Politics Spoil Grammy Party for Cuba's Musicians

Sun August 31, 2003 11:10 AM ET
By Reny Martinez

HAVANA (Reuters) - Feuding between Washington and Havana may spoil the party for Cuban nominees who have not secured U.S. visas for Wednesday night's Latin Grammy Awards in Miami.

Among musical luminaries unlikely to make the event are Latin jazz king Chucho Valdes and Los Van Van, a group considered the Rolling Stones of salsa after 33 years' performing.

Singer Ibrahim Ferrer, of Buena Vista Social Club fame and winner of two Latin Grammys, expected to miss the show. U.S. consular officials had not even interviewed him for a visa.

… Valdes, one of Latin jazz's finest pianists and founder of the legendary Cuban jazz group Irakere, said he had not been called for a required visa interview at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana before leaving to tour Spain.

The four-time Grammy winner was unable to make last year's prize-giving in Hollywood because of similar bickering between Cuban and U.S. authorities.

… "We are against the politicization of music and culture. It is not right," said Formell, who won a Grammy in 1999.

… President Bush, backed by Cuban exiles in Florida -- a crucial state in his election -- has stepped up pressure on Cuba to adopt democratic reforms. Among other things, the Bush administration has cut back on visas for artistic and academic exchanges between the two countries.

More…
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3364067

Among Cuban nominees that may be absent on Wednesday are the popular Charanga Habanera group, and guitarists Eliades Ochoa and Manuel Galban, nominated this year for an album he recorded with Texan Ry Cooder, the catalyst of the Buena Vista Social Club revival.

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

I'm surprised that Latin musicians and recording companies don't put an end to the antics of the Miami exiles and the Dubya Bush administration regarding visas for the Latin Grammies by insisting that the event gets moved to an overseas venue. Mexico has locations with adequate airports and hotel space that could serve at least as well as Miami. For that matter, even someplace like Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic could probably serve just about as well. And neither Mexico nor the Dominican Republic are likely to pay much attention to Dubya's Cuban visa rigamarole.

Let the Bushies try and play to the Miami exiles then! Let the Miami exile politicos supporting the Dubya Bush administration idiocy wipe the egg off their faces.

If they had been allowed to come, they would have been hit with rocks, D-cell batteries, bottles, eggs, and plastic baggies filled with human excrement AGAIN.

This happened before, courtesy of the Cuban "exile" protestors who demanded their rights so wildly previously to stand close enough they could go after them that the Grammys were returned to Los Angeles, contrary to original plans.


http://www.timba.com/artists/losvanvan/index.asp?Page=photos.htm

on edit: I just returned from listening to the song available on their webpage, and was AMAZED by their unbelievable talents. Maybe someone else would take a listen. It's the first one on the list, LosVanVan, "Tim-pop con Birdland"
http://www.timba.com/music/songs.asp

Concerning the Buena Vista Social Club:
(snip)
Viva "Buena Vista Social Club"
In spite of volatile Cuban-American exile politics, Wim Wenders' music documentary wins over Miami.

BY ART LEVINE
A little over a week ago, the aging Cuban musicians from the Buena Vista Social Club played in the heart of notoriously anti-Castro Miami, and, this time, there were no firebombs, no protests, no violent attacks on the audience.

They played a lilting and sensuously rhythmic music from the old Havana of the 1940s and 1950s, and the mostly Cuban-American audience greeted these players with robust applause, affection and a fond nostalgic remembrance of their lost Cuba.

Of course, the musicians were only there on a movie screen in the U.S. premiere of Wim Wenders' lovely new documentary, "Buena Vista Social Club," inspired by the Grammy-winning, Ry Cooder-produced album of the same name. Indeed, when a few of the musicians showed up last year to play in person for a music industry conference in Miami Beach, hundreds of protesters chanted outside and the convention center hall was cleared briefly because of a bomb threat. Still, the warm response to Wenders' stirring film represents progress of sorts for a community still shaped by the feverish right-wing exile politics that have turned Miami into the nation's most repressive city for artistic free expression. Cuban-born Raquel Vallejo, a member of the Miami Beach Cultural Council, went to last year's bomb-threatened concert and also attended the Wenders screening at the Miami Film Festival. "Isn't it ironic," she told a friend, "that a lot of the people clapping tonight were the same people involved in the protests outside the convention hall?" (snip/...)
http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/1999/03/09feature.html

It might be important to repeat that the _Bush administration has forbidden the American Ry Cooder to produce any more albums, concerts, etc. with the Buena Vista Social Club, to give it up.