Ya Viene Llegando
I was just watching A Mano Limpia, a local news analysis show on Spanish television here in Miami. The guest was the Cuban-American singer/composer Willy Chirino. They ended the show with a clip of Chirino playing to a group of Cuban rafters at Guantanmo. This was during the rafter crisis of the mid 90s. Rafters interdicted at sea were taken back to Cuba, to the US Navy base there. After being processed and a several month stay there, most were able to come to America. But for that short period they were in limbo. Chirino along with other Cuban-American performers went to Guantanamo to perform for the folks there.
The video they showed on TV tonight was Chirino singing a song called Ya Viene Llegando (loosely translated: It's coming, slowly but surely) about a free Cuba. The notable thing about this video was how most of the people in the audience knew every word and were singing along. Then there's a tight shot of a man, no older than 30, singing with tears in his eyes. We can talk about Cubans being economic migrants all we want but that doesn't make you cry thinking of a free Cuba. It was all I could do to keep myself from sobbing in my own living room watching it.
4 comments:
I get that. I can't even listen to that song in my car without bursting into tears. "Cuba.....Libreee!"
That song was the most popular song in Cuba around 1991, the year I left. I've told you this story before: New Years Eve 1991, I was driving from one house party to another along a street in Havana, windows open, and I could hear the song playing loud on houses along the way. Everybody was playing it.
me acuerdo que de chiquitica en Cuba en los 90 tambien se escuchaba "Y dice ese mari$#@ que en Cuba no pasa nada" de Willy Chirino.
Nada que aunque el regimen prohiba toda la musica que quiera los cubanos van a escucharla.
Henry pudieras poner el video, que yo no lo pude ver.
gracias y saludos
I didn't see the show. But it sounds like the same video that comes on the DVD part of the Cubanisimo album. Well worth getting just to watch that video clip, which I get goosebumps just thinking about...
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