HISTORIAS DE MÚSICA CUBANA / STORIES OF CUBAN MUSIC
NEW YORK FILM ACADEMY: 4/3 @ 4:30PM
In this special documentary series, HFFNY presents stories that offer multiple cultural, political, and sociological readings of Cuban music and dance. “Stories of Cuban Music” celebrates musical diversity in the documentaries Decir con feeling (Rebeca Chávez) and Ampárame: La religiosidad en la música cubana (Patricia Ramos).
Introduction by Director of Cuban Film Archives Luciano Castillo
AMPÁRAME! LA RELIGIOSIDAD EN LA MÚSICA CUBANA
Patricia Ramos | Cuba | 2009 | Documentary | 52min | U.S. Premiere
Cuban music has always bordered on magic and popular religiosity, whether it be cultured music, jazz or danceable rhythms like salsa. Ampárame tries to address the direct, physical and participatory way that the Cubans have engaged with music, trying to walk the way of classical Cuban music while taking into account those roots expressed in the practices and religious beliefs of any denomination that become part of that which is considered “culture.” Patricia Ramos offers an etensive overview of the relationship between music and religiosity in Cuba.
Followed by
DECIR CON FEELING
Rebeca Chávez | Cuba | 2009 | Documentary | 52min | U.S. Premiere
The “filin” is soul and feeling, that is why the cultivators of this genre in Cuba are the kings of song and bolero. The “filin” is one of the most transcendent moments in the development of the Cuban musicality, rupture and at the same time continuity of the troubadour movement of the first decades of the twentieth century. “The word filin,” Jose Antonio Mendez once explained, “means feeling, but we did not use it precisely as a feeling, but as a wave, so-and-so does has a wave to express.” Rebeca Chavez tells us a story in which the glories of the genre are paraded: José Antonio Méndez, César Portillo de la Luz, Elena Burke, Omara Portuondo and a long etcetera.
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