Bridge to Cuba in edgy times
Running directly against the headwinds of American culture is nothing new for Pablo Menéndez. But in the aftermath of an election where a promise to erect a wall paved the way to the White House, he’s doubling down on building bridges.
Born in Oakland, he’s lived in Havana since 1966, when a one-year trip to Cuba with his mother, blues and jazz singer Barbara Dane, turned into a permanent change of address. Rather than cutting ties with his homeland, the guitarist has managed to stay connected to the U.S. music scene, particularly in the Bay Area, where he’s performed often with his Cuban roots rock band Mezcla.
On Saturday, Oct. 14, at San Francisco’s Brava Theater Center, Menéndez is at the center of his most ambitious U.S. show yet, bringing the latest incarnation of his talentladen band together with a cast of Bay Area cultural stalwarts, including Dane, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday with a concert at the SFJazz Center; percussionist John Santos; flutist John Calloway; and father-and-son guitarists/producers Greg and Camilo Landau, who’ve accrued seven Grammy Award nominations between them.
“We all know the world is in crisis,” Menéndez said, speaking from his house in Havana, where he and friends were dining on plantains from trees in his front yard felled by Hurricane Irma. “It seems like there’s a whole lot of money for war, and not for music. We wanted to reach a wider audience, especially a progressive audience in an iconic theater. We’re going to celebrate love between the Bay Area and Cuba.”
Bonds between artists in the Bay Area and Cuba have long defied the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba and the communist government’s efforts to sequester the island’s people. Musicians are probably overrepresented amongst the region’s small Cuban community, with recent arrivals like Oakland vocalist Yeny Valdes, who’s one of the special guests at the Brava show.
Menéndez has honed a singular blend of blues, rock, jazz and folkloric and popular Cuba forms by attracting some of Cuba’s most accomplished musicians. He recorded the band’s most recent album, 2014’s “Pure Mezcla,” at Yoshi’s in Oakland, but the ensemble he’s bringing back to the Bay Area features some new faces, including “two amazing women touring with us for the first time,” he said.
Mezcla vocalist/percussionist Lien Diaz got her start with the pioneering Afro-Cuban rock band Sintesis. “She’s one of the greatest rumberas of recent times,” he said. “She actually trained as a doctor, but all that time she was drawn to Afro Cuban dance and music. Her sound is unique, not folkloric, but deep in the tradition and completely contemporary.”
The band’s other vocalist is Yuko Fong, who was born in Tokyo and moved to Cuba as an adult to pursue her love of Cuban music. Rising 22-yearold violinist Christopher Simpson is also playing his first U.S. gig with the band, which is propelled by the powerhouse percussion tandem of Octavio Rodríguez and Ruy López-Nussa, who hails from a storied musical family and performed at SFJazz last year with his older brother, pianist Harold López-Nussa.
Few relationships better capture the singular connection between the Bay Area and Cuba than Menéndez’s lifelong friendship with Alameda guitarist/producer Greg Landau. They first met in the late 1960s, when the teenage Landau visited Cuba with his father, documentarian Saul Landau (his mother is esteemed Oakland poet Nina Serrano).
As someone who’s devoted his life to documenting Latin American music, Landau sees Menéndez as ideally placed to “give an expression to this bridge that’s formed between Cuba and the Bay Area, to celebrate the strength of power of people to connect despite all the obstacles.”
Saturday’s event starts at 7:30 p.m. with the U.S. premiere of the hour-long documentary about Menéndez titled “Tan Lejos/So Near…So Far,” by award-winning Cuban director Lourdes Prieto and Los Angeles documentarian David Sandoval.
At a time of increasing tensions between Cuba and the United States, Menéndez believes that Mezcla carries the key to a new age.
“Rock ’n’ roll mixes so well with rumba,” he said. “And Mezcla is the music of love and mutual respect.”