01/09/2010

Going Down To Cuba


Sometimes, songs about places are about not where someone has been but where they would like to go, either because they have idealised it in their mind or perhaps because they just like the sound of the name (as with the Bee Gees and Massachusetts). On occasion, they may even know they will never get there because the place is imaginary (Somewhere Over The Rainbow). The song here, Going Down to Cuba by Jackson Browne, is a different sort of song of this ilk - about a place the author hasn’t been to yet because obstacles have been placed in the way. These aren’t the usual obstacles that appear in songs for someone to overcome in the pursuit of their heart’s desire-“ You can reach me by caravan, cross the desert like an arab man....you can jump on a speedy colt, cross the border in a blaze of hope” etc, etc. These are not heroic challenges but political barriers and not the usual stuff of songs.

The motivation for this song has, of course, a perspective from the USA - one can get on a plane in London and arrive at Havana 9 hours later with no more difficulty than flying to Spain. However, the travel restrictions between the USA and Cuba have added an extra dimension - and maybe the frisson of forbidden fruit - to American songs about Cuba over the years. As early as 1964, Phil Ochs covered the visit to Cuba-and subsequent arrest- of the African-American reporter, William Worthy, in his typically witty Ballad of William Worthy-“Well, there really is no need to travel to these evil lands, Yes, and though the list grows larger you must try to understand. Try hard not to be surprised if someday you should hear that the whole world is off limits, visit Disneyland this year”.

44 years, and 8 American Presidents, later Jackson Browne echoed the same sentiments in Going Down to Cuba. It is a longer and more earnest song than Ochs’ and reads at times what it actually is - a musical rewriting of his article in the New York Times of 2004 about the embargo on cultural exchange: 'Songs of Cuba, silenced in America’. It is not often one expects to hear a line like “They make such continuous use of the verb, ‘to resolve’ “ outside of a Paul Simon song. As such, it is less a song about Cuba itself than about another country’s perspective on it, though at a different end of the political spectrum than, say, Gloria Estefan’s Cuba Libre. Music and politics have always mingled easily in Cuba, with the murals of Che Guevara and posters of the Cuban 5 overlooking the musicians playing at every street corner and café. That mix does not always come so easy to songs that look at the country from outside,

However, it is a song that quietly grows, with the gentle rhythm of the music and background vocals and the hopeful expectation of the singer of finally experiencing the Havana landmarks that any visitor to Cuba might expect to see. The Hotel Nacional overlooking the Malecon, where once in pre-Castro days Frank Sinatra sung at mafia gatherings where guests dined on tortoise and flamingo and where now you can stay in the Nat King Cole room or look at the photos in the lobby of more recent visitors like Naomi Campbell and Ken Livingstone. Or the Malecon itself, the long coastal stretch where the crumbling grandeur of the palatial buildings is buffeted by the waves and sporadic hurricanes and the smell of brine and fish hangs in the air. Or the initially bizarre sight of 1950’s Chevrolets,  Dodges and Cadillacs still driving round, held together by Soviet parts and the ingenuity of Cuban mechanics." It’ll put a smile on your face to see a Chevrolet with a Soviet transmission”. Or the ubiquitous mojitos and cigars. It is through these little touches and the gently barbed comments-‘they know what to do in a hurricane’- that the song becomes more than a worthy editorial on the cultural and economic blockade.

The music of the Beatles was once seen as western decadence in Cuba. However, now in a small park - known as Rockers’ Park- - in the Vedado district of Havana there is a bronze sculpture of John Lennon, with a plaque of some of the lines from Imagine in Spanish, ‘You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one’. (Tourists trying to find it need to pronunciate the name clearly to taxi drivers, as they may end up looking at the statue of Lenin in Parque Lenin south of the city instead.) There is, of course, another memorial to John Lennon in a park: in Central Park, New York, a 3 hour flight away. There must be a moral there somewhere.

Link to song

35 comments:

  1. Thanks Geoff! I always like the more well-known song by him called Running on Empty and now I love this one too!

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  2. Didn't he co-write some songs with the Eagles? I think he did. Love the column and this song, Geoff!

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  3. Yes, he co-wrote Take It Easy. He also wrote Doctor, My Eyes, which the Jackson 5 did

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  4. Brown has been has been a constant in my life for over thirty years. I adore love his writing. He is a genius with words.

