By Arleen Rodríguez Derivet on June 3, 2023
Silvio, photo: Bill Hackwell
I missed it. I missed the ceremony of the awarding of the Honoris Causa of the University of Havana to Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez. I don’t think there is a higher award in Cuban academia. That is why I equate it with a Nobel, the Nobel that Cuba could give to the man who equally deserves that one from the Swedish academy.
And the truth is that when I found out about it, late and sideways, it did not even occur to me to sneak into the university celebration.
I thought there would be no room for an uninvited guest, that there would be students even hanging from the balconies and that a crowd outside would be waiting for him to leave the Aula Magna. It would have been like that in my years at the University, when his music overflowed squares and stadiums. And so it would have been this Friday, for sure, if it had been announced publicly.
But, alas, the Communication, that even with a new law we can’t seem to solve. The event was not announced as it should have been, or did I also miss the announcement?
I have seen more than once the report of my colleague Wilmer Rodriguez, in the news and in the networks. I don’t think I’m the only one who was moved to tears by the images and speeches.
“The nana songs of mine were those of Silvio. It gives me a lot of feeling to be here,” wrote Leticia Martinez in a group chat, in the middle of the ceremony. And she expanded: “I still remember my mom singing ‘tu la perdiste pero aquí se queda’” (you lost it but here it stays).
His emotion sneaks into my nostalgia. Silvio was once brought into my house by my younger sister. I had grown up with ballads from the prodigious decade, the ones that were played all day long on the radio. Silvio and the Nueva Trova were for historic days or national duels. Until cassette recorders came to us. Normita brought them from the scholarship and the weekend was with Silvio at all hours.
Already in Havana it was something else. And in the 90’s even more. Silvio, Pablo, Amaury, Vicente… all of them were not only heard on cassettes. They were there, within reach of a theater, a get-together, an event, a tour of the homeland and a concert in the Plaza.
And “El necio” arrived in the most uncertain hours. I remember that Magda Resik, Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Amado del Pino -all Silvio’s fans- threw pebbles at the door of his house on the Biltmore, to beg for an interview. And they won. I was also lucky a couple of times.
Hand in hand with Amaury Pérez and his wife Petí, friends or family, it is no longer known, I entered the home of Silvio, Niurka and Malva, in days of personal sadness that they soothed with their songs and stories.
photo: Estudios Revolució
I never was, and logically I will not be able to be, a Silviophile of the stature of Iroel Sanchez, the person who knew the most Silvio’s songs. I am rather of that majority group of my generation and other newer ones, to whom his songs come out of our lips every time we are in a musical mood.
That’s what Miguel Diaz Canel, who presided over the ceremony but didn’t get to embrace the poet at the end of the ceremony, as if he was still restrained by the natural shyness of the boy who traveled from Santa Clara to Havana, just to go to his concerts, usually does with his friends and his children.
All that must have made me emotional when I saw the news. In the end, what are we, if not memories, as Amaury, another poet pending homage, has just said.
Finally, I have been so moved by what they told me and what I saw, that I could no longer say if I missed or not the Cuban Nobel to Silvio, the ceremony that exalted even more the status of the Aula Magna of the University of Havana, this Friday, June 2, an inconsequential date until that delivery, which has just become an important ephemeris of the Cuban culture.
Sourced: Cubadebate translation Resumen Latinoamericano – US