Robust, rubicund, sunburnt skin and the grey hair of the beard by the Caribbean sun, that image accompany in Havana many inhabitants from San Francisco de Paula who faithfully treasure it as one of their most affectionate memories from childhood or adolescence, when they played baseball on the plots and streets, and occasionally shared with the American who inhabited, a long time ago, Finca Vigía among books, magazines and trophies.

It is a quasi mythic picture of the American writer Ernest Hemingway, the same that used to set off for the capital at noon, to the center of the city, to have lunch with his friends at “lunch” time and above all, to take a good daiquiri, the famous “Papa”, without sugar, in the old bar of El Floridita.

Many times he did it with his own guests, with the actress Ava Gadner, or the actor Gary Cooper, his interpreters on the films. She, always beautiful, splendid from her feline beauty. He, brave and tender, the eternal antifascist fighter who had, on the screen, a romance with Ingrid Bergman, in the cinematographic version of that novel For whom the bell tolls that came from pain and experience in the biographic Hemingway’s period of the Spanish civil war, within the narrator’s personal life, the same that wrote on the novel A Farewell to Arms about those other years of his youth when he was a journalist of the Star from Kansas City and above all, when he was an ambulance driver during the First World War; his stories always based on personal life experience in a game of fiction and testimony.

Hemingway left Cubans the writing of one of his most emotional narrative pages with The Old Man and the Sea, Pulitzer award, and then Nobel prize which was received in the Island and that he dedicated, as a tribute and offering to the patroness of Cuba, Our Lady of Charity, in El Cobre sanctuary, at Santiago de Cuba’s door, where you can find copper mineral opencast and the ancient marks of the slaves from colonial time as well.

That Hemingway, alive and sportsman, is a memory we treasure in our minds since we always prefer, in this archipelago, evoke the writer in his prime of life and not in his fall when he was sick and decided to end his life with his own hands, 45 years ago. This tragic fact took place on his father’s destiny years ago, also marked by suicide.

Ernest Hemingway is a legend for Cuban men and women, an adventure symbol, full of energy on the plains of Africa, dreamer and lover, epic in his own horizon, performing heroic feats in the wars, testifying those events that touched Humanity and that found echo in his work to translate existence with the eternal language of beauty.

Article by Mercedes Santos Moray and published en cmbfjazz

Adolfo Guzmán, eternal master of masters

On the summer of 1978, it was celebrated in Cuba for the first time the Cuban Music Contest Adolfo Guzmán. It coincided with the realization of the XI Festival Mundial de la Juventud y los Estudiantes.

This contest became the best way to pay homage to the Master who had died on July 30, 1976, to keep on living in memory as a example of what “An artist of his people” should be.

The XX Aniversario Medal and National Working Hero condition of master Adolfo Guzmán are endorsed by a fructiferous musical production devoted to tenderness, life and human being. No puedo ser feliz theme song of the contest together with others with an extraordinary lyricism: Te espero en la eternidad, Al fin amor, Es tan difícil mentir, Profecía, Olvido. Lloviendo, among others, are part of the catalogue of who caressed great registers and moved other distinguished personalities along the world.

Referring to Guzmán, Esther Borja, our Damisela Encantadora, pointed out:

"Guzmán has a preferable place in my heart and life. People are not able to imagine what it means for an interpreter that a composer says to him/her: - I like how you sing my songs very much, I like it very much, because you sing them as I like. - Guzmán was for me not only the director of El Álbum de Cuba but also my friend for many years”.

Taken out from the article written by Josefa Bracero Torres on section “En la memoria radial”. Read the complete article at www.radiocubana.cu

Born in Havana Ignacio Cervantes and his Cuban Danzas.

The great pianist, composer and conductor Ignacio Cervantes, the most notorious Cuban musician of the XIX century and prominent figure of the American musical romanticism, was born in Havana on July 31, 1847 and received the first musical education from his father, Pedro Cervantes, who would become the secretary of the Havana University.
When he was just ten years old, he created his pristine work: Soledad Danza, which he dedicated to his mother, Mrs. Soledad Kawanagh.

In 1865 he traveled to Paris with his father and is admitted to the Academy of Music, named at that moment Imperial Academy of Music.

In 1866 received a great piano prize for his performance of Hertz’s Fifth concert, and later harmony, fugue and counterpoint prizes. During his staying in France, Cervantes aspired to Rome Award, but he was unable to participate in the competition due to his foreigner condition.

Once in Cuba he taught, play in churches, visited the philharmonic societies, conducted the orchestra of an opera company in Payret theater and made concerts with Beethoven’s, Bach’s, Chopin’s, Schuman’s, Liszt’s and Mendelssohn’s works, among others.

In 1875, during the patriotic fight carried out by the mambises to bring down the opprobrious Spanish colonialist regime, Cervantes was called with urgency to the General Captain office and was expatriated shortly after to the United States from where, according to his own words, he would be able to do the same he did here… He lived four years in American land and came back to Cuba in 1879 when he was informed that his father was not in good health.

Ignacio Cervantes’ music legacy is one of the most significant in the history of the Cuban music. Composer of vocal and instrumental music, as well as symphonic and chamber music, his main treasure is found on his famous Cuban Danzas, which according to Alejo Carpentier:

“…are small exquisiteness, of grace and distinction wonders…

With his clean and clear style, constitute a small sonorous world (…) that belongs only to Ignacio Cervantes.
Achieving this for a musician of our continent is a worthy deed to be considered”.