Juanes concert supporters show changing paradigm

Levin covers the arts for The Miami Herald.

Enrique Santos, popular radio personality on 98.3 FM, is no fan of Fidel Castro. Once, to exile Miami's amusement, he punked the Cuban president, calling him on the air and pretending to be Hugo Chávez.

Los Van Van celebrates Jose Marti with Key West performance

It is not that Juan Formell, the leader of Los Van Van, Cuba's most famous dance band, doesn't have any political views. It is just, he says, that he doesn't come to the United States - or to Miami, where Los Van Van play Sunday night - to promote them.

``We came here to do music, just music, and nothing more,'' Formell said Thursday afternoon as he sat on the patio of the Doubletree Grand Hotel in Key West, where he and Los Van Van were slated to play that night. ``We didn't come to the U.S. to do any kind of politics or ideology or anything like that,'' he said.

``If you ask me a political question, I'll answer you - I'm not a mute,'' Formell said. ``But this is not about sharing an idea or an ideology - you can think in one way, I can think in another. But we're talking about music.''

Concerts by Cuban musicians still stir debate among exiles

Although there has been less of a public outcry than in the past, the return to Miami of controversial Cuban musicians like Los Van Van and Omara Portuondo is resurrecting some of the difficult questions that have long marked their U.S. performances.

Are there any real benefits from such ``people-to-people'' contacts? Do the musicians or their government profit from the U.S. tours? And is it proper for them to play in a city where many of its residents bear the emotional wounds of the Cuban regime?

Those questions were seldom asked during the Bush administration because it largely blocked such visits. But now President Barack Obama has been loosening the controls, with at least eight Cuban musicians or groups already approved for U.S. tours.

Cuban punk rocker Gorki Aguila to speak Friday in Miami

Cuban punk rock musician Gorki Aguila, leader of the dissident Cuban punk band Porno Para Ricardo, will host a press conference in Miami on Friday to promote the release of his band's fifth album. Aguila's unexpected appearance in Miami comes on the eve of the Havana concert being presented Sunday by Colombian rock star Juanes. Aguila, a raucous Cuban singer, was frequently mentioned by Cuban exiles as a dissident artist who should perform at that event.

Aguila, who has been arrested and banned from radio and public performances in Cuba for scathing songs that openly mock the revolution and leaders Fidel and Raúl Castro, was arrested in late August and charged with ``social dangerousness'' and ``subverting Communist morality.'' He was let off with a fine, and has lived with family members in Mexico since then.

A spokesperson said that Aguila had not defected, but had received a visa to come to the United States and that he would also visit Washington, D.C., and New York City to promote his CD, Disco

Concert `without borders' not without politics

Colombian rocker Juanes will strap on his guitar to command the stage at 2 p.m. Sunday at Havana's historic Plaza of the Revolution, but the show has been sounding a discordant political tune for months.

Juanes has repeatedly stated that his ``Peace Without Borders'' concert ``is not political.'' But the event is highly charged with the political baggage that comes with Cuba's 50-year-old regime and its ever-growing exile community. And once again, a seemingly cultural event becomes a window into the role the arts and artists have historically played in promoting the Cuban government's agenda, and, in some cases, challenging it.

``Cuba is a country divided, and everything is affected by politics,'' says Cuba culture watcher Alejandro Ríos, who runs the Cuban Film Series at Miami Dade College. ``Juanes himself is political. His songs speak of social causes and issues -- he's no Britney Spears and bubble-gum pop.''