Cuban Rumba reaches its roots in Matanzas in Timbalaye 2023 (+audio and photos)
A long day was devoted in Matanzas to the closing of the Timbalaye festival, along the rumba route, on August 31, with the presence of Miguel Barnet, honorary member of UNEAC and president of the Fernando Ortiz Foundation.
In the cultural park of La Marina neighborhood, the community welcomed the organizers of the event. Emilio O’Farrill Almendariz, leader of the AfroArte project, gave an account of the transformations that took place after the intervention of the artists in the courtyard during the first edition of Ríos Intermitentes, in 2019. That intervention imposed a renewed image to the place and returned the prestige and hygiene to the site where the folk group Los Muñequitos de Matanzas was created.
In the former garbage dump, now a center for community development and cultural promotion, the delegation attending the event, which also included foreigners from Mexico and Italy interested in Cuban cultural expressions, enjoyed a performance by the children of the academy La Rumba Soy Yo (I am the Rumba).
The Castillo de San Severino, Museum of the Slave Route, welcomed the guests with a demonstration of the dances and songs of the enslaved men and women who bequeathed them, an invaluable heritage, by the group Gangá Longobá, from Perico.
It was the opportune moment for Miguel Barnet, Adopted Son of Matanzas, to donate to the museum, the only constructive vestige of the foundational moment of the city of Matanzas, a tray carved in wood associated to the Nigerian culture with high patrimonial and museographic values.
The National Literature Prize winner extended his visit to Tirry 81, where the excellent poet Carilda Oliver Labra lived. There he recalled passages of friendship and admiration they shared for several decades.
The participants also attended a practical workshop on Afro-Cuban dances with the Afrocuba group at the Bonifacio Byrne Cultural Center and enjoyed the performances of two rumbero groups at La Aurora Park.
Ulises Mora and Irma Castillo, president and vice-president of the Festival, respectively, expressed the honor of closing in Matanzas the activities of the Festival in its fifteenth edition.
The celebration of Timbalaye, along the rumba route began in the country on the 19th. With a tour of ten Cuban provinces from the eastern region, it concluded during the night of the last day of August in a gala that included the performance of important exponents of the genre, Intangible Heritage of Humanity, in the foundational Plaza de la Vigía.
…ONLINE AUDIO
written by Jessica Mesa Duarte.
