his emotional yet dignified sentiment (though all these factors are major considerations for me), but that the song is allowed to operate on a number of levels (to use that most worn of musical clichés). The apparent simplicity of the song allows listeners – and I don’t just think Cuban, or even Spanish speaking listeners – to engage with and find poignant meaning in the song.
A summary of song and performer perhaps may help here – the now ubiquitous ‘back story’. Ferrer is a Cuban songwriter who has been working since the 1960’s (effectively the life of the Cuban revolution). In the 1970’s and 80’s, he enjoyed fame and, if not fortune (a difficult thing to find in Cuba) then certainly artistic commendation. His songs were well known to many Cubans through their numerous television and radio broadcasts and Ferrer was entering the tightly guarded pantheon of ‘Great Cuban artists’. However, some of his more pointed, critical social commentaries began to attract the wrong kind of attention, and by the 1990’s, Ferrer was black listed by the government. His albums are now unavailable (legally at least) in Cuba, his songs never broadcast. This song, ‘yo no tanto como el’, I assume (it is not on an album, nor can I find a date for its ‘release’) must come from around the time of Ferrer’s personal censorship. It is, on the surface, a description of the ideological differences between Ferrer and his father. Yet there are an almost limitless number of avenues of personal interpretation open to the listener to explore, hidden within the simple, repeated words.
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All this discussion of post-modernity and appropriation of style on ‘The Grain’ recently[1] has left me thinking about the ‘authenticity’, to use a musicological buzzword, of such musical practises. The criticism often levelled at post-modernity is that too often it appropriates style without concerning itself with content – or context. Thus we lambaste artists who seem to quick to jump on the latest stylistic bandwagon. Case in point, the recent 80’s pop revival for taking the sound but leaving the meaning. The reason being that we take it as read that the meaning of music stems from the context (social, economic, historical) of the musician, and that this inevitably shapes and creates the sound. To take the one without the other leads, all too often, to pastiche – that most wretched of musical traits. On the other hand, as AN demonstrates in the Beastie Boys essay, when genre styles are appropriated into a meaningful context, when they are not just taken on fashionable, but on representational, aesthetical considerations, then the ‘old’ can be re-told and re-evaluated as something contemporary and valid. In addressing this well documented subject, I’d like to step outside of the Anglo-American dialogue, and talk about a band who I have become very interested in of late; Porno Para Ricardo.
Right – introductions. Porno Para Ricardo (PPR) are a Spanish – language, hardcore punk band from Cuba. Formed in the late 90’s, they have become prolific since the mid-noughties, releasing several albums on a self-run record label. Ok, a hardcore punk band from Cuba – as niches go, this one is fairly… well, niche – but bear with me. For PPR have seemingly committed wholesale appropriation (genre robbery, if you like) of a totally alien style in hardcore punk. They have taken 80’s New York and transplanted it into contemporary Havana. It is interesting to note perhaps that NY-Havana was a particularly busy cultural tramline that fed both cities (Salsa, Latin Jazz, Afro-Cuban styles, Bolero all owe their origin to this inter-city dialogue). It has since been artificially (and, some would suggest, superficially) closed by political forces. But this aggressive re-opening by PPR is just part of the significant re-contextualisation of style to create a new, politically motivated, meaning. PPR have taken the punk aesthetic on board firstly because it speaks to them both politically and aesthetically and secondly because they can re-mould it – play with the nuances, tinker with the conventions, fine-tune the sentiments – to speak for them and their unique situation. Is this post-modern? I don’t know. But it’s what post modern and the appropriation of the past should be.
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In light of the United States’ apparent sea change in attitude towards the ‘axis of evil’ nations, and the notable absence of world record orator Fidel Castro, one might be forgiven some long overdue optimism in thinking that perhaps the iron curtain around Cuba may be lifting slightly. Whilst it may be true that ‘Gitmo’ may be closing its barbed-wire gates to the world’s orange boiler-suited malcontents, and Cubans may now be ‘allowed’ to use mobile phones, things, as they say, have a long way to go.
It should be remembered whilst reading that any article gesturing towards the political and historical events that have come to define Cuba should be prefigured with the knowledge that one is entering contested terrain. Though even the most seasoned of commentators find their ‘facts’ about Cuba shrouded in secrecy and engulfed in political hyperbole from both sides, it remains suffice to say that anything said about Cuba (including this piece) must be taken with a fairly hefty pinch of salt.
This, in part, is what I want to talk about. As a foreigner, the problem of unravelling the accuracies of the long standing stalemate between the Caribbean island and its goliath neighbour, and thus trying to see a way forward (post Castro/Bush) is compounded by the simplistic way in which it is addressed in the world outside Cuba’s borders. Whether it is the tyranny of the US in imposing a crippling trade embargo, or Cuba’s communist regime and their stubbornness and reluctance to change – the fact is that illegal emigration from Cuba has created a situation where more Cubans live outside Cuba than live in it.
We tend to hear about this problem in these simplistic terms, a situation not helped by the cultural products from Cuba with which we are familiar. The ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ for example, however enjoyable, don’t touch the subject of politics with a ten-foot barge pole – and why should they? With political censorship still strictly controlled, in order to gain any type of official sanction music that steers clear of controversy has become de rigueur. Obviously there are a number of examples of musicians in Cuba (and outside Cuba) who openly criticise the regime. The quite brilliant folk singer Pedro Luis Ferrer and the genuinely-anarchic-without-a-hint-of-pretence punk band ‘Porno Para Ricardo’ are two notable exceptions. Yet both ply their trade in a world that exists outside of ‘Cuba’ – the former relying on European tours, the latter constantly hounded by police. A popular and accurate assessment of the current political and social climate is a hard thing to come by. However, in the song ‘Añoranza por la Conga’ by the Santiago de Cuba based band ‘Sur Caribe’ one may find exactly that.
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