Of course, this is not a normal concert. “Here we are at last,” Mick Jagger calls in Spanish into a microphone and the endless crowd cheers for him. The emphasis is on at last. The Rolling Stones in Havana! “Under Fidel, it would not have been,” the neighbor says in the audience while waiting for the start of the concert. The Stones were in Cuba until the seventies not be played, were like the Beatles subversive. Teens who wore their hair over the ears or dressed unusually, were insulted by Fidel Castro as antisocial elements, even landed in re-education camps. But the leaden days are gone. Not more strict Fidel, but his younger brother Raúl today in Cuba the saying. The deemed open, relaxed, funny. And he is negotiating with the US about the end of the trade embargo, which more than a half century imposed Washington over Cuba and this also applies to artists and cultural goods. The Stones concert is therefore also inconceivable without the other world event this week in Havana. Barack Obama visited Cuba, first sitting US President since 1928. He promised the end of the embargo and impressed the Cubans by its clear, facing nature and self-deprecating skits which he recorded with the comedian Pánfilo. Cultural diplomacy. Some joke now on this sultry Friday night already that Obama only the opening act for Jagger & amp; was Co.
throughout Good Friday about people have flocked to an open space in Havana’s Ciudad Deportiva , There is a vast area with various sports and training venues. The people who settled on the lawn in front of the stage for a picnic. Alcohol is forbidden, police seize one or another bottle of rum. Also eat there except corn chips and popcorn not to buy. When toilets are four rusty metal walls that have been placed on the grid of the runoff in the surrounding streets.
It is the most visited concert in the history of Cuba
When the Stones opened their set with “Honky Tonk Woman”, are at least half a million people in front of them. It is probably the most visited concert in the history of Cuba. The show is free – hardly a Cuban could afford tickets that cost elsewhere around $ 200. Families are here, seniors and all the subcultures that exist today in Cuba. Most striking, the punks with their spectacular Iroquois cuts. It must not obscure the fact that in Cuba uncomfortable artists are still harassed, such as Gorki Águila, frontman of the punk band “Porno para Ricardo”. He is under house arrest.
Nevertheless, this concert has nothing to do with . the infamous appearance of Billy Joel and Kris Kristofferson, 1979 theater played in Karl Marx exclusively against party cadres and members of communist youth organizations who today, however, asks the young people what songs they know by the Stones, obtained in response:. not one you would better versed with Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Both played already in Cuba. Not only because the claim is nonsense, Cuba would be culturally finally open with the Stones in the world. the country has produced even world-famous dancers, ballerinas, musicians and writers.
Two phenomena come together the socialist Cuba and the Rolling Stones have one thing in common:.. amazing longevity. When the Stones were founded in London in 1962, the Cuban revolution was two years old and the US imposed an economic embargo on the island, to force them to give up their socialist course. Just as the end of socialism in Cuba and end the Stones has been predicted repeatedly. To date, both are very much alive, as submitted for young Cubans but from a bygone era, their disputes and conflicts they have not experienced.
The four slender men in tight pants have fun
Mick Jagger, Ron Wood, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts are such considerations rather snuff. The four slender men in tight pants enjoying themselves, jam from a expectable musical highlights to the next. Mick Jagger tigert as always omitted, arms and legs to schmeißend, across the stage and flirts violently with its black background singer. The concert will be broadcast on big screens, the equipment arrived in 61 containers and a packed jumbo jet to Havana. What a contrast to the Cuban economy of scarcity, in the still pending human for bread and eggs and it signed their food cards
. The Rolling Stones are not explicitly political band. Once Jagger says in Spanish: “I think things are changing.” This can of course be understood as one wants. But it is clear that the band is not subject to censorship. Unlike in China, where they played in 2006 in Shanghai and under pressure from the Chinese authorities waived “Brown Sugar”. In Havana they play the song about heroin without problems.
As encores “You can not always get what you want” and a fünfzehnminütig stretched “Satisfaction”. On the way the taxi driver says in his Chevrolet that he had both songs often heard in secret. At that time! And now: “Obama and the Stones in a week. Something’s happening. “What exactly that had yet to be seen.
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