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  5. I loved the performance of this song on the Colbert Report back in 2008: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/185621/september-23-2008/jackson-browne-pt--2

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  6. I heard him last year at at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida. Believe it or not, he accepted the cat call for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird.” And he tackled it. Not once have I EVER heard any other artist acknowledge that request (besides Skynyrd, of course) and actually play the song. “I know that one!” Browne replied as he began his perfect, note-for-note rendition. No preplanned set list, indeed. He played Going Down To Cuba as well:)

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  7. Thanks for pointing out that line about knowing how to manage a hurricane, Geoff! I also loved “Where Were You,” a 10 minute indictment of the U.S. government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. It is on the same album, “Time The Conqueror”.

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  8. This song is the anthem of our Freedom to Travel campaign. Thanks for the column Geoff! It gave us renewed hope today in the office when we read it. It's a critical time for the campaign as Obama considers ending the travel ban.

    http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/cuba/travel/index.html

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  9. One of the great protest singers. Others have mentioned a few above and I wanted to mention “Giving That Heaven Away” where he is “still looking around for that Sixties sound” - great song!

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  10. I think the "unknown band" with whom Browne describes living in Laurel Canyon in the song "Off Of Wonderland" is supposed to be the Eagles, too.

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  11. Oh, I'm so glad you're still writing the column. I was worried you had stopped when you didn't post for over a week! And now you have two new columns - what a treat! THANK YOU for not actually having stopped!

    I loved this Cuba column, including the idea that a song can be about an out-of-reach place that does exist. Another example might be Judy Collins' “Judy Blue Eyes" whicn ends: “How beautiful it would be to bring me to Cuba, the queen of the Caribbean I only want to visit you there, how sad that I can’t go."

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  12. Yes! I echo Laura's comments - so glad you're still writing the column (although my own late reading/posting was more to do with a summer holiday than giving up on "Songs About Places":) Thought you would enjoy a photo of my son with the John Lennon statue you wrote about: http://www.flickr.com/photos/missmass/570288134/
    Thanks for the great column.

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  13. Geoff, thank you for the column. I recently organized a concert called "Classically Cuban: The World Sings to Cuba" at the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. There is so much more that we don't know about Cuban culture and the concert was an attempt to explore it. It included songs from 22 countries, four continents and seven languages that were written during the 19th and 20th centuries. Cuban music is well known and well researched and that's wonderful but fewer people know that foreigners have written songs about it. Japan, Australia, Germany and Brazil were among the nations that were represented. The last song played was "I'll See You In C-U-B-A" by U.S. composer Irving Berlin. The song was written in the '20s during the U.S. Prohibition era. If you wanted to have a good time, you'd go to Cuba! From England, which I think is your home country, we had Alla Cubana. Here is a link to the concert program:
    http://casgroup.fiu.edu/events/docs/189/1269883910_Concert_Program.pdf

    We hope to repeat the event - if you are interested, we could send you news of the next concert in case you can attend.

    warm wishes
    Emilio

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  14. Thank you for the enlightening column, Geoff. This is the image that most Americans have of Cuba: http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1998-01-26 - a dictator with a gun smoking a cigar. Think about it: if even the New Yorker (liberal, intellectual) depicts it this way, what hope is there for the rest of the U.S.A.? And by the way, Fidel stopped smoking in the early 1980s, so this isn't even an accurate rendition! The embargo is not only food and medicine, it is information. Any information. So, thanks.

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  15. Geoff, enjoyed the column. You might like my book "Music and Revolution" (www.amazon.com/Music-Revolution-Cultural-Socialist-Diaspora/dp/0520247116) - here's an excerpt from its opening. Hope you write some more about Cuba! - http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/10508.ch01.pdf

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  16. A very different approach to Cuba is the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire" from the 1980s.

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  17. Geoff, do you also know one of my favorite songs, Joni Mitchell's Harlem in Havana? I think you'd like it.

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  18. That's a hilarious observation, about cabbies heading to the Lenin statue instead of the Lennon one - ha ha!

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  19. This was a fascinating column. To be honest, until I read it, I didn't know much about Cuba. It was really just a few words and images - Castro, Bay of Pigs, rum, Elian Gonzalez.

