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Stopping Cuban Music at the Border

By Reese Erlich, AlterNet. Posted May 31, 2006.


At the Barbados Jazz Festival, a glimpse at one unintended drawback of the U.S. embargo on Cuba: even musicians get stopped at the border.

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[Editor's Note: In this special AlterNet podcast, Reese Erlich takes you to the Barbados Jazz Festival to hear some great Cuban music and see how U.S. policy impacts the musicians. Reese Erlich produces Jazz Perspectives for public radio stations in the U.S. and Canada, which can be heard online at JazzCorner.com.]

U.S. policy towards Cuba gets more ridiculous by the day. While the rest of the world can visit Cuba, buy its rum and cigars, and hear its musicians live -- people in the U.S. cannot. For a brief time in the late 1990s, Cuban musicians performed regularly in the U.S. But that ended as the Bush Administration sought to tighten the trade embargo of Cuba. These days Americans must travel abroad to hear their favorite Cuban artists live.

Every year Cuban musicians attract huge crowds at music festivals all over Europe, the Caribbean and South America. And these days, that's almost the only place where Americans can hear Cuban musicians live. Mary Jane Marchelewicz (maar-ka-levitz), a school teacher from Burlington, Vt., says she came to the Barbados Jazz Festival with just that in mind.

"We discussed what we were going to see here at the Jazz Festival and decided when we saw the venue for Sunday that we were more interested in hearing the Cuban band because of the kind of music, the different sound. It's very sensual. It's the feeling, the movement, the sensual music."

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View:
Banning anything...
Posted by: Aussie Kim on May 31, 2006 6:58 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...Makes it waaaay more popular.

The US doesn't learn, does it? Banning alcohol helped fuel the Mafia.

Banning drugs keeps them lucrative and makes them good business and ensures that places like Colombia stay virtual slums.

Banning Cuba makes it more popular and ensures they are raking in loads of money from ther rest of the world.

Well done, USA - you show us the way via reverse-psychology.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

USA vs. The World
Posted by: FedUp on May 31, 2006 7:33 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
A cada puerco le llega su nochebuena.

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RE: Listen to it in Cuba
Posted by: Aussie Kim on Jun 5, 2006 12:27 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Erm - we often do. Australians often travel to Cuba - we have taste in music and don't care what 1950's Americans think. (IF they think at all, of course...)

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

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