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Down The Years // |
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Opio para el pueblo – The Toten Hosen in Cuba – 15.5.-22.5.2001Something to browse through: the diary covering our trip to Cuba, 15-22.05.2001 May 15 | May 16 | May 17 | May 18 | May 19 | May 20 | May 21 | May 22
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Day Three – the Old Man and the SeaIn the morning we meet Noppa by the pool, drying his clothes on the diving platform. His suitcase still hasn’t arrived, but now we know it’s thought to be in Madrid. Now he’s wearing bathing shorts, or to be precise, long sports trousers where you can zip off the legs. It’s the hottest new thing, made of an indefinable synthetic material and costs US$ 45. A really hot offer from the tourist supply around the corner. There should have been some more interviews to give this morning, but there are only three newspapers in Cuba anyway. Since one of those has a fat article about us this morning and the other dates have somehow not quite worked out, and our local guide has gone missing, we decide to spend the day in downtown Havana, on the tracks of Hemingway.
Following in Hemingsway’s
tracks: Faust, Andi, and Kiki First stop is the Bodeguita del Medio, the bar where Hemingway would trade his writing fees for Mojitos. This rum and mint drink costs twice as much as in our hotel bar, but it’s twice as big, too, and turns four times more. On the ground floor, tourists are standing on each other’s feet, while one floor up you can casually indulge in the high art of consuming alcohol. One or two hours later we leave the place and per chance end up in a joint the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time: we’re the only tourists and as such are eyed curiously – it has to be admitted though, that some of our shady companions generate similar amazement in pubs at home. The name of the bar is to be found nowhere, but it features flies in a ratio of thousands per square metre plus a clientele that looks like they’ve jumped from a B-movie pirate film. Burly boxers and several hundred years of gaol were united here. The stuff these guys tried to sell us in the time that followed would indeed have brought you into jail in any country of the world – and for quite a long time, too. But the drinks were superb and the atmosphere was, let’s say, “appropriate”. In the evening, it was finally time for “Cubadisco”, a music fair during which a kaleidoscope of bands plays in a multitude of different locations. We’re going to a venue that’s only a short stroll from our hotel. A showy villa built at the beginning of the 20th century, which before the revolution served as a fashionable sports club including a swimming pool that looks more like a palace. The building dilapidated, got rebuilt a few years ago and is now used as some kind of convention centre. From 10 p.m. onwards, the crème de la crème of Cuban salsa is playing up in the garden’s villa. And if you only know Cuban music through Buena Vista Social Club – no grudging the old gents – then you’ve seen nothing yet. Salsa and every variation of son, mambo, or whatever they call the various Afro-Cuban styles, is the big thing on this island. Wherever you go, wherever you listen, this sound is always coming at you, sometimes with soulful voices, sometimes stripped down to congas and rhythm to make you realise the African rhythmic roots, with an intricate complexity that shows any rock drummer his limits. In front of the stages, masses of people are dancing and you feel the cliché is only too true that says ALL Cubans have rhythm in their blood – at least we’ve never seen so many people dancing so beautifully to such complicated tracks. “Stiff in the hips” is really only a friendly expression of what you feel like as a German. The bands, consisting of no less than 15 musicians, play seemingly endless songs, they are exploding with their joy of playing. One or the other uninformed travel companion called this “Muppet Show music”, but it didn’t keep them from grooving with the masses for hours on end, like being in trance. Talking of trance: the amounts of rum that were drunk that night (not by us) was really amazing. One in five people turned up with a bottle of rum, serving himself and his friends generously. And yet: not one drunk, no aggression whatsoever, no fights. How do they do it? Something seems to be going very differently here. I hope we’ll find out what it is... Hours later, Wölli asked the conga player in our hotel bar to teach him the art of polyrhythmic, which means the greater part of the guests didn’t find any sleep that night. Best regards, yours, the Hosen
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