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  20. Geoff, here is my version of "The Ballad of William Worthy." I've been to Cuba too - loved it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49Fu7AKL_bI

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  21. Also, here's a long article about the William Worthy case, for anyone interested in the background (not written by me, I just found it online): http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/7/2/1/0/pages272109/p272109-1.php

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  22. I think Phil Ochs also did "Talking Cuban Crisis", which is very good.

    Echoing the folks, above, Geoff, thanks for continuing the column - was worried you had ceased publication and so I stopped checking. Just checked in today to find two postings, which was wonderful. Thanks for making my day!

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  23. I was part of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee during the early 60s, before we were shut down. Some of my writings are in this pamphlet: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/history/canada/socialisthistory/Docs/1961-/Cuba/RealCuba.htm. Now I edit the Socialist Voice (http://www.socialistvoice.ca/). Thank you for your insights, Geoff.

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  24. Here is the original article in the New York Times by Jackson Browne, so everyone can read it: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/22/opinion/22BROW.html

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  25. This is the most evocative description of Cuba I've ever read:
    "The Hotel Nacional overlooking the Malecon, where once in pre-Castro days Frank Sinatra sung at mafia gatherings where guests dined on tortoise and flamingo and where now you can stay in the Nat King Cole room or look at the photos in the lobby of more recent visitors like Naomi Campbell and Ken Livingstone. Or the Malecon itself, the long coastal stretch where the crumbling grandeur of the palatial buildings is buffeted by the waves and sporadic hurricanes and the smell of brine and fish hangs in the air. Or the initially bizarre sight of 1950’s Chevrolets, Dodges and Cadillacs still driving round, held together by Soviet parts and the ingenuity of Cuban mechanics. "It’ll put a smile on your face to see a Chevrolet with a Soviet transmission”. Or the ubiquitous mojitos and cigars."

    WONDERFUL!

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  26. Geoff, I agree with you that "There must be a moral there somewhere." I'd love to know what you think the moral IS though! That it's stupid for Cuba to be a forbidden place, unreachable to the narrator of Jackson Browne's song - i.e., you think the embargo should be lifted? Doesn't this run the risk of Cuba becoming Americanized - with a McDonalds and Starbucks in every town? I don't know where I stand on this actually! Wondering where YOU stand....

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  27. God I hate Gloria Estefan - very happy you didn't pick Cuba Libre as the song for your Cuba column, Geoff!

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  28. Do you happen to have a photograph of the scene you describe, Geoff? - "murals of Che Guevara and posters of the Cuban 5 overlooking the musicians playing at every street corner and café." I bet everyone would love to see one, maybe you could add it as another picture for this column, along with the amazing cars one?

    I'm also pleased you're still writing the column. Although I do think people should give you a break - this Cuba column was only about 8 days after the last one!:) Patience, people! Even music writers are allowed a short summer holiday!:)

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  29. Sorry for delays-I was away for 4 days! Re Tiffanye' comments, I havent got the exat photo but have put up two more photos that could be put together.
    Thanks for all the links given.
    Re Steve's comments,that is an interesting observation. I think the embargo-which is causing deaths from lack of medical supplies-is probably different from americanisation and McDonalds though.
    Yes, Phil Ochs also did Talking Cuban Crisis -'lets sink Cuba into the sea and give them back democracy -under the water'.

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  30. Thanks for the song, Matthew-great version of it

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  31. Thanks for the photos - it looks like an amazing place, not at all what I pictured. (which was something much grimmer - Moscow circa the 1970s, etc, minus the snow of course!)

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  32. It's a Caribbean island-lots of colour and music, white sandy beaches,beautiful countryside with mountains, lakes and forests.

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  33. I hear you Geoff, but it seems like ending the embargo means all the consumer goods flood in, bringing the Americanization of Cuba. Tour trains and trolleys, T-shirt shops, jet skis and Disney cruise ships. The land will once again be stolen from the Cuban people to produce American-manufactured cane fructose for sodas.

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  34. Wow, I honestly had no idea. I really did picture it as Berlin circa 1946 - the power of propaganda! Thanks Geoff.

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  35. I understand your point Steve-theres something unique in how Cuba sits outside the mainstream of globalisation. However, organisations like Amnesty and the UK Cuba Solidarity Campaign have sought the embbargo to be lifted due the detrimental effects on Cuban life

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