The Castro Cultural Commissioners saw in Elvis the incarnation of evil, “the decadent and deforming music of the imperialist enemy.”
Havana, Cuba – Every August 16, thousands of people (it is estimated that between 400,000 and 700,000) they go to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, to commemorate death, in 1977, of the King of Rock and Roll.
8 years ago, on August 15, 2017, I was one of the thousands of fans who, on the outskirts of Graceland, in the middle of a sea of flowers and candles, participated in the vigil that commemorated the 40 years of Elvis’s death.
Taking advantage of my stay in the United States, with a friend of my youth, we could fulfill our old dream of shooting in the south, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, touring the rock route and blues. And our pilgrimage culminated in Graceland, because if there is a rock and roll mecca it cannot be another than Elvis’s house.
Surrounded by a sea of candles and flowers, squeezed by men and women so excited that they could not contain the tears, our voices joined that of Elvis when he was heard, singing as only he could do it, as if he came from the very sky, “The Wonder of You” and “I Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
They came from all over the world. Many arrived from noon and waited for hours, under the summer sun of Memphis, the beginning of the ceremony, at 8:30 pm. But it was worth the wait: fans could not fail the king in such a round anniversary.
There is much to thank Elvis. He will not have invented the rock and roll, he would not touch the guitar better than Chuck Berry, but if it had not been for songs such as “It’s Alrigth, Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel”, and that wiggle that scandalized all the usual, pacatos and habitual etchings Very gray, uniform and boring.
I do not conceive how it would have been if Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard and then, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Dylan had not existed first. But I can get a fairly accurate idea, because the communist mandamases who govern my country as if it were a camp, determined to preserve our ideological purity, during the 1960s and much of the 1970s, did everything they could deprive us of their music to the Cubans and make us the impossible life of those who refuse to renounce rock.
The Castro Cultural Commissioners saw in Elvis the incarnation of evil, the quintessence of “the decadent and deforming music of the imperialist enemy.” One of them, the writer Lisandro Otero, came to qualify for rock as “music for pale
Fidel Castro himself, back in 1963 (when Elvis had already made his triumphal return of the military service and sang romantic ballads) invented the term “Elvispresliano attitudes’, to warn the young people of all the bad that expected them if they did not cut their tum order.
After a while – after Elvis’s fury was replaced by that of the Beatles, who were also prohibited in Cuba, and that Elvis had returned in 1968, when he seemed to have gone out of fashion, singing as God in a special TV – to those of my generation no longer called us “elvispresllians”, but the harassment followed. Instead of the tupé, it was our hair that bothered the mandamases, as much or more than our parents and teachers, and made us a goal to punish for the hordes of ideological correction.
If I have referred to Fidel Castro and his commissioners it is because they confirm that those who have attacked Elvis and rock music, and have forbidden it for considering it harmful, they are, in the best case, bitter, twisted and frustrated people. I imagine how much they mortify them see the crowd in Graceland without being summoned by a church or a unique party.
In the vigil in Graceland I attended, there were people of all ages, but most were elderly, many with canes and in wheel chairs. They are still faithful to Elvis and will continue to be until the last breath. They thank you for your music, which made them more free and uninhibited. I can imagine them like Pepillas and Pepillos, dancing Jailhouse Rock and falling in love, lulled by “Love me” or “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”
I saw offerings in Elvis’s tomb so simple and naive that they would seem pathetic but out of the beautiful stories behind them. Like that of a forty woman, accompanied by her teenage son, who put candles to Elvis and explained that he did it in memory of Davis, his father, a rock and roll lover who was gathering the money to come to Graceland to the vigil, but could not do it, because he died a few months ago.
With people like her, those who do not succeed to explain the endurability of Elvis’s myth, who consider it like any other pop idol, who say that Graceland is just another theme park, a business issue …
