Thursday, December 4, 2008

The Lucas Prizes


Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

Here I am watching The Lucas Awards... how revolting!
Always the same, it would seem that there are only 5 pop groups, 4 rock groups and 2 salsa bands. The directors of the video clips, coincidentally, are always the same.
I think I said in my previous post that they call me “the radical. For some time I’ve lost hope in Cuban intellectuals and artists (those based on national territory). Fear and accommodations are worth more than art, solidarity and any kind of activity that might threaten small business. But after what happened with Gorki, it makes me nauseated.
But the other day Ciro, always so sympathetic with his compañeros (an evil intention it won’t be and vice versa), said to me: Look, Claudia, the good thing about Porno Para Ricardo is that we’ve raised the bar so much and the level of censorship we’ve seen has been forced down; now other groups can sing things that maybe if we had not already done “El Comandante” and “El General” they couldn’t do it, and they go through official channels and do critical lyrics and it’s fine. We are the black sheep.
So I get to see Nassiry (of Hard Currency) singing “Why your evil intentions” and I feel good.
I can’t deny that Ciro’s right, even if it’s painful for me to see them become the black sheep for the government and the musicians as well. I don’t know how they even have the desire to do a study to help the underground scene which has demonstrated that it will never help them… but in the end, I have to recognize that I’m also a victim of this spirit of the “evil intentions.”

No comments: