Silvio left exactly at seven in the afternoon, at the agreed time. That punctuality, so rare in Cuba, was the first gesture of the night. He wore Silvio: Jean, a dark blue pulonver with a small cuban flag embroidered on the left side – there where he beats his heart – and a black cap with the word “apprentice.” He appeared with one of his two inseparable companions: the camera (the guitar was already waiting for him on stage).
The public exploded. He did not receive it, he appointed him with ovations, applause and screams that multiplied in the staircase of the University of Havana. Silvio greeted, drew an accomplice smile with his hand, raised the camera and fired a photo of that human tide that awaited him. Then he hugged the guitar and began the trip.
The weather seemed to agree. After days of heavy rains that had made us fear for the concert, at that time he cleared. Orange colors painted the horizon where the sea is, in the boardwalk. It was the first time on days that the sun was seen in that way, like a warm watercolor that blessed the appointment.
The first chords evoked José Martí: “There is a cluster of essential truths that fit in the wing of a hummingbird, and are, however, the key to public peace, spiritual elevation and the great homeland,” the troubadour read. Text words “Street teachers“, The same from where Silvio extracted the inspiration for” hummingbird wings. ”
With that song he opened the concert. And it was not accidental: it is an issue that hugs the diverse, the broken, what resists. An exact metaphor for today’s Cuba, although it is a subject of twenty years ago.
After that start I launched the crowd. I wanted to take photos from below, feel the concert from people’s skin. What I saw was a plural tide: twenty people who sang songs from when they had not been born, forties like me that we suck the poetry of the new trova thanks to our parents, and sementons who heard those songs when they just premiered.
Three generations linked to the same verses. We haven’t seen that in Cuba for a long time.
There were kisses, hugs, tears and applause around me. All spontaneous and self -revoving. In the midst of that tumult, I heard Silvio dedicate the concert to Pepín, the worker. This called that endearing character, photographer and stage manager, narrator of a thousand anecdotes, generous until the end, who died in 2024. His photo appeared with a smiling on the screen. A tribute just to one of those essential invisible.
The repertoire was a journey through decades: after “hummingbird wings” came “America”, “Snake sleep”, “Virgin of the West”, “The thing comes”, “not to throw the sofa”, “ours after”, “the goodness and its reverse”, “casiopea” and “tonada of the will”.
It is worth stopping in the band that accompanies the troubadour. Virtuosity is remarkable: Emilio Vega in vibraphone, Jorge Aragón in piano, Niurka González in flute and clarinet, Jorge Reyes on double bass, Rachid López on guitar, Maykel Elizarde in Tres, Oliver Valdés on drums and Malva Rodríguez in second voices and piano. They are not companions, but accomplices. We will already detail about each of these musicians in the next deliveries along this tour with Silvio, in which we will be giving coverage in Oncuba
While listening to the songs of this first part, I asked me: how is it possible that after so many years Silvio continues to write songs that play deep fibers and reflect so much collective feeling?
I think the key is that it does not live in a bubble. It suffers the same cuts of light and water, the same migrations of friends and loved ones as anyone in Cuba. His reality is not far from that of people. And, beyond everyday life, their songs speak of the universal, what all generations face.
In that first part of the concert I confirmed an intuition: as well as “I hope”, “La Era” or “History of the chair” were the hymns of other generations, today “not to throw the sofa”, it is becoming the new classic of the young Cubans.
I checked it when I heard how cheers exploded in the most critical verses, while, a few meters away, there were the president of the country, ministers and officials. Direct verses that ran free between rulers and governed.
How ugly the squares look
wanting to impose your pattern,
In the name of the Immaculate
and of a sacred reason.
Sophisms, some call him;
Packages we say here.
And I, who don’t believe in any,
I see you throw the sofa.
“Silence, because the wolf arrives
and devours you;
The enemy stalks everything
Any time. “
And while they imagine nice
of consciousness,
reality is a relaxation
of inefficiency.
Youth escapes in mass
And they alter
Because a mouth is not race
or of your sidewalk.
And, like the mocked spinal,
One morning
They throw the least complicated
through the window.
What little favor to the lights,
How useless and bitter costume,
While the forbidden seduces
Without having to use mask.
I don’t want the hug with last
nor the kiss as an obligation,
I don’t want vices and dogmas
Have in my heart.
