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It's all in the culo,
a Catalan friend tells me. We're at central Havana's Casa de la Musica,
owned and managed by Egrem, Cuba's state-owned record label. It's about
6.30pm on a Tuesday - the so-called matinée - and already the place is
heaving with teens and twentysomethings who move in unison like
professional dancers to timba, a pounding, fast-paced contemporary
salsa, played by a loud, spirited band called Klimax.
Going
to a live salsa gig is a genuinely Cuban experience in a city that, for
all the sun and rum and friendly folk, can sometimes make you feel as
though you're living in a parallel, gringo-only universe. In Havana's
two Casa venues - the other is in the leafy suburb of Miramar - locals
share the floor with visitors from Europe, North America and West
Africa. But I can't, ever, get the bum thing right. I can only shuffle
at the margins of a floor of gyrating, balletic geniuses.
Fortunately,
there's a whole scene in Cuban music that appeals to stiff, talentless
types. This is trova, the favoured music of the barbudos - the bearded
intellectuals who led the revolution in 1959. Sensually, it is the Lada
to salsa's 1950s Chevy, but to catch a superstar of trova (the genre
has its roots in the word troubadour) such as Silvio Rodríguez or Pablo
Milanés - ideally in an open-air mega-concert on the Plaza de la
Revolución - is to catch Cubans of all generations in a moment of
idealistic harmony.
Music,
like Marxism, is everywhere. What is perhaps most extraordinary about
Cuba is the juxtaposition of the rigidities of communism - slogans,
military installations, Soviet-style posters, green uniforms - and the
libertine excesses of salsa. At the Delirio Habanero, a bare functional
venue that looks out over the Plaza de la Revolución, we catch the rap
trio Triangulo Oscuro - who mix in merengue, Colombian cumbia, Cuban
salsa, rumba and a hypnotic African rhythm called quizomba - and, later
on, a stylish seven-piece outfit called Tres de la Habana playing son -
the Afro-Spanish country music that boomed in Cuba in the 1920s.
As
in most Cuban bands, several of these musicians are
conservatoire-trained. Their virtuosity and sheer vim distract you from
the battered carpets and basic lighting, but you can't but notice Che's
portrait flickering into neon life on the vast, cement edifice outside.
After
midnight, my favourite hang-out for more mellow music is El Gato
Tuerto, a glamorous, intimate, bolero venue in Vedado. Migdalia, a
rotund diva, comes over to you and sings into your eyes. If you know
the words, she'll let you do the responses. Otherwise, just blow her a
cheesy kiss.
Across
the road, the following night, Compay Segundo's band plays at the
elegant 1930 Salon of the Hotel Nacional. Honouring the memory of the
veteran singer who died in July 2003, it still delivers a classy,
traditional son. And those in the know told me that the band actually
sounds better without Compay's mistuned, seven-string guitar.
Also
less frantic, and equally redolent of pre-revolution Cuba, is the
grandiose Floridita bar, where the members of the Trio Taicuba are
still picking quiet, dinner-friendly tunes after 57 years as the house
band. There's an inevitable museum air to these watering holes, with
their drunken literary pilgrims posing next to a bronze Hemingway, but
Taicuba play quality, laid-back, rural son.
Since
December, a magazine, The H, has been serving as a kind of Time Out for
visitors to Havana, but there is so much live music available in Cuba
that all you really need are addresses and a map. Generally speaking,
if you go to a venue between 7pm and midnight, you'll catch a show. If
you opt out, expect to have bad renditions of Guantanamera played three
inches away from your dinner table in all the tourist haunts.
Finally, if you can't make it to the Caribbean, London now has a Floridita bar (020 7314 4000), run by Conran, at 100 Wardour Street, the site of the old Marquee. Cuban bands and soloists perform there six days a week.
Where to enjoy the music
Cabaret Nacional, San Rafael 208 (863 2361)
Café Cantante Mi Habana, Paseo, corner of Calle 39 (879 0710)
Casa de la Musica de Galiano, Galiano, corner Neptuno y Concordia (860 8295)
Casa de la Musica de Miramar, Calle 20 no 3308, corner Calle 35 (204 0447)
Delirio Habanero, Paseo, corner Calle 39 (879 0710)
El Floridita, Obispo 557, corner Monserrate (867 1299)
Gato Tuerto, Calle O, between Calle 17 and Calle 19 (55 2696)
Hotel Nacional de Cuba, Calle O, corner Calle 21 (33 3564)
First published in slightly edited form in the Daily Telegraph on 22 January, 2005
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