Music in Cuba

[Bala Perdida]

I feel like music in Cuba has been more freely shared and expressed than in many other red states. I don't know if this is wrong or not based on Cuba's history. I know that music in Latin America is heavily interchanged, this I'm guessing comes from a lack of a language barrier. I know I hear lots of music come from Cuba. I was just wondering how much music Cuba gets in. I know rock has survived in Cuba since the 50's and I think I heard that Justin Bieber did a concert there last year. That second part however is less important, seeing that allegedly the Cuban government is friendly towards new musical styles such as rap as a form of market normalization. So in short, any info on music imports and music restriction in Cuba?

[Creative Destruction]

I'm not sure of any generalities, but I know that Audioslave played a gig in Cuba a few years back. Before that, the Manic Street Preachers played there.

[Bala Perdida]

Fairly recent too, not as hostile as it was during the cold war era. I still think that it was less hostile then (compared to other states), but I don't know to what extent.

[Creative Destruction]

This site seems to have a lot of info on concerts in Cuba:

http://www.cubaabsolutely.com/Culture/music_Concerts.php

Not all domestic bands, either:

http://www.cubaabsolutely.com/Culture/article_music_rock.php?id=Brutal-Fest%27s-2014-Cuba-festival

[Bala Perdida]

All modern, which is okay. A lot of familiar faces nowadays. I was wondering about other genres in Cuba, particularly Cumbia which is very popular in all of Latin America. I wouldn't say it's alien to Cuba but I can't find info on how it's received there. I just know that they basically don't play it there, but I wouldn't say it's political because they don't play it in Puerto Rico either.

[Ismail]

As far as culture goes, a member of the SDS visited the Albanian embassy in Cuba in 1968 and, among other things (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n1/cubaalb.htm),

We talked about the culture problem, and he said that there was a great influx of bourgeois culture, in the music on the radio, the English, French, U.S. movies, etc. Then he went into a criticism of the Cuban film Memorias de Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment), partly about its not condemning for (as) taking the clothes from him, for his being let off in the trial, and also for not really condemning him. He also objected to the love (not sex) scenes. He said that movies should educate the working class and that anyone who made a film like that in Albania would have his head cut off. He also objected to the modern art style paintings and posters, that he was discussing with two soldiers a painting representing Che in Bolivia, and he (or they, it wasn’t quite clear) said, ‘But where is Che?, why don’t they show him, with a rifle, in Bolivia?’It's why Sartre and a bunch of others supported Castro back in the day. In the 70s and 80s Cuban culture became more akin to most of the Eastern European countries (in line with a deepening of Cuba's relations with the USSR), and in the 90s this process was reversed.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

As far as culture goes, a member of the SDS visited the Albanian embassy in Cuba in 1968 and, among other things (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n1/cubaalb.htm),
It's why Sartre and a bunch of others supported Castro back in the day. In the 70s and 80s Cuban culture became more akin to most of the Eastern European countries (in line with a deepening of Cuba's relations with the USSR), and in the 90s this process was reversed.

Do you only talk in cold war cliches?

I mean, you are aware that substituting 'bourgeois culture' for 'anything that comes from a capitalist country' is a really lazy piece of propaganda, right?

[Bala Perdida]

Do you only talk in cold war cliches?

I mean, you are aware that substituting 'bourgeois culture' for 'anything that comes from a capitalist country' is a really lazy piece of propaganda, right?
Actually the info given out in the quote was somewhat what I was looking for.

[Ismail]

Do you only talk in cold war cliches?What "cold war cliches" did I talk in? Unless, of course, I was the Albanian who the SDS persons were speaking to in that embassy in 1968. I'm simply posting that to give an example that Cuba's cultural standards have always been viewed as relatively "open," as "less dogmatic" and whatnot by many Westerners.


I mean, you are aware that substituting 'bourgeois culture' for 'anything that comes from a capitalist country' is a really lazy piece of propaganda, right?There were many Western literary works as well as musical compositions in Albania. Unlike in the USSR, Poland and elsewhere under the revisionists, however, there was no attempt to blatantly rip off the latest in Western consumerism and portray it as worthy of praise just because it was from the West and, because something is from the West, you have to uncritically praise it or otherwise be seen as "isolated" or whatever.