Havana, Cuba. – A friend Praguense tells me that the songs preferred by the Czechs of the elderly, who wrinkle their hearts for the many memories that evoke, are those in the late 1960s of the balladist Marta Kubišováand no, as we could think of those of Karel Gottthat pop singer who liked the avant -garde workers of the socialist emulation and the pioneers of red scarf and to whom, therefore, the authorities endured his bourgeois and westernizing fools and they even begged him in 1972 to return from his tour of his tour of his tour of Western Germany.
Marta Kubišová, who was also an actress, was very popular and received several awards, but was prohibited by the communist authorities after her song Prayer for Marta It became the anthem of the resistance to the Soviet invasion that in the summer of 1968 crushed the Prague springthat attempt to democratize and give a more human face to Czech socialism.
Kubišová, who became a prodemocracy activist and was one of the signatories of Charter 77, on November 22, 1989, during the so -called velvet revolution that ended the communist regime, he sang Prayer for Marta and the Czech national anthem in the Plaza de San Wenceslao, before thousands of protesters.
Today, the old songs by Marta Kubišová, who was censored by the communist regime for more than 20 years, also tender, put melancholic and make certain third masochists crying Czechs who still feel nostalgia for the communist past.
When Castroism ends – I must not miss the years – and the years will pass, the nostalgic of the communist past to cry when they listen to the songs of Silvio Rodríguez. What they will not have is a serious singer -songwriter like Kubišová that buries them and shed their skin evoking what they will consider that they were “the golden years of the revolution.” Because at that time, Sara Gonzálezwho would excite the “maximum leader” so much, not even played the guitar or was deputy of the National Assembly of Popular Power, but studying viola at the National School of Art. When he began to sing to “the heroes and the victories of the revolution” and to believe “because her friend and colleague told her Amaury Pérez– That it was “the very homeland”, the Cubans were not for politician trovas and preferred to detach themselves with the Van Van, The tired ox And “tell me where you want me to put your barbecue.”
The nostalgic of Castroism, when they give them the era of the revolutionary offensive, the Havana cord, the ten million harvest, the schools in the country That it was the time they were closer to communism, if they look for a female voice for their masochist sparrow in the 60s, so as not to fall into bourgeois frivolities, they will have to settle – although it is not epic – with The Gatico Vinagrito, The ugly and other children’s songs of the Teresita Fernández troubadour.
For the times when Marta Kubišová played the guitar and sang her ballads in Prague, Luisa María Güellthe miniskal girl Ye-yé, we groaned “I am not old to love you” and Martha Strada She was twisted to sing, as only she knew, “open me strong, it was” … but the commissioners, who eventually fled the two singers and many other, closed the bars, loaded the vitroles in greenish green trucks and ended the Havanera nightlife and even with fried stalls, barbershop and shoemakers, in the revolutionary offensive of March 1968, who dares so much to regret the singer -songwriter Silvio Rodríguez.
Anyway, the very long reign of Fidel Castro and its continuators will have its soundtrack. Of so much that he has lasted and of so many musical fashions that passed during these 66 years, that Soundtrack They will compose not only the songs of the new trova, as the commissioners would like, but will cover from that on a tyrant that sang Lupe Even the most path and eschatological of reggaeton and cast, the perfect music for the decadent current demadmer. And it will happen, of course, by titles as suggestive as Tied to you for this rope, Havana can’t stand it anymore, the parakeet is crying, the love is over, that man is crazy and Remove this salt from.
