Cuban artists are granted visas to the U.S

Cuban artists are granted visas to the U.S.; permits issued for the
first time since 2003
The flow of artists and musicians between Cuba and the U.S., choked off
since 2003, has begun to trickle again.

The most famous voice to hit stateside from the island is Omara
Portuondo, the lone female artist from the Buena Vista Social Club, who
has received a visa to perform in the U.S. in October. Omara, who just
got a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Tropical Album for
her album Gracias, will perform during the San Francisco Jazz Festival
on Oct. 20 and at UCLA on Oct. 23. The Latin Grammys will be held on
Nov. 5 in Las Vegas; no word yet on whether Omara will attend.

Also coming to the U.S.will be composer and conductor Zenaida Romeu who
was granted a visa in early September to travel to Fargo, N.D., (of all
places!) in mid-November to guest-conduct the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony
Orchestra. Back in the '90s, a number of Cuban groups made the rounds of
college and community performance series across the U.S., garnering an
audience in the heartland. Romeu is director of the all-female Camerata
Romeu, a chamber music group I was lucky enough to hear on my first
visit to Cuba in 1997.

The last name in this group is trovador Pablo Milanés, who'll go not
quite to the U.S. but to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico in October.
All this comes on the heels of Juanes' historic Havana concert on Sept.
20, but these visas have been in the works for months. Another mostly
off-the-radar event, which saw a Cuban theater group collaborate with
the University of Alabama on performances of Shakespeare, took place
this summer. And the New York Philharmonic is planning performances on
the island, though dates haven't been set yet.
Meanwhile, the king of Latin crooners, Julio Iglesias, recently said
that he would play Cuba if asked. And René 'Residente' Pérez, outspoken
frontman for alt-reggaeton act and multi-Latin Grammy nominee Calle 13,
has said he'd like to do a concert in Havana. This summer, Ricardo
Arjona complained that he had been planning a Cuba concert, but would
pass on the idea since Juanes had announced his big event.
It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will throw its
full support behind such cultural and people-to-people exchanges the way
Clinton did, or whether the softening affect of the Juanes concert will
move that process along. Juanes recently played the Clinton Global
Initiative Gala in New York City, where the former president
congratulated him backstage. I don't know, however, if Hillary was in
the audience. And a new poll by Bendixen and Associates, which shows an
about-face in Cuban-American opinion on the Juanes concert, was released
at the Americas Conference in Miami Wednesday – which seems a clear
attempt to show policy-makers' that exile opinions have changed enough
to make those cultural exchanges politically palatable stateside.

–JORDAN LEVIN.

Cuban Colada (1 October 2009)
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/cuban_colada/2009/09/cuban-artists-are-granted-visas-to-the-us-permits-issued-for-the-first-time-since-2003.html