A musical journey, from the UK to Cuba and back again!

My thanks to UK singer Holly Holden for this guest blog on making music in Cuba and how a chance meeting in Havana led to her touring Europe’s top festivals with UK dub-step pioneer DJ Mala.

When I was thirteen my mother took me to see the documentary film Buena Vista Social Club. I remember leaving the cinema in silence – dumbstruck by the sounds, the smiles, the colour, and overwhelmed by a sensation that that this magical world was where I should be.

It took me a while to get there, twelve years to be precise. During that time I learnt to speak Spanish and how to dance salsa. I read books, listened to music, and memorised old trova songs, which I sang in jazz clubs in Berlin and at birthday parties in Ecuador. I also spent a year at the University of London studying the modern history, politics and culture of Latin America and the Caribbean. Finally, in the summer of 2011, I was awarded a grant to travel to Cuba to research my MA dissertation on the phenomenally popular dance genre reggaeton and the ways in which it revealed, refracted and sometimes even contradicted conventional ideas about race on the island.

The two and a half weeks I spent in Santiago de Cuba blew me away. I had never been anywhere so noisy! Music was everywhere – bachata in the guagua, trova in the town centre, reggae in the barrio. I could be walking down the street with a group of new friends and they would spontaneously burst into song, someone clapping a clave, someone singing a harmony on the chorus. I was in heaven! Despite being there to conduct academic research, as a singer it was impossible for me to be in Cuba without making music and I ended up in a recording studio with Alain Garcia (Alayo Style) – rapper, urban poet and director of hip hop trio TNT la Rezistencia – who had helped guide me through the Santiago urban music scene.

I returned to Cuba a month after graduating to set about writing and recording an album with Alain. For me it was imperative to avoid the dynamic that characterises so many international-Cuban collaborations, whereby the Cuban element is often exoticized, eroticised and exploited. We also wanted to avoid perpetuating stereotypes of Cuba as a land stuck in a nostalgic, pre-revolutionary time warp – a common foreign perception that can be limiting for musicians as they are restricted to playing what foreign audiences consider to be ‘authentically’ Cuban.

We decided that the most effective way to distance ourselves from these problematic traits was by making no specific reference to Cuba in our name or in the content of our material, by referencing a wide variety of musical genres, particularly those that are not considered ‘authentically’ Cuban, and by writing bilingual songs which dealt with universal issues. We called our collaboration X Planet – an imaginary utopia where genre boundaries are blurred and where people and ideas move without restriction.

With the album recorded we were invited to take part in the Semana Britanica – an event put on by the British embassy to celebrate contemporary and historic Anglo-Cuban relations. It was an honour to perform at the prestigious theatre of the Museo Bellas Artes. The whole band was on a high when we headed to the closing party. At that same party I was introduced to a number of the artists involved in British week, including Mala – South-London producer and pioneer figure in the dubstep scene, who had just finished recording an album in Havana which featured a number of artists linked to Gilles Peterson’s Havana Cultura project including Roberto Fonseca and Danay Suarez. We shared some Cuban stories and exchanged email addresses and went our separate ways.

Months later, having launched his album Mala in Cuba it turned out that Mala was short of a singer to perform hypnotic ballad Noches Sueños on his tour. After an unplugged audition in a rehearsal studio in Croydon I was welcomed into the Mala in Cuba family and I spent the summer with an incredible group of people singing to audiences at festivals all over Europe. It was an unforgettable experience and all thanks to a British Embassy introduction!

I spent January in Cuba, re-connecting with old friends and reviving X Planet. During my visit we packed out Santiago de Cuba’s hottest new live music venue the Iris Jazz Club. It was the first time X Planet had performed in Cuba since our Havana show as part of British Week and so it was fantastic to see the audience singing along.

I’m back in London now but I’m hoping to return to Cuba this summer with the aim of putting together a small festival, which will celebrate Santiago de Cuba as the hotbed of Cuban creativity through panel discussions, concerts and exhibitions.

Watch this space!