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From Classical Pizzicato to Tropical Syncopation  
by Luis Rumbaut

On December 1999, the all-woman string ensemble Camerata Romeu performed at the Gala Hispanic Theatre, as part of their 1998 tour that also took them to Philadelphia, Miami, New York, and Boston. This ensemble is directed by Zenaida Castro Romeu, a musician born to a family of performers and composers spanning several generations in Cuba. She learned to play the piano from her own mother, and later pursued degrees in choral and orchestral conducting, obtaining both in 1983. Later she conducted a variety of organizations, including Cuba's National Symphony Orchestra, the Cuban National Choir, and choirs in Spain, Nicaragua, Sweden, and Germany. Along the way she found time to teach at the Cuban Institute of Art, host a popular TV show in Havana, and write soundtracks for movies and TV.

- Please tell us about the history of the group.

- The group was created 5 years ago. When we return to Havana this year we'll have the 5th anniversary concert. It was created 5 years ago on the same ethical and esthetic bases that you've seen. We wanted to create a group that would be a women's orchestra, made up of young women, to show that there were well-prepared youth that every year came out of the art schools. This was something I had not found before. For example, I was teaching master's classes in Spain, and I realized that in other places there was not what there was in my country. I said to myself: well, it's interesting to show that every year, well-schooled young women come out of the conservatories and enter society, then we are going to open a new work opportunity, we are going to start a Chamber Orchestra. The dream was to create a Symphony Orchestra, but because of the country's economic problems, that was totally out of the question at the time I decided to go ahead with the project.

Thus we started with the support of the Pablo Milanés Foundation. This was in fact the first orchestra founded after the Revolution without state support. Pablo Milanés helped me, he fell in love with the idea, and he began to finance the orchestra that you now know. The idea was to do Cuban music preferentially, although in concerts we always play (...) Mozart, Britten, Elgar, we play Bach, we perform pieces by Handel, we do any repertory of world music; and are often asked to play complete programs of world music, for which we perform two programs: one of world music and one of Cuban and Latin American music. Because what we always seek to do in all of our concerts is to promote Latin American and Cuban music, which is the unknown music, because in world music there are hundreds of versions by excellent groups, and it wouldn't be as novel as to show the music of our own people, which is absent from the concert halls, not just of Europe, but from our own countries.

That's how we started. The repertory was small but, fortunately, the composers have latched on to the idea of the Camerata, and have started to produce for it. So much that we are now a unique orchestra, in that we have a unique repertory, conceived and written for us. Because we are promoting a part of our culture that is promoted very little, because only one part of Cuban culture is well known, but dance music does not mean all of Cuban culture. It's an undeniable part of it, but it is not all of it, we are not just that, we are more than that. And on that basis -which also has its ethical implications, because it has to do with who is a woman, and a Cuban woman, and how to project that in society, and so on- so, based on that, to elevate the negative image that we could say is going around, as the only vision of Cuban women. I mean, in the time of my mother, in the time of my grandmothers, there has always been a woman who is educated, decent, altruistic, with aspirations, and for some reason people who get to Cuba perhaps see only one part of society and not a total picture of society.

So I feel like an aggrieved party, for example when I go abroad and people speak negatively of Cuban women. It hurts, because I am a part of that, I am a part of the Cuban nation, a nation in the greater sense. And that is also why the subliminal language, part of the subliminal message of the orchestra, is that in Cuba there has always been a music for listening, salon music. This hall [a renovated hall in the Cuban Interests Section in DC, equivalent to an embassy], is the proper setting for chamber music, to be played this way, in a salon, a room like this one in which we find ourselves today. And that's the idea: to promote the music, promote that area of Cuban culture that, regrettably, is not promoted much, but that has always existed.

- Much of the music that you play has noticeable folkloric elements. Can you tell us about the coming together of folklore and what is called cultured music?

- That is a process carried out by the composers themselves. Each one creates the Cuban landscape of sound. They hear it on the street, they process it, they screen it, they internalize it, they learn from it, they assimilate it, and from there they turn it around and they create a music that is new, a new landscape. What Leo Brouwer does is new, not exactly what you hear on the street, but he collects it - as with one of the four pieces, "Almendra's Son," for example- in some way, remotely so, but that is the interior process of each composer, just like painters who create landscapes, who create new things, which maybe don't exist, or which maybe do exist and maybe they don't. Composers create that landscape of sound of a people, but it is a process internal to each composer. There are some who come closer to folklore; others draw nearer to a sense of nation and not of folklore; others come closer to what is Spanish, what is left of the Spanish in all of us. We also have composers who draw closer to the European part, the European inheritance of Cuban culture. But you have to take it case by case, because that's the language of each composer. Our discourse, although you may hear it as very Cuban, is really eclectic, because what it draws closer to depends on each composer. Now, certainly they draw from popular or folkloric roots. And what you hear, what you hear from outside, is a completely national discourse, with its different variants. Do you see?

