Sonny Boy in Memoriam, the Cuban Friend of Harry Belafonte
From the Isle of Pines (Today, Isle of Youth)
By Vicente Morin Aguado
HAVANA TIMES – Sonny Boy, the stage name of Arnold Dixon Robinson as registered by Cuban law, which requires recognizing both father and mother, spoke to me with pride about his friendship with Harry Belafonte. During Belafonte’s visit to the Isle of Pines, recently renamed the Isle of Youth, the New Yorker received as a gift from local authorities the uniqueness of a musician born to a father from Cayman Brac and a Jamaican mother.
Music, a universal language, and common English were enough. Belafonte was astonished to hear old versions, authentic museum pieces, of some songs that had propelled him to the top ten of the music market three decades ago.
From my lengthy conversations with Arnold Dixon, as neighbors and me being a reporter for the local radio station, Radio Caribe, I recall his comments about Belefonte’s amazement at hearing a version of “Matilda” predating the one that brought him so much success in his country. He also listened to a lively rendition of “You Are My Sunshine,” far from the soft melodic lyricism recorded by Sinatra or Bing Crosby, not to mention, as it was a recurrent example for the interviewer, his version of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain, When She Comes,” under the influence of Caribbean heat.
Wrapped in his political activism, Belefonte continued touring the world, while Sonny Boy, as his father called him when he was little, lived the 92 years of his life in the house where he was born, at the corner of 32nd and 41st streets in Nueva Gerona, which, with its forty thousand inhabitants, gathers half of the always-called pineros.
Sonny Boy and his band, the name that the musical group he led eventually adopted, managed to preserve the Anglo-Caribbean tradition of a century ago, adding elements from Cuban traditions associated with the Spanish colony, especially the so-called Sucu suco, a variant of the son montuno, recognized as an endemic expression of the Isle of Pines.
Notable among these is the track “Pepín Bucanero,” a Sucu Suco with clear notes, well-defined voices, and instruments, whose lyrics take us back to a time when piracy found a recurrent refuge on the island south of Cuba.
Conflicting feelings arise when obligatory mention is made of the awards received by Arnold Dixon Robinson in the twilight of his existence. Cubadisco, the annual music industry event, gave him a special recognition, a result of the album recorded in 2006, while the Cuban Institute of Cultural Research Juan Marinello had classified him as “Living Memory,” personality of the year 1997.
On its presentation website, the aforementioned institution states: “Living Memory is a great recognition of the daily and selfless work that these individuals, as practitioners, enthusiasts, and/or amateur cultural promoters, carry out in communities to preserve and disseminate the traditional expressions of our popular culture.”
It hurts to know that there is hardly any video of Sonny Boy on YouTube. With much patience, Google’s search engine offers some musical clues lacking moving images. This neglect contrasts with the customary eulogies in the hour of his physical death.
This, in a country where the State reigns as the sovereign lord over the dissemination of culture, accompanying the artist as much as the worn armchairs in his home comforted him in his human simplicity, where we shared some concerns marked by the Anglo-Saxon sobriety of his family upbringing.
Here are some opinions from local scholars, José Antonio Cabrera Navarrete, a professor at the University of the Isle of Youth “Jesús Montané Oropesa,” and Annara Cabrera Espinosa, a teacher at the “Josué País García” Primary School in Nueva Gerona.
“Caribbean rhythms and dances present in the music of the Isle of Pines and its culture are going through difficult times. This matter must be reversed to rescue that part of the cultural heritage as they are practically in the phase of disappearance after the death of the original carriers who cultivated it. Several projects have been proposed for their rescue, but they have remained only in good intentions.” (Taken from: Sony Boy. Music, interculturality, and Caribbean identity. Observatory of Social Sciences in Ibero-America.)
Arnold Dixon Robinson walked in a wheelchair around his house when the above words were written. He responded briskly, sang slowly but confidently, sharing his last birthdays.
My existence has taken other turns. Driving my small 2012 Honda Civic along a street in Hendersonville, Tennessee, I read that this long street in the vast homeland of his fleeting friend Harry Belafonte is named after another singer, a pride of Country Music, Johnny Cash.
Searching on YouTube, there are plenty of videos of both the former and the latter on the web. Johnny Cash’s rendition of “You Are My Sunshine,” solo guitar, warm, intimate voice, pleases me. Finally, like it’s taken from a dusty drawer, Sonny Boy’s version appears.
Surely, readers, when tracing Cuban music on the web, will realize that the matter does not play with the usual contrast between a rich and a poor country. The son of a Caymanian and Jamaican, born on the Isle of Pines 92 and a half years ago, accompanies us in the persistence not to end up blurred amid the misty neglect that threatens to become history.