Cuba send 200 artists to a cultural festival in the USA

 Cuba send 200 artists to a cultural festival in the USAHAVANA, 28 Mar (DDC) The Vice Minister of Culture, Fernando Rojas, said Wednesday that he will send more than 200 Cuban artists to Washington to star, from May 8 to June 3, the “Arts of Cuba” festival, reports the official newspaper Granma.

“This is the first time we are going to the United States with such a large official delegation,” he said.

The event will bring together Cuban artists living on the island with others from exile at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington.

The delegation will include representatives of all the arts, such as Pablo Milanés, the Los Van Van orchestra, the National Ballet of Cuba, the theater companies El Público and Argos Teatro, the painters Roberto Fabelo and Esterio Segura, and the singer Omara Portuondo, among others.

These artists will be joined by emerging figures, especially jazz, such as Yissy García and his Bandancha, Zule Guerra and Blues de Habana and the pianists Aldo López-Gavilán and Jorge Luis Pacheco.

“I have many expectations, it is going to be a great professional impact for me as a new artist to present myself with so many important names and even more so in a Cuban festival in the US, in the current context,” Zule Guerra, leader of EFE, told EFE of a “new jazz” project and fusion, focused on the voice as the guiding thread.

The “Arts of Cuba” program, which will run through several halls and spaces in Washington, will also include a sample of classics and contemporary masterpieces of cinema, an exhibition of movie posters, tastings of dishes and installations of sculptures and works by Manuel Mendive, Roberto Diago and Celia Ledón.

The poster will be completed by another 200 artists from the diaspora and the Cuban-American community, including the Latin Grammy winner Arturo O’Farrill and his Afrolatin Jazz Ensemble, from New York, and the singer Aymée Nuviola, who lives in Miami.

Rojas confirmed to EFE that there have been no problems with visas for Cubans, at least “until now”.

The vice minister of Cuban Culture added that although “the minister (Abel Prieto) would not go”, they think of a “possible official representation” to accompany the delegation.

Havana and Washington resumed diplomatic ties in July 2015 after a historic announcement six months before it began a “thaw” in bilateral relations, now interrupted by the shift in US policy after President Donald Trump’s arrival at the White House. .

Most of the participants of the island have had to travel to Mexico or plan to do so to apply for a visa to enter the United States, which last September withdrew almost all the diplomatic staff of its embassy in Havana in response to alleged attacks against the health of its diplomats in Cuba.

Cubans have taken advantage of these trips to offer concerts and presentations in Mexican cities, something they will also do in the United States.