But it is an underlying discourse, because no creative person wants to be like anyone else. Lecuona does not want to be Strauss, Strauss does not want to be Lizt. But there is a common ground, which is the commitment to the nation, which comes out one way or another, and even if it is different with each composer, you can hear the music, and you say, that's German music, although the composers may be different; or, that sounds like a U.S. movie soundtrack, while there are many composers. In any event, composers cannot separate themselves -or many cannot separate themselves- from their roots, their origins.

- What is the situation today of musicians in Cuba, of classical musicians?

- Let me tell you that a few years ago there was a very big crisis in our concert halls, because you would only see gray-haired people at concerts, people who had been educated in the tradition of concerts, and there wasn't a single young person at the concerts. You would think, well, and what happens when those people can no longer go to the concert halls? Who will go? We're talking about some 15 years ago, not long ago, or 10 years. But in the last few years there has been this phenomenon, that as the social crisis deepened in Cuba after the fall of the socialist camp, there was a turning of the youth toward spirituality, toward concerts. It was a massive thing. Personally, I took part in a concert that we did exclusively of Bach's music almost two years ago. We did a concert with the Camerata and some invited musicians for a concert that was to include a concerto for one piano, for two, for three, and four, at the National Theater. We had to put on extra performances, because people were breaking down the doors of the National Theater to hear Bach. It wasn't to hear the Beatles; that's normal. It was to hear Johann Sebastian Bach at the National Theater.

- You mean University studens?

- It was young people, people off the street, professionals () not the regulars. This was a need that arose of a sudden to consume art, to fill a void, to enrich the spiritual life of the individual, and everyone turned out for the concerts. And you could see them in jeans or whateverfor example, in the Basilica you can go in for one peso when there are no more seats, and you go to the side halls, and people go there to listen even when they can't see anything. That is the real audience; they listen. They don't go only to look, they go to listen. You see them sitting in the side halls, in whatever way, to enjoy the concert. That's unprecedented, it's incredible, as if people neededit's young people who have turned out, not young people who had mom or dad take them to the lyceum, or who had mom or dad show them-not at all, it's been a need of people to turn to something, to nourish them in troubled times.

And let me tell you, some of the most exciting words that I've received during the most critical times for my country are from people who have gone to the concert and said, I felt so good, I felt so good at the concert, now I can go on. People go, like people who go to a spring of fresh water, they go to the concert as for a vital need, to enrich their spirituality. Those words that have been said to me several times, "I felt so good at the concert," pleases me more than a musicologist talking about B sharp, change, the contrast and everything, the color of such and such a part () that pleases me more, because I realize why it is that we make art, for whom we work, just for us, that is, the people who thank you simply.

- You have a young group. Do you think consciously in terms of creating a movement through what the individual members may be able to do later?

- Well, what has happened is that they have rotated a lot. The orchestra has become a school. The orchestra travels a lot, and we receive offers sometimes, and the young women sometimes leave. For example, I have two people now living in New York, who until January were with the group. One has a scholarship, and the other married a North-American musician who played with a quintet we met in Costa Rica. Same thing happened with another one-she fell in love in Barcelona, and she lives there now. I have two living in Mexico, another two in Bolivia, living now in Venezuela. In other words, the rotation is fairly high for now, until we can find a way to guarantee them a return for their work that is more than spiritual. And we always have to start over when there is a new member. It's hard for the ones who have been around the longest, to have to start with a new member, because maybe it's only three months until the next concert, and people have some prior reference or expect something from the group, and I can't stop and say, poor kid, she's only been with us for 15 days. No, the commitment is stronger.

Even more so because the orchestra plays from memory, which is part of its image, because part of the idea also was to break down the barriers between producer and consumer, to let people see that we laugh and that it is something live, letting people join the communication that goes on among us. People see a concert with the long skirts, the black dresses down to here, as too distant, no? With the change of image people feel closer to the artistic event, they identify culturally, without barriers.

I think that may also be the reason that the orchestra has been able to reach all levels. I have been walking down the street in some of the roughest places of Havana, let's say, Buena Vista, and a woman of color, a simple person, suddenly says thank you for your work, I feel very proud of you. And she tells me that as may a child, or a doctor, or a teenager. The constant in all that I receive from my country for my work is the congratulations for my work. "Congratulations for your work. I feel proud that you are working." And it's widespread, and it really means a big commitment, because people applaud you, they thank youthey thank you for your work. I don't receive money for my work; I receive recognition.

- What reception have you had in other countries?

- I'd say that everywhere I find a very good reception. In Sweden, for example, we went to a party organized by the King's manager, a party where there were celebrities from the media and politics. The party took place after an exhibition of eight ashtrays designed by the best designers in the world, but it was just eight ashtrays. Around the ashtrays there was a millionaire's feast, with a tent that the Swedes put up temporarily and when the party's was over two hours later, there was nothing there, you know how organized and punctual they are.

