Cuban street scene

Destination: Cuba

Movie: The Buena Vista Social Club,(1998) Director Wim Wenders. Winner of Best Documentary Feature, Academy Award.

Although I blather on here about books and movies that inspire people to travel to places, I can  point to a relatively few that have actually lit a fire in me–given me an obsession. Yes, there have been books and movies that made me want to go somewhere, but  The Buena Vista Social Club was not just a movie, it was an experience.

It captured the fading glory of Havana, the vivacity of the people, the sad decline of a city that once rivaled Las Vegas or Atlantic City as the glamorous vacation spot for Americans who wanted to gamble, drink and find women. (It is said that John F. Kennedy particularly appreciated the latter benefit.)

The story started when musician Ry Cooder visited Havana, and curious about  Cuban music, began asking who wrote this–who made it famous–are they still alive?  One by one he discovered one-time stars of the Cuban music world, some of whom had not performed for a decade or more.

Rubén Gonzáles, an amazing pianist born in 1919, had disappeared from view .  When Cooder sent someone to see Gonzales, he reluctantly came to the studio, but as soon as he saw a piano, he was hooked.  Everyone discovered that his arthritis, which slowed his walking, was not the reason he had not been playing. Gonzales had not owned a piano for ten years. In the narrative with the film’s DVD Wim Wenders says that anywhere he saw a piano, Gonzales would sit down and start playing. “I never saw a musician with such love for his instrument.” Gonzales died in 2003 at 84.

The baby-faced Ibrahim Ferrar,  was working as a shoe shine “boy” when the group located him and he came into the studio to sing some of the songs he had made famous. His impish sense of humor and delight in performing makes him a natural leader. He died in 2005 at age 78.

Another musician, dapper and sexy at 90, in his tropical suit and panama hat Compay Segundo, says on camera that he has five children and is working on his sixth.  Off camera, director Wenders said the challenge was juggling his Segundo’s life with a wife and a mistress–and perhaps another girlfriend on the side. Segundo died in 2003 at age 95.

In The Buena Vista Social Club, Wenders lets each of these and several other of the band members gathered by Ry Cooder, tell the story of their life.  It is a story of a musicians life, with no overt commentary on politics.

Wenders let the camera do the talking, as he shoots in darkened streets with very few streetlights, a guitar factory where few guitars are made any more, the grand old casino building, with the chandeliers and gilt mirrors and bright colors of yesterday visible beneath the dust and peeling plaster of today.  What was once a rich man’s playground now serves children as a gymnasium, and the young ballerinas clustered around the piano as Reuben Gonzales played.

Cuban Taxi

In the commentary, Wenders mentions the fact that the best studio they could find had problems with electricity outages and water pouring in through the ceiling when it rained. And everywhere the narrow streets are lined with vintage American cars, still held together with who-knows-what mechanical ingenuity.

The musicians were nearly unknown in the United States until Ry Cooder determinedly gathered them together.

During the early years of the Revolution, Cuban musicians frequently performed in eastern European countries, but their dream was to go to Carnegie Hall. Seeing them wander the streets of New York City, so blinding with lights, was extremely touching. It was telling that two of them studied figurines in a shop window and recognized Louis Armstrong, but could not place Marilyn Monroe or John F. Kennedy. You could almost see the curtain between the two countries descending in the 1960′s.

Their dream comes true and bits of the performances from Amsterdam and from New York City are included in the film. The film ends back in Havana, where a banner in front of a wrecked building says “The Revolution is Eternal”. And beside crumbling cement walks beside the beautiful seashore, and electricity so undependable that people don’t trust refrigerators, the banner proclaims, “We Believe in Dreams.”

Ken and I were thrilled to be able to see Rubén Gonzáles, Ibrahim Ferrar and Compay Segundo, along with some of the others in person at a concert at the University of Arizona. We bought two recordings, and the next year when a few members of the band returned, we went again to hear them.We are so grateful to Ry Cooder and Wim Wenders for bringing these musicians to our attention.

Now the United States is returning to cautious permission of limited tourism to Cuba,[updated reference Jan 2012 about a Smithsonian tour] that had been curtailed for a few years. Of course, people have been going anyway one way or another. Matador has some good articles about Cuba, including this “How To” article by Julie Schweitert. Like the musicians, (and this ballet troupe) I don’t want to talk about politics, I just want to see this beautiful country and hear more of its music.

The images here are from Flickr, used with a Creative Commons license. Please click on the image to learn about the photographer.

Have you been to Cuba? Have you been waiting for America to make it legal? I realize that this can be a sensitive subject for some people.  Please keep the conversation civil.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Mumbai Stop Light

Welcome to A Traveler’s Library. If this is your first visit, I hope that you will stick around. Be sure to read the two response posts to this one, which I link at the end of the article. And if you are curious about that book mentioned in the first paragraph, it is about the Dominican Republic.

I recently finished a wonderful book that killed any desire I might have had to go to the place featured, and then I saw the Academy Award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, which definitely did not make me want to visit Mumbai.  I began to think about the anti-travel movie. And the don’t-go-there book.

Is there such a thing? Although I have not read the book that Slumdog was based on, I have read comments that say it portrays Mumbai as even grittier than the movie. Does this make me want to travel there?

Controversy still rages (on Twitter for instance) about the depiction of Mumbai in the Academy-award winning picture.  Most Indians whose comments I have read are not happy. One said on Twitter, “Would you like it if America were portrayed by a movie that showed only the slums of New York?” Uh, well, there have been quite a few movies that do not show America in the best light. But perhaps because movies set in India are rarer in the United States, the impact of Slumdog has been greater. American movies, set in America, are widely viewed around the world, the good, the bad and…all that.

But back to the question of whether Slumdog Millionaire might make people actually want to go to Mumbai. I began to hear another discussion which caught me by surprise.  Slum tours, it seems, are newly chic. Some call this kind of tourism ‘Poorism.’

Do the profit-making companies that lead these tours actually give back to the communities as they claim? What motivates people to go on such tours? Is it voyeurism? Isn’t all travel ultimately voyeurism? Do the slum tourists come away changed in any way? Will they be more sensitive and generous in the future? Will the inhabitants of the slums learn how to make a legitimate buck off the tourists, or will the bad guys among them simply hone their pickpocket skills?

Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss, discussed the tours in a 2008 New York Times article. You can learn more about one of the tour companies that he discusses, Reality Tours, at their web site.

For now, I only know that for me, I am not interested in visiting a place to look at the lives of the poorest, and I am wary of traveling where I fear that I will be isolated in expensive resorts or hotels from the regular street life because it is unsafe, unhealthy or simply unsavory.  Call me unadventurous, but that’s my thought.

I am sure of one thing…the people who run tours in the slums of Mumbai are going to do a lot more business because of Slumdog Millionaire. As to the two main questions here–whether I am totally missing the point of Mumbai, and whether slum tourism has a place– I have an open mind. So educate me. Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Oh, I mentioned a book up there in the first paragraph. I’ll get around to that soon.

See the posts that followed this one when Monica Bhide replied with her take on Mumbai in two parts. And if you enjoy what you see at A Traveler’s Library, please subscribe by RSS or e-mail–you’ll see opportunities in the right hand column. The link attached to the title of the movie will take you to Amazon where you can buy the DVD. It won’t cost you any extra, but it will earn a few cents for A Traveler’s Library. Thanks.

Photograph by Mike Powell, Flickr, Creative Commons license

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.