The Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematographic Industry (ICAIC) presented on Tuesday, for the second time in eight years, the book Rock and roll prisoner (2017), of the Cuban writer and professor Francisco López Sacha.
The launch took place in the Héctor García Mesa room, of ICAIC, in the context of the 40th edition of the Jazz Plaza International Festival.
“Our editorial wanted to present titles, not recent, that are related to cinema and music, being the work of Sacha the first of them,” said Mercy Ruiz, director of ICAIC Editions, in statements collected by the agency Latin press.
“It is a theoretical attempt and a very personal periodization that does not always coincide with the criteria of musicologists, but with my memory, my sensitivity and my level of information,” López Sacha declared at the time.
In 30 chapters, the Cuban intellectual analyzes the rock industry, its origins, representatives, artistic tendencies; Not from a purely theoretical vision, but through their own experiences, sensitivity and information level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4ngfvmoejo
“My purpose is to historia , the needs and deficiencies of social groups, ”wrote López Sacha, born on February 22, 1950 in the city of Manzanillo.
The presentation of the book was in charge of the musicologist Oni Acosta, who said that Sacha writes about the contexts in which the musical currents have emerged, not from a lonely or fortuitous birth, but a process of sedimentation, maturation and confluence, being jazz one one of those tributaries.
“It is a job that López Sacha did since his way of understanding music, from his way of living it, but without detaching himself from that writer, essayist, student and knowledgeable of music,” Acosta told Acosta Latin press.
After weighing this beatles fan as a mind with a creativity in constant development and movement, the critic said that the text equally approaches the twist, a history such as jazz, the ragtime, the swing and all the important figures of Each stage, while describing the sound of a prodigal era in searches and mergers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dveww0xBL4
From Santana to Adalberto
Research, in turn, transgresses criteria and dynamite, from very personal perspectives, various myths about gender and introduces the reader into some valuations on the birth of Cuban rock.
Thus, in the volume, parallels appear on great authorities and binomials such as Santana, Peter Frampton, Elton John / Bernie Taupin, Lennon / McCartney, without marginalizing national talent in figures such as Formlll, Silvio, Pablo or Adalberto, and influences which was rocky for such composers.
Critical valuations on referential gangs such as Rolling Stones and Beatles are not lacking here, while, in a bold, fabula way and questions some rock archetypes and relaps them as possible scenarios of an alternative world, observes Oni Acosta.
It is not only the great writer and essayist, but he is a man who can translate those complex musical and morphological processes; Thanks to him we can understand better and argue about it, the musicologist ended.
Sacha, a story teacher
Francisco López Sacha is the author of the novels The Birthday of Fire (1986,1990), The softest of all summers (2022) and the stories Discovery of blue (1987), The Division of Waters (1987) and Variations to the art of escape (2011).
It holds the awards Bearded caiman (1987), Juan Rulfo (2000), Alejo Carpentier (2002), Critics Award (2017), the distinction for national culture (1994), the Alejo Carpentier medal (2021) and his literary and investigative work was dedicated to the International Book Fair of Havana 2024.
Together with the missing Eduardo Heras León, considered one of the great masters of the story in Cuba, López Sacha has taught numerous sessions of narrative techniques, an initiative under the Literary Training Workshop ollo Jorge Cardoso, emerged in 1998 with both writers and collaboration From Ivonne Galeano.
