Culture

Cuban Folk Musician Yaima Orozco

Yaima is one of the best folk musicans of the wave of young musicians who have been making their way in the genre since the year 2000. Above all else, I would describe her as a woman whose beauty is difficult to contain, like a beam of light we hope to capture in our hands.

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Cuban Folk Musician Alex Mendez: Run-Away Slave in Copenhagen

A Cuba folk musician living in Europe speaks to us about his music and shares his thoughts on his condition as musician. “I learn from what people feel. Now, without a sensitive pair of ears my songs say nothing, they’re empty, emptier than a beach in Copenhagen during the winter,” Alex Mendez tells us in his interview for HT.

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Cuban Singer-Songwriter Levis Aliaga

The work of Levis Aliaga (Ciego de Avila, 1972) is one of the most solid produced by folk singers of his generation. Praised by artists and writers, Aliaga has not yet achieved much renown among audiences – something which, most likely, has more to do with his current whereabouts (the Canary Islands) than with his talent as a singer-songwriter.

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How Cuban Music Made Me a Better Historian

“If you want to learn anything about the history of this country, you have to start with Carlos Varela.” This advice, offered by a colleague who was helping me in a Cuban archive a decade ago, proved remarkably true. I arrived in Havana in 2004 to research child migration conflicts.

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Ballerina Xiomara Reyes Returns to the Cuban Stage

Days before the start of Cuba’s International Ballet Festival (October 28 – November 7), the second Cuban woman to make it in the American Ballet Theater (ABT), lead ballerina Xiomara Reyes, returns to the Cuban stage to treat us to her immense talent. “I have many dreams and ideas in my mind and my heart.”

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Cuba’s Deja Vu Surprises and Delights

Though most who had attended the concert had expected to see a different band play, people were not put off to find that the guest band was Déjà vu on arriving at the gardens of Havana’s Mella Theater on a recent Thursday. (13 photos)

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