World Travel Guide

City Guide  - Havana  - Culture
Culture

Cultural Events: Cuba is synonymous with music and most Cubans are passionate about it. Trova is ballad-style singing to the accompaniment of a guitar, and most towns have a Casa de la Trova, where a pleasant evening can be spent; guajira is country-style music and the most famous song, heard all over the island, is Guantanamera. Most famous of all is salsa whose evocative rhythms have swept the world. Other forms of music with their roots in Cuba have put the country on the musical map. The rhumba was developed in Cuba, a combination of Afro-Cuban music for voice and percussion, which is now accompanied by a passionate dance. The chachacha was originally popularised between the 1930s and 50s and is still performed to this day. The Cuban Government has seen fit to encourage all forms of culture and most towns have at least one theatre. Standards tend to be very high and Cuban performers have made their mark on the world stage in a variety of forms. Details of performances can be found in the city listings magazine, Cartelera.

Music:
Groups such as Los Van Van and The Buena Vista Social Club have long been established in Cuba but now their reputation has spread worldwide and both frequently tour in the West. They perform regularly in different venues around the city, such as El Palacio de la Salsa in the Hotel Riviera, on Paseo y Malecon (tel: (7) 334 051). Classical music is performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, who regularly appear at the Teatro Nacional, on Paseo y 39 (tel: (7) 796 011).

Theatre:
The standard of theatre in Havana is exceptionally high with performances of local, modern plays, as well as international classics that can still be appreciated by non-Spanish speakers. The most professional performances are at the Gran Teatro (tel: (7) 629 473), Paseo del Prado esq. San Rafael, Centro Habana, and the Teatro Nacional (see above).
Dance:
The National Ballet of Cuba is internationally renowned, thanks in part to its founder, Alicia Alonso, and also to its association with the Bolshoi and Kirov in Russia. Their home is the Gran Teatro (see above). Every night the Palacio de la Salsa in the Hotel Riviera (see above) pulsates to the sound of salsa with some exciting performances by local bands.

Film:
Cinema is huge in Cuba, although homegrown films are few and most cinemas show dubbed or subtitled foreign films. Many major international films do reach Havana but generally a couple of years after they have been released overseas. There are dozens of cinemas throughout Havana, the main ones are the Payret, opposite the Capotilio on Paseo de Marti, the Yara, opposite the Habana Libre Hotel, Calle 23, and Charles Chaplin alsi, Calle 23 between Calles 10 and 12.
The internationally acclaimed Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate), directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea and set near the Coppelia ice cream parlour in Havana, was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film in 1994. Buena Vista Social Club, directed by Wim Wenders, is a documentary that chronicles the collaboration of Ry Cooder with legendary Cuban musicians, all now aged between 70 and 90 years. The success of the Ry Cooder produced album led to sell-out concerts in Amsterdam and New York for 'los superabuelos' (the super-grandfathers).

Cultural events:
Every November, many of the world's best dancers travel to Havana for the Havana International Ballet Festival. The annual film festival, Festival del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, has been running since 1978 and features the latest films from Latin America as well as some international art films. The International Jazz Festival is a bi-annual affair, although it is a much smaller event than when the late, great Ronnie Scott was involved.
Literary Notes
The romance of Havana has made it an attractive setting for many works of fiction by both Cuban and international writers. The most famous book featuring Havana as a backdrop has to be Graham Greene's classic 1958 novel, Our Man in Havana. A vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana joins the British secret service and sends in bogus reports and recruits imaginary agents. His description of the Tropicana is familiar to visitors today: 'Stage and dance-floor were open to the sky. Chorus-girls paraded twenty feet up among the great palm-trees, while pink and mauve searchlights swept the floor. A man in bright blue evening clothes sang in Anglo-American about Paree. Then the piano was wheeled away into the undergrowth, and the dancers stepped down like awkward birds from among the branches.' Ernest Hemingway's 1952 novel, The Old Man and the Sea, won him the Nobel Prize for Literature for his simple tale of an old Cuban fisherman's fight with a big fish. The prolific contemporary writer, James Michener, co-wrote a book with photographer John Kings in 1989 called Six Days in Havana. Their impressions of Castro's Cuba gave a unique insight into the country and its people. Modern Cuba is depicted in Pico Iyer's Cuba and the Night (1995), an in-depth, rather cynical, description of a Cuban woman's relationship with an ex-pat. Cristina Garcia's moving novel Dreaming in Cuban (1992) explores a family divided by the revolution, looking from both sides - the exiles in America and those who stayed behind in Cuba.



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