Babalooo! Where Are You?
by C. Reeder
Among the chaos
of Cuba, Abdala
Studios stands
ready
to make music
Congas and claves punctuate the air with a pulsating salsa beat when the door swings open to Studio 1, mixing with the rich smoke of a Cohiba cigar and vapors from my café Cubano, a coffee substance, not unlike car oil, that my American friends affectionately call legalized speed. I am in Cuba, sitting in the lounge of the recording studio, Abdala, chatting with Katia and Sandra. Katia is an attorney for the studio and Sandra is a client liaison and, much to my relief, has a B.A. in English.
People on the street look at me with bemused horror when I try to speak what
I can only call Spanglish. Things like, "Bueno, mi gusta... Old Havana?"
I sputter as I jump into a taxi, while waving and pointing to the place on
the map where I want to go. Gesturing and facial expressions can only get
you so far. I wasn't sure I wanted to test my less than stellar foreign language
skills on humorless looking guys with guns in army fatigues standing in these
little wooden boxes [one sees] all over the place. English is not the first
language in Cuba.
In Habana Vieja (Old Havana), a big tourist stop, pot-holed streets are jammed
with scooters, Chinese bicycles, Russian Ladas, new Korean cars, pedestrians
from cruise ships, and huge American-made metal relics from the '50s in various
stages of disrepair, spewing miasmic fumes from exhaust pipes.
Nuematicos, hombres who fish from inner tubes, balance tires on their heads
as they march down the Malécon and disappear over the historic seawall.
This is the Cuban version of fast food.
Only 200 physical miles from my house, but light years from the world I know,
I strain to find some common ground in this enigma called Cuba. My desire
for wanting to be here is all mixed up with a love of all kinds of Latin music
and images of myself as a very little girl in a living room with her family
in Columbus, Ohio watching the colorful Ricky Ricardo sing "Babalooo"
out of a little black-and-white television box.
The common ground is, of course, Musica!...and at Abdala Studios, music rules.
Abdala Studios is the brainchild of the gifted Cuban musician and songwriter
Silvio Rodriguez, and built with the support of the governmentowned CIMEX
Corporation. With international interest in a cha-cha-cha over Cuban music,
et al., the time is right. Ya es tiempo!
Opened for a year and nestled in the Miramar District of Havana, Abdala Studios
is over 16,000 square feet, with three recording rooms, one large enough for
an orchestra, a MIDI room, mastering room, and state-of-the-art SSLs in a
compound totally self contained.
One can get delicious cubano food from short-order cooks and drinks from the
bar, like a Cristal beer or Havana Club y Coca Cola. CDs of the artists who
have recorded there are for sale, or you can take home studio paraphernalia
like hats, t-shirts, etc. The U.S. dollar is the currency.
Abdala is a short drive from sparkling five-star hotels on the water, through
neighborhoods of crumbling apartment buildings and dilapidated Andalusian-era
style mansions. Along the way, I pass by the lonely looking Russian Embassy
with all 30 concrete stories hovering over its neighbors and sending off morgue-like
vibes.
The U.S. Treasury Department prohibits U.S. citizens from spending money in
Cuba, so most of the clientele are artists and record companies from Europe,
particularly Spain or Germany, Japan, South America, Mexico, and Canada.
The current project pumping sounds out of Studio us a three-CD set called
Tocando Tierra (playing/ touching the earth) produced by Don Grusin and Frank
Quintero, engineered by Roger Nichols, and executive produced by Samuel Quiros
and Alejandro Zalles for Latin World Productions, S.A.
Tocando Tierra is an eclectic feast of over 30 musicians from various musical
genres and sizzling with talent like the Habana Ensemble, Bela Fleck, Abraham
Laboriel, Alex Acuna, Jerry Hay, and singers such as Ilan, Luis Enrique, and
Soledad.
Sandra explains that Abdala Studios was named after a heroic character (i.e.,
died in battle) from an early epic poem by revered José Marti. Marti
was a revolutionary hero who himself died fighting in a battle to free Cuba
from Spanish colonialism at the turn of the last century, a mirror image of
the character he created decades earlier.
Unlike the dead fictional Abdala, Abdala Studios is very much alive and kicking.
MartI wrote in Our America, "The thought is the father to the deed."
To that end, Abdala Studios is the new proud parent of recordings by Aldo
Lopez, Carlos Puebla, José Maria Vitier, Amaury Perez, and a televised
tribute to the barbarian of rhythm, Benny More, for RTV called, A Benny. A
publishing company is in the works and Unicornio Publishing will handle all
catalogs in house.
I find out later from other sources that Sandra and Katia are paid the equivalent
of around $20 a month, and are not allowed to meet me for a drink to chat
at my hotel. I am told Cubans are not allowed in hotels where turistas stay.
The word on the street is that life for the average Cuban "got a lot
worse" when the economy converted to dollars. Since the current rate
is 22 Cuban pesos to one dollar, it's not hard to figure out why. The Cuban
government doesn't allow Cubans to earn U.S. dollars directly, although I
was told this is changing - at least for some musicians.
Well, and why not? In my global community the musician is usually at the bottom
of the money food chain.
My approach to international politics consists of repeating my Cicero mantra,
may- I-have -your-leave-not-to -knowwhat-I-do-not-know. Both sides of the
almost 40-year-old U.S/Cuba embargo make a point. At what point does the point
not matter anymore?
As the Mambo King neared death "...he heard the heavy bronze bells of
the cathedrals of Santiago and Havana ringing simultaneously, he heard the
tttling-tttling of a bicycle and blinked and saw the Havana night, shoots
of light in the sky, a thousand trumpets and drums in the distance, cars honking,
and the low murmur, like an ocean, of nighttime crowds." (Oscar Hijuelos©1989)
So what if I turn into a big mush about Cuba.
From Silvio, who is in the habit of "discovering amazing things"
comes this lyric, "Only love engenders miracles, only love turns clay
into miracles."
Abdala Studios is a miracle in the making and a labor of love. Anyone with
a heart drummed by a Salsa beat or an emotion emblazoned by a bolero would
agree.
Find out more by visiting www.abdala.cubaweb.cu/indexi.htm
or e-mail abdala@imagenes.get.cma.net.