Impressions of a Cuban singer in the United States

By Alberto Faya

I visited the United States for the first time little over 31 years ago. It was a trip that had been on my mind since childhood. It was also an encounter with myself, with a part of my culture that had been defined basically by a series of events that had turned that nation into the enemy against which I had fought at Girón Beach, the enemy I had waited for, vigilant, from diverse spots in Cuba, side by side with other comrades in my militia battalion, the terrible foe of a reality I had decided to defend.

My arrival in New York City was loaded with conflicting feelings, and that’s how I entered that world that was so familiar and so full of expectations, not all of them pleasant. I was a child of the Cuban Revolution “in the bowels of the monster.”

Among the huge number of experiences that I had in that trip and recall most clearly were several encounters with Cubans living in some “northern” cities. In each encounter, I was unable to rid myself of a series of prejudices that had emerged as a consequence of the inevitable confrontations that other Cubans, enemies of the Revolution, had generated on the island.

I couldn’t forget the sound of bullets whistling over my head just a few days before I turned 17, nor the grim faces of those who had invaded our (and their) shores, only to end up marching in line to climb on POW trucks. How many relatives of those who shook my hand after a concert had returned from Cuba with hatred in their hearts or, sadly, had never returned? What was the meaning of the joy with which we invariably greeted each other?

On more than one occasion, after the performances, I was invited to eat with my comrades in the Moncada Group. Those were invitations to which my Cubanness was accustomed. Frequently served were black beans, fried plantains, ground-beef “picadillo” and one or two glasses of beer. The tables were set in the familiar and fond way I had seen on the island a few days or weeks before.

The basic ingredients were there, but there was another flavor, something I could only describe as different. I perceived it then in such a way that I still preserve it as a distinctive element of my 53-plus-days stay in the United States, a stay during which I experienced many emotions and lived moments that were important for my formation as a person.

Bearing in mind that tastes are a reflection of a culture and that gastronomic preferences are truly an intimate part of (never foreign to) the social contexts in which we live, I wonder to what degree those beans served to me with great affection were essentially Cuban.

To what degree was Cubanness expressed in a dish that I identified as ours but that somehow tasted strange? Could it be that culinary habits of those compatriots were truly Cuban, while mine were the product of a society that had changed so much that we couldn’t even recognize the “true” flavor of rice and beans?

Should I use Badía condiments, or similar spices, to achieve a real flavor of our own?

At that time, my grandmother, who was still alive in Santiago de las Vegas, did her loving best to cook for us rice-‘n’-beans dishes that tasted delicious, even though some ingredients were not the same as during my childhood. No longer did we have El Mundo dry wine, or Uncle Ben rice, or the side dishes that used to be served at any home to complement a traditional meal.

How much had our perception of “good beans” changed? Was the change good or bad? Was recalling those beans as delicious a wrong perception because “the truth” was in the products advertised on Cuban radio and TV before the triumph of the Revolution? Was describing the beans offered to me by Cubans in the United States as “different” a cultural “problem” of mine?

In an effort to find an answer to a topic that, to some, might appear banal, I turned to the opinion of a Cuban with some of the keenest definitions of Cubanness, Don Fernando Ortiz, who, in a lucid article titled “The human factors of Cubanness,” published in 1949, said:

“Cubanness is principally the peculiar quality of a culture, the Cuban culture.” [1] Farther on, he wrote:

“…Cubanness is not only in the outcome but also in the complex process of its formation, disintegral and integral, in the substantial elements that are part of its actions, in the environment in which it’s expressed and in the vicissitudes of its duration.” [2]

My hosts — called Cuban-Americans in the U.S. — had tried very hard to please me with the best traditions they maintained with great difficulty in a different world. Their dishes were delicious, as were those my grandmother prepared in Cuba, but their Cubanness, as expressed in the preparation of a dish, was different from mine. I should make a necessary reflection: They tried to remain Cuban amid a reality that was sometimes hostile and always different from the one I lived in Cuba every day.

They lived off the recollections and daily human links that their need for identity required. I lived the daily Cuban reality, as changing as the one they lived but one where the definition of “Cuban” was dictated by life in the country that generated it. I then felt that singing to them a son or a rumba was a contribution not only necessary and indispensable but also beautiful.

I felt that the contribution of us artists was extremely valuable for those persons who, slowly and through the relay of generations born in that country, would have to make tremendous efforts to preserve what distinguished them as a human conglomerate or as a minority, depending on the focus.

Now that I write these lines, I feel that we Cubans living on the island not only defend our existence there but also, by our persistence in the defense of what we are, help provide our compatriots of good will — immersed in other realities throughout the world, as they have been for more than a century — with some reasons to identify themselves as part of the history where ancient patriots mix with today’s patriots, old music with today’s music, the beans we’ve always eaten with the beans we’ll eat in the future, and to reunite in that common place called Cuban culture.

Alberto Faya is a singer and the founder of the Nueva Trova movement. He is a member of the National Council and Executive Council of the Musicians’ Association of UNEAC.

[1] Ortiz, Fernando: “The Human Factors of Cubanness in Ethnicity and Society.” Cuban Thought. Social Sciences Publishing House, Havana, 1993, pg. 3.

[2] Ortiz, Fernando: Op. cit., pg. 6.