Family & Kids Travel

In Trinidad, Cuba, the Casa de la Trova closes around midnight, but I get the feeling that the music will continue somewhere. Perhaps it’s because I was sketching the band while they played, and the trumpeter spotted me, and afterwards we talked, and he suggested that if I bought a bottle of rum we could all go to the town square, have a few drinks, keep the party going.

When I arrived in Havana a few weeks ago, my pale English skin wasn’t prepared for the suffocating June heat, my two years’ living in Spain didn’t prepare me for the Cuban accent, and I was confused by the way people gave you a huge welcome and then tried to hustle some US dollars out of you. So I decided to go to Trinidad, about 150 miles south-east of Havana. It’s got a World Heritage Site designation from the UN, due to its ‘perfectly preserved’ (that is, ‘picturesquely collapsing’) colonial buildings, cobbled streets, and stunning church. The broad steps next to the church ascend in a series of wide terraces, and it’s there that I arrive with the musicians just as the nearby bars are closing up for the night.

The five musicians and I sit around one of the white cast-iron tables dotted around the terrace. We open the rum, pass it round, and talk in a relaxed way about our different cultures. Now and then they laugh at my Spanish accent, with its madrileno c (th, in contrast to the Latin American ss). My new trumpeter friend, an Afro-Cuban called Paco, who looks exactly like the young Miles Davis, punctuates his conversation with scales and trills from his trumpet. Juan, the singer, is a veteran of the Cuban army, and is bragging about his time in Angola. Diego, the guitarist, a quiet man in his forties, only strums his guitar and smiles distantly. They drink more rum, and soon Diego and Juan start playing an old Benny More tune: Ya esta la hora de bailar cha-cha-cha. The percussionist keeps time with those two hollow sticks that make the tock-tock sound. Waiters from the other bars draw near. Some of them join in by clapping their hands, others sing harmony. My friends back in England were right: everyone in Cuba really is a musician.

Some tourists (other tourists, I should say) drift by, and sit at a table near the edge of the musical group, which now numbers about twelve. I hear Scottish and Australian accents. One of the singing waiters picks the prettiest looking girl from among the new arrivals, and invites her to dance by taking her hand and giving her a broad grin. The party is now in full swing: the rum flows, the dancers change partners, and the heart-piercing music of Cuban son drifts over the palm trees and into the throbbing night air.

At one point the guitarist, who has seen me trying to figure out his chord changes, asks me if I play. I say “Yes, but – ” Too late: he shoves the guitar into my hands and tells me to play something. The musicians give me a look of tolerant scepticism.

“Play anything, ” the guitarist says. “We don’t mind.”

What the hell, I say to myself. It’s a friendly party, not a competition. Unfortunately, the only song that comes into my head at this moment is Yesterday. How unoriginal. How un-Cuban. Oh well, I think. At least it’s short, and then we can all get back to the free concert.

But after only two bars for the guitar introduction, the musicians join in. They do it in a sort of jokey way, as if to say “what a square rhythm, what a lame song”. Nevertheless, they seamlessly add a Cuban-inflected accompaniment, and by the time I get to the first “and I believe in yesterday”, most of them are singing along, pronouncing the English in their heavy Cuban-Spanish accents. The whole thing is a little bit lame, but even as I sing I’m aware that this is, after all, a good song, and though you may hear it a million times, there’ll always be a time when you hear it again and you respond to its gentle melancholy, heightened now by the tock-tock of the sticks, the muted trumpet notes from Paco, and the sad slow voices of these Cuban men and women.

The song ends and everyone laughs and applauds. “Bravo.” “Muy bien.” They’re complimenting the ambience rather than me, the atmosphere to which we’ve all contributed with drinking, conversation, and music. And that’s fine, because this is one of those evenings that you yearn for when you travel, but which come along only once in a while. My pale English skin can take the night-time heat. I’m starting to get used to the Cuban accent. And the drinks that I bought for everyone all night were ridiculously cheap. I’m under no illusion about the gulf that separates me from Paco and his colleagues, but for just a few hours, helped by rum and the irresistible lure of a corny song, I feel a hustle-free connection.

Soon it’s four in the morning, and the local cops who have been tolerating the party make some invisible sign, understood by all the Cubans, that it’s time to break it up. I exchange goodbye hugs with my companions. When Paco embraces me, he holds onto my shoulders for a few seconds more than the others did, and whispers in my ear:

“Could you give me ten dollars? I have two little babies, you see …”

I hand it over. It’s a small price to pay for a memorable night.