por servicios de noticias
Silvio Rodríguez in concert
After three decades from appearing on the stage in the U.S., Cuban legend Silvio Rodríguez will soon be back to play at the Paramount Theater of the Arts in Oakland, California, and in New York to play at the Carnegie Hall on June 11.
Rodriguez, now 63, has been a sort of folk-song poet laureate of Fidel Castro’s revolution in recent years, performing at important official events and even serving in Cuba’s parliament for a time, though many admire him most for his touching lyrics and haunting melodies. Rodriguez is still fi rmly on the side of the socialist system Castro built, but his latest album suggests there need to be adjustments if it is going to survive.
“Against disenchantment, offer hope,” he sings on the album “Segunda Cita,” or “Second Date,” which was released in March. “Overcome the ‘r’ in revolution,” the song goes — alluding to the uprising that swept Castro to power on New Year’s Day 1959, and to almost everything in Cuba that has happened since.
“If we don’t change, they are going to change us,” Rodriguez wrote in response to written questions from The Associated Press, “and that’s not what I want to happen to my country.”
He added that, “I hope evolution takes us, as the angel in the song says, right up to the crossroads where we made the wrong decision and we rectify that.”
It’s light criticism by any measure — and Rodriguez has been coy when asked to shed light on what he meant.
He also read a statement defending the Cuban government — but did not sing — during a recent “Concert for the Homeland” in Havana. And he plunged into an unusual, public debate with one of the Castro government’s fiercest critics, Carlos Alberto Montaner — that nonetheless raised eyebrows in Cuba and abroad for the mere fact that Rodriguez would reply to the dissident.
Cuba’s official media describes Montaner as a CIA agent.
Rodriguez has sometimes broached thorny subjects uncomfortable for the government, but songs like “Playa Giron,” a denunciation of the U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion, have become anthems of the revolution and even his small jabs at its single-party communist system come as a surprise.
Stronger dissent has come from other leading members of Cuba’s Nueva Trova movement in recent months — at least during tours abroad.
Folk singer Carlos Varela told a Miami television station last week that he admired the Damas de Blanco, a support group for the wives and mothers of Cuban political prisoners which the government dismisses as paid stooges of Washington.
Varela said he thought it was “fantastic” that members of the group whose name translates to “Ladies in White,” have been nominated for a Noble Peace Prize. He also bluntly denounced the “acts of repudiation” by government supporters who surrounded the Damas and shouted insults at them for hours several times in recent weeks.
In March, another top Cuban folk singer, Pablo Milanes, defended a Cuban dissident hunger striker who is demanding the release of political prisoners and told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that Cuba’s aging leaders “are stuck in time.”
Rodriguez and Milanes are barely on speaking terms. But they and Varela are allowed to travel overseas freely, unlike most ordinary Cubans — for whom permission to travel abroad is costly and hard to get.
Citing an example of erroneous policies in his comments to the AP, Rodriguez mentioned the “revolutionary offensive” of 1968, when the government nationalized all businesses, taking over everything from elegant department stores to mom-and-pop soda shops.
Rodriguez is considered by many to be Latin America’s Bob Dylan, and he and Milanes are founding members of the “Nueva Trova,” which combined music and revolutionary politics.
Rodriguez also plans shows in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and Puerto Rico. He recalled last playing New York in 1978, singing at a theater on Broadway. (Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.)