I saw them truncar publications
smart
and disqualify songs
by different.
I saw them priming the bonfires
of homophobia,
In the name of false flags
and sad glories.
I saw them, confident and safe
launching darts,
appearing to play hard
But to shelter.
I saw them, and it’s not that I would like
or look for it;
I saw them in the childbirth of an era
that lengthened.
To pronounce us,
To complete the unit,
We will have to count on the other
The lights and the dark.
The missing path is big
And much to correct.
The rod, getting higher,
Invite to fly and follow.
There was a moment of deep emotion when Silvio reminded three brothers of the new trova who are no longer there. He sang “Créeme” by Vicente Feliú, “I forgive you” by Noel Nicola and “Yolanda” by Pablo Milanés.
The public accompanied him in a broken voice. It was not just tribute: it was to bring them back, even for those minutes.
Another felt moment came with poetry. Silvio recited “Halt!”, By Luis Rogelio “Wichi” Nogueras, to sympathize with Palestine. His Malva daughter covered his shoulders with a kufiya while the verses rumbled:
I travel the road that traveled four million spectra.
Under my boots, in musty, autumn afternoon frost
pain painfully the gravel.
It’s Auschwitz, the horror factory
that human madness erected
to the glory of death.
It is Auschwitz, stigma in the face suffered from our time.
And before the desert buildings,
before electrified fences,
Before the sheds that keep tons of human hair,
Before the rusty door of the oven where they were incinerated
parents of other children,
Friends of unknown friends,
wives, brothers,
children who, at the last moment,
millions of years old,
I think of you, Jews from Jerusalem and Jericho,
I think of you, men of the land of Zion,
How dumbfounded, naked, terrified
Hatikvah sang in gas cameras;
I think of you and your long and painful way
From the Judea hills
to the concentration camps of the III Reich.
I think of you
and not successful
as
They forgot so soon
The voaho of hell.
On the staircase, under the Havana sky, those words were an aldabonazo.
The repertoire continued with “More Porvenir”, “Eva”, “Song of the chosen one”, “Skown”, “Whoever” and “I will love you.” Then came “the era is giving birth to a heart”, “Angel for an end” and the bise: “The fool”, an unpublished guaracha called “Anyone born in Cuba” that put everyone to dance, the essential “hope” and, to close, “come hope.”
Anyone born in Cuba
can be called Cuban,
Even if you like grapes
More than the Manzano banana.
Cuban of the pickle
and Cuban of the piglet.
>Cuban like milk
and Cuban of coal.
Cuban that does not guess,
Cuban of lucidity.
>Cuban of Chinese Lady
and Cuban chess.
Cuban with his Cuban
and transsexual Cuban.
>Cuban of Centro Habana
and Provincial Cuban.
Serenata Cuban,
Cuban to start.
>Cuban to give the can
and Cuban to attest.
FALSIFIED CUBAN
and original Cuban.
>Insubordinated Cuban
and editorial Cuban.
Cuban of the Navy,
Cuban of the Malecon.
>Cuban of the sardines
and Cuban shark.
“Those who are far away,” said Silvio before saying goodbye by addressing those who were at the top of the hill, near the Alma Master and the Rector. He also went to many who could not be on the staircase, for those who were not even in Cuba and continued in concert from live broadcasts made with cell phones. The metaphor came true.
This was Silvio’s fifth concert on the staircase of the University of Havana. The first, together with Pablo Milanés in 1984, brought together more than 40 thousand people and was broadcast on television.
Then he returned in 1987 with Afro -Cuba and Santiago Feliú. In 1997, during the World Youth Festival, he shared the stage with Sara González, Amaury Pérez and Vicente Feliú, among others. The fourth time was twenty years ago, on a tour of nature, under a downpour that did not stop him.
Now he returned to inaugurate a new adventure: the Latin American tour that will take him through Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Colombia. Twelve concerts in five countries that sold out in hours. Presentations promise to be a phenomenon in the southern cone.
What lived in the staircase during Silvio’s concert and his ex officio fellow was a true collective cure for the soul. Cuba is going through very difficult times: crisis, migrations, hopelessness.
However, the night of September 19 will be recorded as a balm in the memory of those who were there and those who, from various latitudes, also sighed.
We follow the tour. Next station: Santiago de Chile.
