Cuba's ban on anti-Castro musicians quietly lifted

By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Havana
8 August 2012 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19174552

Change could be about to hit Cuban radio. After five
decades, the government has done away with a blacklist of
musicians and singers that had seen dozens of artists
banned from the nation's airwaves.

The list was never officially published, but artists who
abandoned the Communist-run island and spoke out against
the 1959 revolution found themselves struck off radio
playlists.

They included Celia Cruz and Havana-born pop-singer Gloria
Estefan.

Now, in another small sign of change in Cuba, the
blacklist has gone.

News of the change emerged last week but there has been no
public announcement: that would mean admitting to
censorship in the first place.

The Communist Party has not authorised any official
interviews. But several of Cuba's biggest radio stations
have confirmed to the BBC that the ban has been
overturned.

They say there were at least 50 artists on the list as
recently as a few days ago but station directors can now
decide for themselves what to broadcast.

Among those formerly-banned artists were Grammy-winning
saxophonist Paquito d'Rivera, who defected from Cuba
whilst on tour - leaving his family - and was openly
critical of Fidel Castro; singer Willy Chirino, who
launched his musical career in Miami after leaving Cuba as
a child; and jazz pianist Bebo Valdes - father of the
now-legendary Chucho Valdes, who remained on the island.

Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias was blacklisted at one
point, too, then excused.

And a whole generation has grown up without the salsa of
Celia Cruz - widely renowned outside Cuba as a master of
her art, but dismissed at home as an icon of the
anti-Castro diaspora.

Wait and see

"Queen of Salsa" Celia Cruz died in exile in the US
The decision to lift the official ban has not transformed
the airwaves: in fact it is not clear whether any station
has yet played the de-censored artists.

The authorisation was for the music to be aired "where
appropriate" and some albums would have to be dug out of
dusty archives, if they weren't destroyed.

But the step is seen as a loosening of tight, central
control - at least in the cultural sphere - and perhaps
another sign that attitudes to Cuban exiles, once
routinely excoriated as traitors, are softening.

Radio station staff in Havana told the BBC they were
informed at meetings last week that the list "served its
purpose," but was out-dated, and that its removal was part
of Cuba "opening up to the world."

"The artists were banned because they were making
statements against Cuba," explains cultural journalist
Reny Martinez.

"Things have changed. Something has changed in the Party.
I think there's new flexibility with culture," he says.

Still, the limits of that apparent new spirit of tolerance
have yet to be tested.

Radio station staff said they would "wait and see" for
now, before revising their playlists.

But a decade after her death, a new generation of Cubans
could eventually be introduced to Celia Cruz and her
salsa.

Gloria Estefan and others could finally make it off the
pirate CD stalls and onto the airwaves.

___________________________________________

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