Culture

HT Photo Contest Closes 9/15

This is the official announcement for the HT Cuba Photo Contest 2014. It is our sixth contest, one for each year of the online publication. The fifth contest saw a record number of photographers (90) entering their pictures. All finalists and semifinalists’ photos will be published by HT.

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A Cuba Book For Obama’s Xmas Stocking

If you are reading any other book on Cuba right now, close it. If you were thinking about giving another title as a Christmas gift to a beloved Cubaphile, don’t. Make better use of your time and money with Marc Frank’s Cuba Revelations. You won’t find ideology or an agenda in here, but rather a comprehensive composition covering the multilayered, and often quite complex, reform process that has been underway in Cuba since at least 2006.

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Miguel Angel Fraga: A Cuban Writer Born of Pain

The author of several works published in Cuba and abroad, Miguel Angel Fraga sets out to capture the truth of a difficult and misunderstood era, the experiences of those who became Cuba’s first victims of the terrible HIV-AIDS epidemic. “I can say that it is thanks to HIV that I am a writer today,” he tells us during his interview for Havana Times.

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Concert Premieres at Havana’s Contemporary Music Festival

For the longest time, “contemporary music” was for me synonymous with unbearable music, or, at least, a kind of music that wasn’t meant for the ears of someone like me, who is not an expert and doesn’t have any in-depth knowledge about music. Because of this, I hadn’t attended the Havana Contemporary Music Festival again since 2001. (26 photos)

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Cuban Ballet Dancers Circulate Grievance

Members of Cuba’s National Ballet Company (BNC) – currently on tour in Spain – have approached director Alicia Alonso with an urgent petition calling for improvements in work conditions and denouncing favoritism and irregularities in the handling of the company’s budget. The letter has raised a stir in the Havana cultural world.

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DKNO: A Cuban Rapper

Maikel Castillo, known as DKNO (“The Dean”) in the Cuban rap scene, tells us about his interest in the rap genre and about the “consequences of telling the truth without mincing one’s words.” He said he sings about social issues, for the most part, problems around the world.

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Painting Canvases, Bodies and Souls

Art has always reflected the most distinctive characteristics of the historical period in which it has been produced. Portraits, landscapes, sea vistas, figurative and abstract pieces: all have invariably sought to capture their times through different styles. My interviewee, painter and tattoo artist Jose Rene Blanco Salermo, paints canvases and human bodies. A dreamer, he also paints souls.

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Los Van Van to Attend Latin Gammy Awards

The prominent Cuban musician Juan Formell, director of Los Van Van, will attend the ceremony of the Latin Grammy Awards on November 21, where he will receive the award for Musical Excellence, Prensa Latina reported.

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