Música cubana

I watched MUSICA CUBANA in a little neighborhood cinema and really liked what I discovered. Unfortunately, the marketing people tried to push this film to be something else (Buena Vista Social Club II), which can spoil many peoples expectations. When you watch this film, you get a very interesting insight into today's music scene in Havanna, you meet a fascinating group of young artists, who stand between their traditional music roots and the influx of modern western styles. Their music is as diverse as their love for artistic expression and stage performance, powerful and passionate. It takes an icon of Havanna's old music scene, the great singer Pio Leiva, to get the artists together and help them form a common musical expression. And I realized, the most exciting aspect of this film is that the new voice of Cuba has many voices.

I went to see this movie with relatively high expectations, as I really enjoyed Buena Vista. I have to say that the first 30 minutes I was really disappointed, but more to the end, it got a bit better. If you haven't seen the first one, this might be an enjoyable experience. If you did, don't have your hopes too high.

The producers clearly wanted to make some money piggybacking on the success of Buena Vista. The plot is as bad as a cheap porn movie, lines and actors are second hand. The musicians are OK, but they only give the westerner eye what it wants to see: Latin machos who cry when they talk about their mothers ("I have only two women in my life: my mother and my wife. My mother always comes first"), children singing "Hasta Siempre", pictures of Che Guevara everywhere, etc. I couldn't connect to the atmosphere at all, everything seemed a bit "engineered".

The music is not bad, it's quite good in fact. They found some young artists, with new ideas so the sound is more diverse (some rap moments, funky bass, etc). This is probably the biggest merit of this movie, showing some of the less-known side of Cuban music. However, the best moments come from the songs we already know from Buena Vista. To sum it up, it's a movie about Cuban music, with some dialogs to glue it up. Buena Vista, without the authenticity, originality and documentary flavor.