2008 | 2007

Sharing Dreams/Compartiendo Sueños 2008:
Design in Music/Diseño en la Música

posterColette Gaiter

I visited Cuba in June of 2007. Everything that I had read and heard emphasized that music is an integral part of life there. Years before my trip I asked a woman I knew, who had visited Havana, what impressed her most while she was there. Without hesitating she said, “Music is everywhere. People play music and dance everywhere.”

Even though I knew that, I was surprised by the quality and effect of the music. When I first arrived, as I walked along the Havana streets, I thought I was hearing recordings of the Buena Vista Social Club, but it was live music. Once I was leaning out of an artist’s second floor studio window, inhaling the sights and sounds of the crowded street. There was a band playing on each corner, in a restaurant or bar. I could switch my attention from one to the other or take in the stereo sound of two different songs. For me it was a quintessential Havana experience.

One night I was with some of my traveling companions on the patio of Hotel Inglaterra. The band played steadily, competing with conversations and the business of procuring drinks. Suddenly, the ambient noise level went down as people tuned in to the hear the solos. These musicians were so good, all conversation stopped. Even though by that time we had become accustomed to the ubiquitous live music, we could tell we were listening to something extraordinary.

I believe that the arts and socio-political ideas are inseparable everywhere. The pleasant music played as an accompaniment to an outdoor meal, as implied in my poster, is only part of Cuba’s musical story. Dance music, an essential part of Cuba’s musical history, remembered nostalgically in vintage images from “occupied Cuba,” reminds outsiders of how inhibited we are in physically expressing ourselves. Cuban hip-hop musicians, sharing some of the same dreams and frustrations of their U.S. neighbors, synthesize Afro-Cuban music and create their own sounds and stories.

I decided to use my photograph of a group of musicians rehearsing at an outdoor dining area in Old Havana. I cannot tell from their faces if they are bored, tired, or just not warmed up yet because there is no audience. I wondered then and now, “How do musicians feel about tourists regarding their music as background to flirting, eating, or serious conversations?” I try to consider what dreams might be shared between the musicians and their audiences, even though their worlds seem so disparate.

Choosing this seemingly innocuous scene and including vintage wallpaper graphics of tropical foliage both allude to pre-embargo guidebook images—Cuban music ready for tourist consumption. By replacing the mark with a red star over the “U” in “MUSICA,” I invite viewers to consider how different political and economic systems affect the way people make and experience music.

Visite Cuba en Junio de 2007. Todo lo que lei e oi enfatizaba la musica como parte intergral de la vida cotidiana en Cuba. Años antes de mi viaje le pregunte a una amiga que habia visitado La Habana que fue lo que mas la impresiono durante su visita. Sin duda me dijo “la musica esta en todo. La gente toca musica y bailan por todas partes.”

A pesar de que ya sabia esto, la calidad y fuerza de la musica me sorprendio. Al llegara, caminando por la calles de La Habana, pense que oia grabaciones de Buena Vista Social Club, pero en verdad era musica en vivo.