MADRID, Spain.- The popular orchestra El Niño y La Verdad was eliminated from the “Baila en Cuba” event, where it had scheduled performances. As denounced by the director of the group, the musician Emilio Frías, it is another act of censorship by the Cuban authorities.
“Here is another proof of the censorship that I am experiencing in Cuba…, suddenly they changed the programming and El Niño and La Verdad were left out of the `Baila en Cuba´ event, an event organized among others, by my own representation agency with the one with which I have a double bond, ‘Cuban Clave’ and with which I had long agreed to be in Cuba on this date to participate in this event,” Frías explained through Facebook.
From his publication, made this Monday, he lamented: “How great is the price that an artist in this country has to pay for saying only The Truth, for singing to what the people are experiencing, for saying a word that in its essence is the reason of the human being, Change and Revolutionize every day”.
The composer also pointed out that he did not intend to “take their Facebook page for this” but, he pointed out, it is “their only way to denounce what they are doing with their orchestra and their career.”
After the publication, Emilio Frías has received hundreds of messages of support from his followers, who denounce the repression of the Cuban regime.
“They are forcing you to leave the country, with so many obstacles, what are you going to live on? How do you pay your work team? Here there will be no State place that gives you a space to play and individuals do not want to look for problems, in short, a dead end, “wrote Arelis Herrera.
While Caridad Margarita Gómez considered: “How difficult everything is. They have closed all the roads without worrying about how you and your members of the orchestra are going to support your family and from what I have been able to read only because of a theme of a song called `Cambio´”.
For her part, Iris Blanco commented: “How sad to see all this, but all your followers know that both you and your orchestra are great musicians and will continue to be so even if they censor you.”
At the end of last month Emilio Frías denounced that El Niño y la Verdad had been censored since his return to Cuba on October 9, from a tour of Mexico.
Frías explained that since then they have suspended concerts that had been scheduled for more than three months and have moved previously recorded television programs from the billboard.
“We have had a pitched battle and it has been an odyssey to be able to present ourselves on the Island, and even so we have not had any results, we have not had a clear and exact answer as to what is happening, although I can imagine it (… Although they tell me , in the Cuban Institute of Music and Ministry of Culture that I have no prohibition from working or appearing on Cuban Television, the reality that I am living is completely different,” he said.
On September 10, the group was censored while offering a concert at the Casa de la Música in Galiano.
When Frías spoke to the public about the censorship of his song “Cambio”, local security agents turned off the audio.
Before the repressors decided to end the concert, Frías told the public: “Maybe I can be wrong, but my mistake is mine. I am not saying that, as I think, many people think. I have not said anything, they have set up all this here… And if they are going to do that, really, I tell them, if they are going to get like that, don’t invite me anymore. Don’t call me anymore, and get me out of everywhere. Get me off TV, get me off the radio. The only place they won’t be able to get me from is the heart of all Cubans.”
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