Cuba’s San Remo Music Festival Loses Participants

Cuba’s First Lady is the organizer

By Xel2 (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES – This week we draw about the San Remo Music Awards festival, after several international artists pulled out after learning who the organizers of this event were, to be held in April in the Cuban capital.

Among the cancellations are Alex Ubago, Andy and Lucas, and Kalimba, after being questioned by users on social networks about their participation in an event organized by Lis Cuesta the wife of the Cuban president, Miguel Diaz Canel.

Almost simultaneously, these artists appeared on their official channels to claim that their representatives were unaware that the festival was organized by Cuban government institutions.

In part, this is the political cost for using repressive methods against social protest that has left many hundreds of political prisoners after July 11.

Music and art in general are impossible to separate from their context. We hope that sooner rather than later the Cuban public will be able to enjoy art without mediating ideology and politics.

Greetings and happy Sunday,

Wimar Verdecia Fuentes

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.