Local Alex Cuba back for Wednesday show
H
e can’t get his name uttered in the statecontrolled media of his home country, but the rest of the world toasted him this past week in Las Vegas.
And he’ll be back in Prince George for a Wednesday night show at ArtSpace.
Alex Cuba was one of the nominees in one of the most prestigious categories at the 2017 Latin Grammy Awards extravaganza. He did not win the trophy, that went to Vicente Garcia, but he was one of the nominees in the Singer-Songwriter (Album) category. It is the sixth time he has been shortlisted for these globally coveted awards, winning four previous times. This year’s star-studded gala only reinforced that Alex Cuba is one of the world’s leading Spanish-language musicians.
He doesn’t need his home country’s approval to know his worth or have fun with his hard-earned talent, but he loves the Caribbean island of his birth and upbringing – he even took on the country’s name as his own when he’s on the stage or in the studio – so it clear they were deliberately hiding his presence from Cubans.
Alex Cuba is not a politically controversial figure. He and his brother Adonis departed Cuba for Canada by approved means and they frequently return to visit family and friends. Their father is a well-established musician there himself and sometimes travels to Canada to perform with his acclaimed sons.
So things are generally good between Cuba the singer and Cuba the country. But there is one significant hiccup in that relationship, and it was only recently that Alex Cuba felt confident speaking about it.
His first inkling of a wall between himself and his home country was in 2011 on his first visit home since winning his first Latin Grammy. His father set up an interview on the radio station in their family’s hometown.
“I was excited. Oh my god, my town was supporting me, they feel proud, this is beautiful, so I’m on the radio. Cool!,” said Cuba, taking The Citizen back in time to the incident.
“The night before the interview my dad gets a phone call and I see his face drop. That phone call was telling him the interview had to be cancelled because they had just received instructions from head office, I don’t even know how to call it, telling them not to do it because they had to investigate me. They didn’t know much about me, so it wasn’t safe to have me on the airwaves, live talking. My dad got really upset, mad, let down. I pretended it wasn’t bothering me because I wanted to make sure that my dad was OK. I said ‘dad, c’mon, it’s cool, I don’t care, whatever, it’s no problem, let’s go have a beer somewhere or something,’ but that stayed with me. That was really a ‘stab me in the back’ kinda thing.”
What puzzled Cuba the most was his political neutrality in the years since he moved to Canada. If officials were searching for any badmouthing of the government by Alex Cuba, no such thing could be found. Plus, he had lived his post-emigration life in first Victoria and then Smithers where he and his wife reside today. Canada has a much more reasoned and rational state relationship with Cuba than the United States. These, thought Alex, were marks in his favour. — see CUBA, page 3