I always thought that innocence and music are
gifts from God. The former is pretty much gone and the latter, as represented
by some of its latest iterations… well, I’m not so sure…
Ever since I was a
little child, hiding behind my grandmother’s skirts, I was a witness -and
participant- of a devoted love to music in all its variations. Later, when I
was about 8 years old and in the arms of that same grandmother, my journey
through the steps of a dance floor began. I learned to dance the music of my childhood and of my grandmother’s adolescence. Danzones,
Cha-cha, boleros, Waltzes… even a street conga or two…
It was a time in
which I would look behind the big radio to find the musicians that surely had to
be hiding inside… Then, on realizing these folks could not really be inside
there, I would be convinced that the answer was that there must be a giant
theater somewhere in the radio station where troves of bands and singers
would be sitting in wait for their name to be called as a result of a request from a
listener. Ahh… long gone times... Much simpler and innocent than today, when
imagination, fairy tales and heroic adventures are relegated to an ever-growing
virtual pile of refuse.
I remember one of my
favorite shows, which took place during a fifteen-minute stretch in the early
afternoon, after lunch and before the school bus came to take me back to the
hallowed halls of education. The little stretch of radio imagination was called
“The Adventures of the Three Villalobos”. These were three brothers who were “cowboys”
(yes, I know… there weren’t any real
cowboys in Cuba but I did say imagination and radio and innocence, right?)
and who, as a family much in the style of the latter day television Cartwrights
(Bonanza) ran all over the Cuban countryside looking for wrongs to right and to
defend the defenseless.
These were basic
adventures. A short 15 min program but you couldn’t pry me away from the radio
during those minutes. I loved it and also knew that during the afternoon the
latest adventures would be a topic of discussion among my friends during the
recesses. These discussions were an ode to the imagination and to the knowledge
that we could be as good a hero as any of these Villalobos brothers.
Together with this
love of music and to the radio adventures and all the imagination these allowed out minds to exercise, there was also a love of curiosity and questioning of all
established presumptions. And there were (and are) many of these. I was lucky to grow
into a family where there were no absolute bosses and where all were encouraged
to talk up, to question, to discuss. I realize today this was not the norm in
the environment where I grew up. And am thankful.
As years went by I
couldn’t but accept that the music I used to listen to came from records played
by an engineer at the radio station and not from live bands in a theater… I also
had to grudgingly accept that my beloved Villalobos were but a threesome of
badly paid aging radio actors in a studio somewhere in Havana and that all the
galloping horses, the pistol shots and the very scarce kisses (remember, cowboys kissed their horses, not
women) came from a well managed sound box and its hard working master.
What has been left in
me from these and many other similar childhood adventures and dreams is a love
of music and the belief that imagination is the cradle of reality and it must
never be abandoned or relegated to a totally practical, “non-real” world… Imagination, which resides in that semi forgotten attic we often overlook, allows me
to create and explore other worlds, other visions, other realities and, when I
finally get to see them, what is to tell me these are not as real as the world
from which we spy on them?
Be Well … Be Back!!!
Final
Notes:
· Pray for those who are fighting an illness
which may take them away from their loved ones… Every request is heard, and
counts!!
· Follow us on Twitter … @RJAsPandora
