Laura Bruneau's Recent Postings

Travelling can be an incredible way to open your eyes and ears to other cultures. But what happens when you visit somewhere so riddled with inherent contradictions that it becomes hard to tell where reality begins and falsity ends?

As a tourist, you are guaranteed to hear music wherever you go in Cuba. Melodies spill out onto the streets of Havana like honey and pulses through the bars of Trinidad as drummers smash their heartbeats out on taut skins. Every meal is accompanied by live music, and each cinematically beautiful surrounding has its very own soundtrack.

Yet doubts seem to set in after the first couple of days. Around the same time that you notice the poverty of those begging for soap to clean their children, you also notice that you have heard 'Guantanamera' more times in the last 24 hours than an entire season of premiership football. Closely following is the Buena Vista Social Club favourite 'Chan Chan'.

Suddenly you begin to question which came first, the chicken or the egg? Do the Cubans maintain their traditional image in a cultural time capsule because they understand that this is what tourists expect, or do the tourists expect this because it has been maintained in such a way?

Tourism now makes up 30% percent of the Cuban economy and it is the single largest industry in the country. It is therefore understandable that fulfilling tourist expectations is a key factor in keeping their way of life intact. However, spend a bit of time watching Cuban TV in your hotel room or listening to the music on the radio and suddenly a very different picture of Cuban culture emerges.

Spanish language versions of Western pop classics and contemporary Hispanic performers such as Enrique Iglesias seem to dominate. Is music a sector seemingly unaffected by the blockade and does this clear influence of American popular culture negate the validity of a separate, older counter-culture? For outsiders this may feel like an uncomfortable juxtaposition, but inside it is possible that this duality amounts to one culture holding the other in its place through delicate counterbalance.

Considering the means of delivery, live vs transmitted, a possible reason for the counter-culture may emerge as being generational. In the same way that tradition is often shunned by our own adolescents, perhaps the youth of Cuba have clung to this outside culture as a way to break free from the music of their parents and establish a new hybrid Cuban identity.

Whatever the reasons, with the introduction of new communication technology under Raul and the relaxing of embargo restrictions by the Obama administration, there will inevitably be an influx of outside musical influence entering the country. Over the coming months and years we will have to wait and watch to see whether Cuban tradition is strong enough to maintain dominance under such pressure and what further mutations Cuban music might find itself sustaining.