Rhythms Del Cuba

RHYTHMS DEL CUBA

Her music is well-known, but Cuba’s inner rhythm can’t be heard within a resort's confines. Our lodging in the Atlantic north feels above it all, so we check out and board a bus for Santiago de Cuba, eager to feel Cuba's undulating pulse.

It rises and falls naturally on the trip. Connecting towns are ribbons of sugar cane fields and banana plantations. They’re fed by rivers glowing a luminous green; pretty yet undrinkable.

A man, contrasted against the earth he ploughs, is dressed in cream pants, shirt and hat - his tropical uniform. He urges a pair of tired Brahmans across his patch; they turn the soil with every heavy step.

As we blunder over potholes, the landscape slides into an urban panorama where shanties are the homes of in-betweeners: neither town nor country folk. Wrinkled olive faces occupy porches, resting, or perhaps waiting. Cuba is always waiting - for buses, rides, rations or a new regime.

She raises tempo though as we reach Santiago’s bus station. Clutching my luggage I shift through the terminal, avoiding eye contact with 'jineteros' hustling bucks from tourists. While they benefit from knowing English, we surmise they're better-versed in the international language of selling since they never ask closed questions. "Where are we from?" "Which museums will we see?" They can take us for a few US dollars.

Carlos stands out, seducing us with his faultless English, and we accept his offer of a two-dollar ride to our hotel. The brazen Cuban loads our luggage into the boot of his red American rust-bucket and piles us - plus another family - into the back seat. Cars are a luxury here, despite their 50s vintage, and must be shared. As Carlos heaves the seventh body in my face smacks the passenger door, vinyl infiltrating my nostrils. The car coughs to life then jerks to the hotel where Carlos charges us ten dollars, not two.

We’ll call it payment for his tip which is to experience one thing here – live music. Searching for a casa de la trova, or music house, we set out in the clement Caribbean evening through the main square. Its corners are pegged with colonial buildings: a centuries-old church invigorated by yellow paintwork, Moor-inspired dwellings in dark wood and pastel render and the Casa Granda Hotel boasting a balcony of crisp white spindlework.

Beyond them a cobbled alley reveals our casa. A child mock-threatens us with his plastic sword: a real pirate of the Caribbean. We pay his father the dollar admission then enter. The band is a piquant brew of singing, guitar, trumpet and double-bass. Locals grow smiles from rows of wooden seats fitted with dried animal hide.

Cuba reaches full tempo and I see her for what she is. She is flat as sugar cane fields, sharp as hustlers, at rest for siesta. There’s discord in her politics, yet harmony among her people. And her music, bright and sustained, carries her from one movement to the next.