The clamor of artists and admirers protesting the few tickets sold for the Pablo Milanés concert, scheduled for Tuesday, June 21, has had an effect. The performance has been moved from the National Theater of Cuba, where it was scheduled, to the Ciudad Deportiva Coliseum, according to the Cuban Institute of Music this Friday.
In a brief statement, the institution explains that the decision was made “with the aim of facilitating greater attendance at the concert” and details that “the institution’s authorities and Pablo Milanés’ team have taken into account the requests of those who have expressed interest in participating in the show”.
The tickets already sold, according to the Institute, “retain their validity”, and the new ones will be sold at the National Theater of Cuba, this Saturday, June 18, starting at 1 pm.
“In the conception and organization of the show, work has been done with seriousness and transparency,” the Institute concludes in its note. “The consideration that this is a concert for the people, who deserve to enjoy the work of a great artist, has prevailed.” The Ciudad Deportiva Coliseum has around 15,000 seats, compared to just over 2,000 at the National Theatre.
“The consideration that this is a concert for the people, who deserve to enjoy the work of a great artist, has prevailed”
Last Wednesday, the sale of tickets for the event ended in a brawl when, just 50 minutes after opening the box office, they warned that there were no seats left.
The explanation given by the director of the theater, Nereyda López Labrada, is that only tickets for “stalls and the first balcony” had been sold to the public, and that the rest had been given to “organisms”, that is, to official groups.
The news was immediately criticized not only by those who hoped to get tickets to see the singer-songwriter, who is 79 years old and has health problems, but by Cuban artists of all kinds, both inside and outside the island.
The announcer Yunior Morales addressed the musician himself in a broadcast via Facebookto suggest that if the concert “cannot be in the open air” for “all the Cuban people,” not just for a few “government” people, cancel it.
In a post published on his networks, Carlos Varela suggested a more forceful opinion through a fragment of the Milanés song I will tread the streets again, originally composed in homage to the Chilean government of Salvador Allende defeated by Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état in 1973: “The books, the songs, that burned the murderous hands will return, my people will be reborn from their ruin and the traitors will pay for their guilt” .
In a post published on his networks, Carlos Varela suggested a more forceful opinion through a fragment of the Milanés song ‘I will step on the streets again’
Precisely at a Varela concert, and also at the Ciudad Deportiva Coliseum in Havana, on May 29, attendees chanted the word “freedom” at various times. At the end of his performance, the singer-songwriter shouted “Viva Cuba libre” and thanked the organizers – with Eme Alfonso at the head – of the event, whom he praised for “having the ovaries” to invite him to sing in Cuba .
The Cuban filmmaker resident in Barcelona Carlos Díaz Lechuga fondly apostrophized: “Dear Pablo! After a hard year, going through personal problems, illnesses, today I want to tell you that I admire you more and more. Cuba is yours. You belong to the Cubans. Nothing and no one can against that, even if many want to. There’s no game with you. You’re tough. If you sing chapó… if you don’t sing chapó”. And he concluded: “This rabble they have formed will not stain your soul, which is clean.”
Pablo Milanés, who has lived in Spain for some time, was one of the artists who used to be supporters of the Revolution who spoke forcefully after the repression of the demonstrations on July 11 last year. “I believe in young people, who with the help of all Cubans, must be and will be the engine of change,” said the famous singer-songwriter in their networkswho described as “irresponsible and absurd” the use of repression by the Cuban government against the people, “who have sacrificed themselves and given everything for decades to support a regime that in the end what it does is imprison them.”
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