The two-day event to honor Cuban doctors will air from July 18 to 19.
Cuban artists such as Los Van Van and Alexander Abreu, as well as Tom Morello, Michael McDonald and Ozomatli are among the 60 acts that will unite for a free two-night concert honoring Cuban doctors.
The Concert for Cuba is a two-night, six-hour broadcast festival scheduled for this weekend (July 18-19). He will gather for a Nobel Prize for the international efforts of Cuban medical professionals during the pandemic and will advocate for the end of the United States embargo, while showcasing performances by Cuban artists and international events that will lend their support to the messages of the event.
Other artists, such as Orquesta Aragón, Mezcla, Síntesis, Dayramir González, Omara Portuondo and Orquesta Failde, will perform from the Cuban Music Institute and other places in Havana. Morello, McDonald, Ozomatli, Dionne Warwick, Arturo O´Farrill and others will appear on video from different locations. Everyone is doing pro bono. See more information on where to broadcast the event below.
The event will also include appearances by Danny Glover, Michael Moore, and various American politicians, as well as Cuban doctors and American doctors who studied in Cuba.
The Concert for Cuba is “something positive at a time when there is so much sadness. Accentuating the work of Cuban medical teams seems like something that most people can and do support,” says Marguerite Horberg, founder and director of the Chicago Cultural Center. HotHouse.
Horberg is producing the concert along with San Francisco attorney and presenter Bill Martínez and Cuban music promoter and manager Raúl Cuza.
The pandemic has illustrated that disease and suffering have no borders, “says Horberg, who has been presenting concerts by Cuban artists since 1986.” Having culture as a very strong healing force both to repair diplomatic ruptures and to share medical advances is something that we think is very important. “
Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade has been working in 22 countries to fight COVID-19. A petition, whose supporters include Glover and Morello, has been circulating to encourage the Nobel committee to award health workers the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
The idea for the Concert for Cuba began with a conversation between Horberg and Cuza about the concert broadcast of El Septeto Santiaguero, one of the bands he manages, for the HotHouse channel. They soon launched the idea for the online festival.
“We have created an outstanding program and our message is of peace, human sovereignty, rejection of walls in favor of bridges and the union of cultures and people,” says Cuza, founder of the Cuza Agency.
Cuza has been working with the Cuban Ministry of Culture and the Cuban Institute of Music in Havana, which is the scene of most of the performances by participating Cuban artists. Both have produced countless shows since the pandemic closed Cuba last April.
“Cuban artists have the same goals as all international artists right now: to keep their audiences and careers in an uncertain situation where we don’t know when we can start touring again,” adds Cuza.
The Concert for Cuba performances will be prerecorded to avoid the possibility of the US government blocking the live broadcast. Most of the participating international artists have an established relationship with Cuba.
Morello (who will be seen playing his anti-political brutality song “Rabbit’s Revenge” on Saturday) performed with Audioslave in Havana in 2005 for an audience of 70,000 people. Canadian saxophonist Jane Bunnett has frequently recorded with Cuban artists. Congolese salsa singer Ricardo Lemvo (a long-time Los Angeles resident) grew up listening to Congolese rumba and great Cuban bands. McDonald, better known as the singer for some of the Doobie Brothers’ biggest hits, has never been to Cuba, but says his longstanding interest in the country and its culture led to the event.
“Many Americans share the bewilderment that this embargo will continue all these years after whatever the reasons it was initially established long ago,” says McDonald. Billboard. “I feel very privileged to be a part of this.”
McDonald will perform the Doobies classic “Taking It to the Streets.”
Organizer Bill Martinez, who has been working with Cuban artists and other international artists to obtain visas to travel in the United States for decades, has curtailed his operations following massive tour cancellations due to the pandemic.
The reversal by the Trump administration of President Obama’s historic changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba had already discouraged cultural exchange with Cuba. But the Concerto for Cuba offers another way for Cuban musicians to play for the world. He points out that the response from artists inside and outside Cuba who want to participate has been so great that they may have to organize a second festival with a different formation.
“We hope to return to better days when we had better relations with Cuba,” says Martínez. “And if we have to keep repeating the same message, we will.”
The Concert for Cuba will air at 8 p.m. ET on the HotHouse Global Twitch channel, the HotHouse website and the Facebook page. The festival will also air in Cuba, broadcast through Pacifica radio stations, and by partners of HotHouse Sunfest, Womad Chile, and the OllinKan festival in Mexico. Organizers hope the audience “is in the millions.”
