Blacklisted Cuban composer gets his due after 50 years in exile
LOS ANGELES — For 53 years, Aurelio de la Vega has been among the top Cuban composers outside his native Cuba — but dead to the communist regime.
Blacklisted by Fidel Castro and company, he was delisted by the music conservatory he founded and considered persona non grata by the press and orchestras of Cuba.
Then, without warning a couple of weeks ago, the Northridge maestro vaulted from the dungeon into the pantheon.
“Aurelio de la Vega . . . is considered one of the two most important living Cuban musicians of so-called cultured or classical music,” declared Cubanow.net, which some say is a digital organ of the Cuban government, in a story and interview published Oct. 9.
De la Vega was, it added, “an illustrious Cuban.”
In the United States, the 86-year-old composer, pianist and professor emeritus of music at Cal State Northridge had just been nominated for a Latin Grammy, his second such honor in four years.
The award-winning musician also had 70 works for symphonic orchestras and chamber groups on his resume, including pioneer forays into electronic music — none performed in Castro’s Cuba.
And while his beloved Cuba was years behind him, it has been an essential part of his creative DNA.
“I was a persona non grata for 50 years — because I left Cuba, because I didn’t agree with their politics,” de la Vega said. “In a totalitarian state, that’s what happens. Nobody would mention my name. I didn’t exist.”
“It’s very strange,” he said of the sudden recogni- tion. “In a way, I am glad. It means there’s some opening, some change. Enough of this nonsense.”
He’s one of the best known Cuban composers of his generation.
A native of Havana, de la Vega quickly rose within the arts community in the Caribbean island and the United States, having studied with Viennese exiles Fritz Kramer in Havana and Ernst Toch in Los Angeles.
In Cuba, he served among the top orchestras and music schools and was cultural attache at the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles.
Then came Castro, communism and exile.
In 1959, a year after the revolution, the internationally known composer joined the faculty at San Fernando Valley State College. A year later, he founded an electronic music laboratory, one of the first in North America.
After retiring in 1993, the music professor and renowned essayist continued to win awards for his compositions, performed by major orchestras and recorded around the globe.
In 2000, he was included in a Library of Congress compendium of all-time music greats.
Then came the Latin Grammy nominations, the latest for his Preludio No. 1, to be awarded next month in Las Vegas.
So some experts on communist Cuba say it’s not surprising to see the exiled artist brought back into the fold.
In recent years, the late Cuban poet and playwright Virgilio Piera and classical composer Julian Orbon were similarly resuscitated, their work once again available in Cuba.
In the wake of strongman Fidel Castro’s massive stroke that reportedly has left him incapacitated, it may not be long before taps is played for the revolutionary.
Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, who knows de la Vega, said we should not pay too much attention to de la Vega’s reported resurrection in Cuba.
“This is a time the Cuban government is paying a lot of attention to Cuban exiles,” he said. “It wants them to come back. And it wants their money.”
It was six months ago that a writer for the Catholic Archdiocese of Havana found some vinyl records by de la Vega and wrote a piece about his rediscovery, the composer said.
Soon afterward, de la Vega said he was contacted by a reporter asking for an interview about his career. Six months later, it appeared in Cubanow.net, which bills itself as “the digital magazine of Cuban arts and culture.”
De la Vega, who has not set foot in his native Cuba since 1959, has mixed feelings about going back. Suchlicki said he might not want to pack his bag.
Stalin, for example, once warmly invited Russian writers and artists exiled in Paris to return home, then killed them.
“I wouldn’t go back to Cuba if I were him,” Suchlicki said. “Because they can always change their minds.”
De la Vega said he hopes that young Cubans will know his music.
“It’s very nice, to me, to be recognized. And that younger people know that I exist,” he said. “I would like to see the new generation of musicians, to communicate with them.
“We can [finally] establish bridges. I have never forgotten my homeland. It’s something that’s in my heart forever.”