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Naomi Campbell Visits Cuba by Anne-Marie García Granma International 1998. Electronic Edition. Havana, Cuba [Editorial note: How interesting that the U.S. media--with its insatiable appetite for even the tiniest details of celebrities lives--virtually blacked-out this story, and the even more splashy news that super-giga-celebrity Leonard DiCaprio was in happily visiting Havana at the same time. --SeeingRed]
(HAVANA)--For supermodel Naomi Campbell, meeting Fidel Castro
was like a dream come true.
"I'm very nervous - I just spent an hour and a half talking
with your president, Fidel Castro," she explained apologetically
after arriving a bit late to a press conference held at the Hotel
Nacional, where she was staying in Havana.
Naomi Campbell was in Cuba with fellow model Kate Moss for a photo
shoot in Havana. Luminous, with a touch of nervousness that made
her suddenly seem more human, as a hotel worker pointed out, Campbell
was clearly under Fidel's spell.
"He told me there was nothing to be afraid of. Fidel knew
who we were from reading about us in the press, but he said that
it wasn't the same as meeting us in person. We had also read
so many things about Fidel...."
Naomi Campbell captured the Cuban president's interest when she
told him about her meeting last week with South African President
Nelson Mandela. "We went to South Africa to hand over a
donation for the children of the Nelson Mandela Foundation,"
she noted.
She added that they also want to make a donation to the children
of Cuba, and that Fidel suggested they contact the Pioneers Organization.
"Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela are two sources of inspiration
for me," Campbell declared. "Two men who fought for
the same cause, a just cause. Two intelligent, impressive men."
Accustomed to adulation, the 27-year-old supermodel neither denies
her origins nor fears the possible consequences of her visit to
Cuba. "I am Jamaican and I am a free citizen," she proclaimed.
"It is a great pleasure to be in Cuba," she added, describing
the people she met here as warm, welcoming and hospitable. "I've
enjoyed myself, and I plan to come back," she concluded.
(HAVANA) - The 1998 Grammy Awards, held in New York City, brought Cuban
musicians two moments of great joy. Not only did the best album of the year
in the tropical music category go to Buena Vista Social Club, a record cut
at the EGREM studios featuring a constellation of veteran son performers; but
also the Latin jazz category went to Havana, the only recording to date by
Crisol, a band created in Havana last spring by Chucho Valdés and U.S.
trumpeter Roy Hargrove, and in which percussionists José Luis Quintana
(Changuito), Miguel Angá and Horacio (El Negro) Fernández contributed their
considerable talent.
Chucho was the author of two of the CD's themes, "Mr. Bruce" and "Mambo
para Roy," both of which were premiered in Havana's Casa de la Música and were
later reprised at last December's Jazz Plaza Festival. He was also
responsible for most of the arrangements. This is the second time Chucho
has received this prestigious award, the first one in 1978 with his band
Irakere, for their disk Live at Newport..
Just a few minutes after the ceremony ended, Hargrove called Chucho and told
him, "The miracle has happened!" Changuito heard the news while jamming at
La Zorra y el Cuervo jazz club in Havana; Angá got word in Paris; and El
Negro found out in Los Angeles about the success of a record which renews the
experience of forging "two complementary kinds of music with the same
roots," as Chucho defines Latin jazz.
"I told Roy," Chucho recalls, "that this was the moment to make a Cuban-
American band with a lot of Latino flavor, since we had the example, among
those who live in the United States, of David Sánchez, an exceptional
saxophonist, as we saw here at the Havana jazz festival. Angá is the Chano
Pozo of this epoch; El Negro made the recording, although the one who came
later, Barreto, is an enormous talent; and everyone knows that Changuito is
the king of the timbales. The Grammy is nothing more than the culmination
of an extraordinary year. That's not just something I'm saying; the videos
and the reviews of the most important festivals in Europe and the United States
in 1997 prove it."
One could write the chronicle of an announced Grammy about Buena Vista
Social Club. In that category, there could hardly have been another winner.
Rarely has a record encountered the praise of the most demanding critics and sold
so well among such dissimilar audiences: Hispanics and white Americans, British
and Greeks, Spaniards and Italians, French and Swedes, those who feel an
affinity for Latino culture and those who are discovering that identity for
the first time.
Ry Cooder, the general producer of the record and the owner of World Circuit
records, as well as the person in the United States who deserves the most
credit for this award, defined this production as a blessing, noting that
thanks to Juan de Marcos González, the founder of the Sierra Maestra band,
he was able to bring together several of Cuba's best musicians, stars in their
own right but better as a group, with a special relationship between them.
Buena Vista Social Club offers a panorama of son, trova and danzón, including the number which lends its title to the CD, written by the legendary Orestes
López, and "Pueblo Nuevo" (New People) by maestro Guillermo Rubalcaba.
It has a coherent, well-conceived base.
Pieces by songwriters such as María Teresa
Vera, Rafael Ortiz, Sindo Garay, El Guayabero, Guillermo Portabales and
Ernesto Duarte shine in performances by major Cuban musical stars, including
Omara Portuondo and Compay Segundo, Puntillita and Elíades Ochoa, Cachaíto
and Rubén González, Guajiro Mirabal and Ibrahim Ferrer, Barbarito Torres and
Lázaro Villa, Juan de Marcos and Ry Cooder (a fantastic guitarist), and the
ineffable Compay Segundo and some of his boys in the unforgettable "Chan
chan."
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