Cuba's ban on anti-Castro musicians quietly lifted

8 August 2012 Last updated at 10:36 GMT

Cuba's ban on anti-Castro musicians quietly lifted
Sarah Rainsford By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Havana

Change could be about to hit Cuban radio. After five decades, the
government has done away with a blacklist of musicians and singers that
had seen dozens of artists banned from the nation's airwaves.

The list was never officially published, but artists who abandoned the
Communist-run island and spoke out against the 1959 revolution found
themselves struck off radio playlists.

They included Celia Cruz and Havana-born pop-singer Gloria Estefan.

Now, in another small sign of change in Cuba, the blacklist has gone.

News of the change emerged last week but there has been no public
announcement: that would mean admitting to censorship in the first place.

The Communist Party has not authorised any official interviews. But
several of Cuba's biggest radio stations have confirmed to the BBC that
the ban has been overturned.

They say there were at least 50 artists on the list as recently as a few
days ago but station directors can now decide for themselves what to
broadcast.

Among those formerly-banned artists were Grammy-winning saxophonist
Paquito d'Rivera, who defected from Cuba whilst on tour - leaving his
family - and was openly critical of Fidel Castro; singer Willy Chirino,
who launched his musical career in Miami after leaving Cuba as a child;
and jazz pianist Bebo Valdes - father of the now-legendary Chucho
Valdes, who remained on the island.

Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias was blacklisted at one point, too, then
excused.

And a whole generation has grown up without the salsa of Celia Cruz -
widely renowned outside Cuba as a master of her art, but dismissed at
home as an icon of the anti-Castro diaspora.
Wait and see
Celia Cruz "Queen of Salsa" Celia Cruz died in exile in the US

The decision to lift the official ban has not transformed the airwaves:
in fact it is not clear whether any station has yet played the
de-censored artists.

The authorisation was for the music to be aired "where appropriate" and
some albums would have to be dug out of dusty archives, if they weren't
destroyed.

But the step is seen as a loosening of tight, central control - at least
in the cultural sphere - and perhaps another sign that attitudes to
Cuban exiles, once routinely excoriated as traitors, are softening.

Radio station staff in Havana told the BBC they were informed at
meetings last week that the list "served its purpose," but was
out-dated, and that its removal was part of Cuba "opening up to the world."

"The artists were banned because they were making statements against
Cuba," explains cultural journalist Reny Martinez.

"Things have changed. Something has changed in the Party. I think
there's new flexibility with culture," he says.

Still, the limits of that apparent new spirit of tolerance have yet to
be tested.

Radio station staff said they would "wait and see" for now, before
revising their playlists.

But a decade after her death, a new generation of Cubans could
eventually be introduced to Celia Cruz and her salsa.

Gloria Estefan and others could finally make it off the pirate CD stalls
and onto the airwaves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19174552