Ask a typical American about Cuban music, and the Buena Vista Social Club, the Grammy-winning 1997 album and 1999 Oscar-nominated documentary featuring the recording’s musicians, will come to mind.
Older Americans might fondly recall the syncopated songs from the 1950s TV comedy “I Love Lucy,” with Cuban-born star Desi Arnaz playing the congas in his Latin-themed big band as Ricky Ricardo, husband of Lucille Ball's Lucy.
But few in the U.S. will picture the influential 1940s members-only club in Havana from which the album and documentary draw its name or realize the outsized influence of Cuban music on the American musical canon.
The presence and popularity of Cuban music in the U.S. has a deep history, and with President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday that the U.S. and Cuba will resume diplomatic relations after a 53-year standoff, Cuban music in the U.S. — and vice versa — will likely become more free flowing again, experts say. The last time musicians from Cuba and the U.S. could easily move between the two countries, it led to some of the most innovative music of 20th century. The stage is set for a similar renaissance in the 21st.
Pre-embargo, Americans were eager fans of Cuban music. Starting in the 1930s, a series of concerts in the U.S. by Cuban musicians, including a groundbreaking performance by the Havana Orchestra on Broadway, popularized Afro-Cuban rhythms and dancing. In the late 1940s and 1950s, New York’s Palladium Ballroom hosted influential Cuban artists including Machito, Celia Cruz and Desi Arnaz. (It was a Palladium dance promoter who introduced Ball to Arnaz.)
From there, the music and its rhythms spread to American artists. In 1947, Dizzy Gillespie teamed up with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo to produce “Manteca,” which they first performed at Carnegie Hall, helping to bring Cuban rhythms into the jazz mainstream.
The Cuban revolution in 1959 and subsequent unraveling of the U.S.-Cuba relationship ended those musical exchanges. The 1962 embargo also had a direct impact on Cuban musicians, according to Ned Sublette, a musicologist and musician who wrote the definitive “Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo.” Much of the equipment they used—from instruments to tape recorders to tapes — came from the U.S., so Cuban musicians had to make do with what they had. They often used the same tape over and over again, causing a distinct hissing sound often found on recordings from that era.
Despite the shortage of equipment, Cuba has always had an abundance of talented musicians. The revolution, Sublette said, brought access to free education for everyone in a country that prioritized the arts and music. “They are some of the most virtuosic, well-trained, erudite musicians in the world,” he said. “There is a very high level of musical culture in Cuba. I really don’t know of a country that has a higher one.”
The 1970s saw occasional glimpses of the musical connections that were once so strong a generation earlier. After the groundbreaking Afro-Cuban jazz fusion band Irakere wowed American musicians on the international jazz festival circuit in the late 1970s, American jazz greats like Gillespie, Stan Getz and Earl Hines were allowed to travel to Cuba in 1977 to perform with them—the first jam between musicians of the nations since the embargo. In 1978, Irakere performed at the Newport Jazz Festival and at Carnegie Hall, and the band’s album of live performances won a Grammy in 1980.
The musical exchanges went silent under Ronald Reagan, Sublette said, but Bill Clinton revived them with the Berman Amendment of 1988. That law exempted informational materials like records, posters and photographs from the ban on Cuban imports. That meant that Americans could license Cuban music that had already been produced, since actual production would involve giving money to Cubans.
The law allowed Sublette to launch his record label, Qbadisc. In the 1990s, he licensed and released albums from Cuban acts such as Los Van Van, Los Muñequitos de Matanzas and Isaac Delgado, as the Clinton administration began to approve visas for Cuban artists to perform in the U.S. for cultural exchange. “Suddenly, we’re seeing Cuba in a way that reflects its people better,” Sublette said. “It was a tremendously important thing that happened in the ’90s.”
The cultural exchanges, however, shut down after 9/11 under President George W. Bush, whose administration made a point of rejecting Cuban musicians’ visa applications. Five Cuban musicians, including Buena Vista Social Club star Ibrahim Ferrer, were nominated for a Grammy in 2004 for Best Traditional Latin Tropical Album but could not get a visa to attend the awards ceremony. (They won.)
The Obama administration opened the door again in 2009, allowing the Cuban dance band Septeto Nacional Ignacio Piñeiro to visit five American cities. Cuban drummer Orlando “Maraca” Valle and his band are performing on Sunday at the Jazz at Lincoln Center series in New York. And the Broadway show “Rent” is to debut in Havana on Christmas Eve, making it the first American musical to be staged there since they were banned after the revolution.
Under Obama’s new Cuba policy, the U.S. may drop Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, which could simplify the visa application process. Because of that designation, security clearances even for cultural exchange visas are lengthy, and the visa process can take up to four months, said Bill Martinez, an attorney based in Concord, California who since the 1990s has been helping Cuban musicians like piano legends Chucho Valdez and Gonzalo Rubalcaba secure visas to perform in the U.S. Venues are sometimes reluctant to sign a contract until the musician has a visa, Martinez said, but the visa can’t be secured without a contract.
And then there’s the question of payment. Because Americans can’t exchange money with Cubans, Cuban musicians cannot tour commercially in the U.S. or be paid for their work. Instead, they receive a per-diem fee from the U.S. government, anywhere from $50 to $100, according to Rebeca Mauleón, a San Francisco-based jazz pianist and director of education at SFJazz, a nonprofit dedicated to jazz performance and education.
“You’re going to have a band and can’t pay them what they deserve,” said Mauleón, who has traveled to Cuba more than 10 times since 1990 to study, conduct musical research and to marry her husband, who is Cuban. (Disclosure: This reporter took an Afro-Cuban music course taught by Mauleón at Stanford University.)
Changes in Cuba have already made it easier for Cuban musicians to move back and forth between the U.S. and Cuba. When Cuban artists like saxophonist Paquito d'Rivera and trumpeter Arturo Sandoval applied for political asylum while traveling to the U.S., they were banned from Cuba. But in 2012 Cuba quietly reversed its ban on allowing exiled musicians to visit home. As a result, Sublette said, many Cuban musicians are choosing to live in Havana, because they no longer have to request permission to leave the country.
Yosvany Terry, a Cuban-born jazz saxophonist, has lived in New York City since 1999, traveling to Cuba to see family and to do musical research. With the launching of diplomatic relations between U.S. and Cuba, Terry says, “Music is going to win, and culture is going to win at the same time.”
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