And a party where there was no Coca-Cola: there was champagne, caviar, paté, strawberries, like out of the movies, for millionaires, very elite. And I'll tell you, it was a party for the world of celebrities in media and politics. The party started with the Camerata's concert and endedwith people -timidly, because they call themselves timid- clapping as if they were at a football stadium. And after us came a concert of Dionne Warwick, and the celebrities present had a very good reception for Cuban music, so much so that the ambassador said, you've done more for Cuba today than in I don't know how many years of diplomacy. Same thing happened in Canada. We played for the Speaker of Canada at the seat of governmentand everywhere the Camerata's work is well received. We've been three times in Sweden, about four times in Spain, three in Mexico, this is our second time in the US this year; we've been twice in Bolivia, twice in Venezuela, once in Ecuador, once in Costa Rica, and so little by little we go around as ambassadors of Cuban culture, because what I defend are the values of my country, the imperishable values, that don't die, the cultural values of my nation.

People say to meI tell people when sometimes they get into particular definitions, of particular stages, I say, look, nobody knows who was the Kaiser of Vienna when Mozart wrote the 38th. Nobody knows! Who could know that? What musicologist, what musician, no matter how learned, could tell me? And there you have it. Who can tell me who was governor when Beethoven wrote the 9th? Who can tell me? Who tells me that?

So I defend the values of my nation. Those are the ones that are forever, the permanent cultural values. Those are truly the ones.

In a way my family has a musical tradition. All I have done is to continue it. My great-uncle had the orchestra of Antonio Maria Romeu. They say people kissed his hands, because he was the one who introduced piano improvisations in popular music. Before him, musical groups played with clarinets, they came from the historical bands, with traditions that came from Spain, and the improvisations were done by the woodwinds, and he suddenly made a charanga-he put in a violin and a piano. The first to introduce it in Cuba music, that's why he's called the Magician of the Keyboard. People talk about Pavarotti, this and that, he has detractors because he has taken opera music to the football fields. Well, Antonio María Romeu wrote danzones with themes from Mozart's operas, and had a danzón called The Magic Flute. So I can't criticize Pavarotti, because my great-uncle did that in Havana. Or Barry White, who did it with Beethoven's 5th, 15 or 20 years ago. My great-uncle did it earlier, at the beginning of the century.

And my grandfather was director of the Navy band in Cuba. And in the city where I was yesterday, Philadelphia, in the World's Fair of 1938 and 1939, Cuba's Navy band, in a worldwide competition, won two successive first prizes. It was my grandfather with the Cuban Navy's band. That's now a part of the history of Cuban music, it's an achievement of a Cuban in the field of music. Right there he received a scholarship from the US ambassador at the time (...) gave him the scholarship because he was a genius of Cuban music. And he saw him and gave him the scholarship in Philadelphia.

And the first musician for RCA Victor -one of the first-was a Cuban, Antonio Maria Romeu. Later my grandfather had many children who also were () look, a pioneer of jazz in Cuba, my uncle Armando. And he's still around -he's 88 years old now- faithful to jazz all his life. It's his language. And he always directed the orchestra at Tropicana. Nat King Cole made his long play in Spanish with my uncle Armando's orchestra in Havana, and uncle Armando did arrangements for him. That long play with "Quizás, Quizás," known worldwide, was recorded in Havana with the orchestra of my uncle Armando. We've been involved whether it be in jazz, or band music, or dance music, or concert music, or education, with my mother, in TV music, with my uncle Mario; also in jazz, my brother Armandito Siqueira-he's always defended jazz. Well, we're going to be four generations, counting my niece, who lives in Miami, related to music one way or another. And I think that they are valued pieces of our cultural history. Each one does, manifests himself or herself, in a different way, finds his or her own from of expression.

- Given that important work in defense of what is national, what are you plans from here on?

I can tell you in the short term; those plans are more concrete. When I go back now to Havana I want to have a big concert for the 5th anniversary. I want to do a retro concert, danzón music, and I've called upon 10 composers of classical music. I asked for danzones and everyone responded. On the 11th we're going to have a good selection of danzones written by the best musicians of the country, who have written it for the 5th anniversary. After that, we'll see. And we're always looking for composers to write for us, and, like I said, we have this forthcoming commitment with everyone writing for us, to do a totally new program for the 5th anniversary, to play nothing that we've played before, totally new, and we will include those danzones in the repertory of the Camerata.

In any case, we are always connected to bigger projects, and we grow. We just did a big Cervantes concert () on the 450th anniversary of Cervantes we did a fabulous concert, with all of his danzas and 3 orchestral pieces, which really had a very good reception also. And we want to continue that way, showing young people the most outstanding people of Cuban musical history, of Cuban musical literature.

Romeu Magazine