It’s always nice to pick up some quality music while traveling, but the timing seldom works out unless I’ve actually planned it that way, and even then… suffice it to say that some people’s big festive ideas for big ideal festivals don’t always work out.The Crossroads moveable fest in southern Africa a couple months ago was good, if small and a bit provincial.The Sauti Za Busara fest in Zanzibar in February should be much better, while covering some of the same East Africa musical turf.It’s good, and a bit different from the West, from whence most of the African genre of ‘world music’ derives, more of a reggae feel, as opposed to the Latino (Cuban-Africaine?) feel in the West.I’m looking forward to it.Then there’s the legendary Festival du Desert in Timbuktu and its sister fests in Segou and elsewhere in Mali, but lately they’ve been looking a little more generic than originally, almost like WOMAD Sahara, but that’s probably mostly because so many Malians are successful outside their home country.
Individual shows are harder to come across, and you’ve got to be an avid signpost reader to make that happen, or a lucky MySpace peruser/pursuer.Still it can happen.This year alone I’ve caught Oliver Mtukudzi in Addis Ababa and Ba Cissoko in Marseilles, while missing (only by inches) Lura in Wroclaw and Tinariwen in Paris and Rachid Taha in selfsame Marseilles.Okay, so I missed them, big deal, but at least I KNOW that I missed them.Of course the magic can occur closer to home also, like catching Omara Portuondo last week in Tijuana.In addition to its own great classical sounds, Buena Vista Social Club accomplished nothing so much as a feeling of great loss at the ‘missing generation’- or two- of the hemisphere’s greatest popular music (after the US).Fortunately it also released a handful of aging musicians for one last go-round on the world stage, one larger than they ever had before.Omara Portuondo is one of those.Fortunately Cuba has excellent health care, the pride of the Caribbean, and Omara Portuondo looks as radiant as she ever did in her youth. If the feet and hips have slowed down a bit, the upper body sways with the rhythm as smoothly as ever, not bad for a woman pushing eighty fast.
And what a rhythm it is! It’s as smooth as… the cheap imported rayon that passes for silk these days in Cuba (but the health care’s good!).Led by guitarist and musical director Swami Jr., Omara went through her entire new album Gracias song by song, note by note.How’s that for a Communistic approach to a concert?But while the songs and notes may have been weighed and measured to original specs, the emotion was real that came from ‘la novia del filin,’ featuring such chestnuts as ‘O Que Sera’ (What Will Be), ‘Amame Como Soy’ (Love Me as I Am), Adios Felicidad (Bye-bye Happiness), and the title song of course- Quiero agradecer a quien corresponda… no quiero guardarme lo que siento… (I just want to thank whoever it concerns… I don’t want to keep these feelings inside…).And for the encore, can you guess?Guantanamera, of course, guajira Guantanamera if that helps you distinguish it from the notorious torture chamber that passes for a US army base, funded by US taxpayers and located on Cuban soil, in case you didn’t know.I’d be willing to bet quite a few don’t, but that’s the region where the best Cuban music originates, and not coincidentally only a stone’s throw from Haiti.
Given a previous song in praise of Che and her striking resemblance to a terrorist’s grandmother, it’s amazing she can even get a visa to sing in the US, but she still can… sometimes.On Oct. 20 she’ll be at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts and Oct. 23 in Royce Hall at UCLA, so I guess the visa came through.I hope she’s not sitting in TJ waiting for it, though I thought I saw a woman at the Calimax with a basket of fruit on her head…Angelenos are so lucky, the best music in the world right there on the doorstep, offering itself up for little or nothing, so anxious are so many musicians to carve out their little niche in the Fantasy Factory for subsequent export.Hey, there’s got to be something the Chinese will buy… if only we could teach them Engrish ranguage.They kicked the big O a century ago… R&R wars anyone?
It’ll take Cuba longer.For all the glossy six-color tourist rap, downtown Havana ain’t pretty.But Omara is, and with a voice like a songbird in the morning.Hopefully the tourists will be crossing the Straits soon, and not just to Varadero’s sometimes-sunny beaches.And hopefully the new generation of musicians will get caught up before the ketchup.But it’s not yet, because Omara still hasn’t gotten a visa for the Grammys in Vegas next month.Of course if I’d known she’d be in LA… but naah, CECUT in TJ has a Cubanosofia cultural series going all month, worth checking out.The revolution started in DF, after all.I wonder where it’ll end?
