There are many boys in the courtyard of the National Museum of Fine Arts. It makes one think and one imagines that many do not really know who the artist who will take the stage shortly is. Actors, television presenters, troubadours, singer-songwriters, people from the show business habanero, faranduleros… The world fits in the courtyard of Fine Arts.
When he arrives on stage, those same boys receive the singer-songwriter who identifies them (us) with enthusiastic applause. Perhaps because she takes out her heart to sing. Maybe because she is successful without having to “hit” a hit. Probably because she has a great love for this island; the love that his father Cástor instilled in him for so many years. Or because he is inspiring that air hippy, of a “disordered” girl, of an anti-diva with a luminous look, as she has already been described.
He breaks into a song in Catalan with an old song. yesalludes. Thank you. Smile. She settles her hair. Come back. A version of “Tonada de luna full”, by the Venezuelan Simón Díaz is capturing you. She walks away from the microphone. She remains seated. Then other songs of her authorship will arrive, versions of her, but when she halfway through the concert she picks up the songs from her album “In the imagination”, the one that she recorded in 2011 with Javier Colina. So the public, that is, us, have already connected with “the phenomenon.”
November 11 has special meaning for her. This day her father would have turned 67 years old. The night is to pay tribute to her: she names the great Marta Valdés, she evokes María Teresa Vera and the public fully accompanies her with “Twenty Years”.
He tells us that he met Silvio Rodríguez, who cried when he found out about that opportunity, and immediately afterwards he sings a fragment of “Rabo de Nube”. Someone remind us that Pablito is hospitalized, in a stable condition. The world is with him.
Near the end, when neither the poor audio nor the noise have managed to break the connection, she summons other friends, including Roly Berrío. She hugs them, kisses them. “It’s too much emotion,” she confesses.
The concert ends and one believes that in the Patio de Bellas Artes none of those present have felt the weight of the tremendous days we have spent… and those that will come. That thing called music and this Catalan girl have helped to let go of pessimism and feel a little bit of peace.
She is almost 40 years old and is a respected artist in Spain, adored in much of Latin America and pampered in Cuba. She is called Silvia Pérez Cruz.
