May Pilgrimage Came to an End

Text and photos: Amauris Betancourt.

(May 09) The Holguín May Pilgrimage fused day and night in its last day, extended till next day’s sunrise over the frieze of the Major General Calixto García Revolution Square in the city of Holguín, to the rhythm of Moneda Dura pop band headed by Nassiry Lugo.

The evening closing ceremony broke off with a gala held at the Ismaelillo movie-theater, and then the Holguín Axe –a symbol of city- was brought down from the top of the Hill of the Cross to the La Periquera History museum.

It was then that the presidency of the Hermanos Saiz Association (AHS) and the directive branch of the Ministry of Culture in Holguín headed the parade from the city’s old side to the modern one.

The May Pilgrimage organizing committee, Cuban and foreign delegates, and members of the Jose Marti art brigade, holding flags, guarded by two vehicles, one with a tree from Quebec, Canada, the other with a giant screen showing images of the last Pilgrimage edition, made their way across the river of people packed at the roomy XX Aniversario avenue, until finally reaching the two 18-story buildings not far from the Hotel Pernik.

The tree from Quebec was planted then and the Holguín Axe was raised up to the top of one of the two buildings.

Then from a stage built for the occasion, Alexis Triana, top Culture official in Holguín, called the people for the coming 17th edition of May Pilgrimage.

Later, there were combined and simultaneous performances for the peoples’ satisfaction. Several artists from the delegations that attended the Festival performed at the central platform, while at the Calixto Garcia Revolution Square the mythical Canadian musician Vic Vogel directed a long Canadian-Cuban concert, or quebecois-holguín concert, which was followed by the local band of Andy Clay, to finally close the day with Moneda Dura Saturday early in the morning.

This was a bright ending to seven days of intense artistic events, from different manifestations, with people coming from all over Cuba and from different parts of the world. Holguín rejoices and keeps alive the hope of holding an International Festival of Artistic Youths within the already famous May Pilgrimage.

Ludwig Van Beethoven Visits Holguín

Text and photos: Amauris Betancourt.

Beethoven, German musical genius, goes into the cultural history of Holguín with the interpretation of his Ninth Symphony last May 6^th just one hour before midnight, in the Mayor General Calixto García Revolution Square.

”It is the third time the piece is played n Cuba, and the first time outdoors”, said Maestro Enrique Perez Mesa, director of the National Symphonic Orquestra (OSN), invited to Holguín to conduct the Holguín Symphonic Orquestra. “It was played last when the Havana Book Fair was devoted to Germany”, added Pérez Mesa.

The execution, done purposely in the eve of its 185^th anniversary when it was premiered in the Vienese Imperial Court, Austria; on may 7, 1824, renders a homage to Beethoven whose musical piece was taken as the official background of the May Pilgrimage celebrated yearly in Holguín.

Singers Maria Dolores Rodriguez, Norkristian Garcia, Marcos Lima and Rigoberto Lopez, the Orfeon Holguin and the Rodrigo Prats Lyrical Theater choirs, along with music students, were praised by the public and by Pérez Mesa who accepted conducting the most important fact from the 16^th May Pilgrimages.

According to Frank Fernandez, “We must feel honored of belonging to a province that has the courage and the cultural capacity of playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

He also appreciated "the effort and the result of playing for the first time in Holguín a work that is the most complex of all musical works ever composed, which demands many resources and good acoustics, but local musicians dared to play it outdoors so that Beethoven could be connected to this so popular, so dear and so famous May Pilgrimage Festival.

Cuba in the Lens of Bernd Harnisch

By Amauris Betancourt. amauris@radioangulo.icrt.cu

(May. 06) The portrait made a very important contribution to popularizing photography, born in Europe during the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Portraits were not precisely the first images made, but they had much to do with bringing this new technique closer to the people due to its high demand based on reflecting a real image and not a recreated one as in painting.

Making portraits is an art indeed. The first famous photographers devoted to it as such, but based on pictorial compositions to give it aesthetic, a category limited only to painting. This way the portraitist, and the corresponding gender, is the most prolific activity in the art history of the lens.

Then exhibiting portraits and revealing a new thing is quite difficult, but not impossible. Bernd Harnisch, a German photographer living in Holland, comes to Cuba, attracted by the 2009 May Pilgrimage, to show "People and Landscapes" in a photographic proposal going beyond candor.

Harnisch doesn't make things too complicated with deliberate compositions. He is devoted to taking pictures and does without conventions; however, he achieves an aesthetic recompense because he unveils Cuba with psychological and aesthetic tact from the view of a foreigner, not as a tourist that who comes just for pleasure, because Harnisch doesn't only make the picture, he writes rather a story and later hangs the picture. He first looks for the empathy of the photographic technique, and above all, readings in between, he comes closer to the topic.

He takes pictures of people and landscapes, and then backs his photos with brief, interesting stories, direct and allusive; and without maybe intending so, he gets close to Cuban idiosyncrasy. The reward comes in close-ups whose creativity relies on photographing beyond the physical image of a face.

The author of "People and Landscapes" rides on his bicycle all over the country, from Guantánamo to Havana, attentive to the daily thing that may go by unnoticed to a local photographer. He recreates this way a social history through that image of a "Hotel left in ruins," a reminiscence of Cuban colonial architecture, capitalist in service; or that "Stairway" kind of copy of opulence. Or the beautiful colonial village of "Gibara" in its ordinary social landscape. He doesn't leave out Cuban music seen in a "Rapper in Holguín," and jumps to sport in the "Maybe the best black Latin-American chess player," taken out of the streets of Santiago de Cuba, who he has not been able to defeat in a match.

Bernd Harnisch includes the "Curious neighbor, and "The "Family that welcomed me when there was no hotel for me to spend the night, or the "The helpful office worker who told him where to fix the tire of his bicycle", as well as the "Solicitous Salesperson" and the "Children."

Harnisch portraits in a singular way and maks justice to the Island he loves.

The Value of the Image Made Word

By Alfonso of the Rosary and Betsy Cintra Friday May 08, 2009 alfonso@telecristal.icrt.cu

Photos: Kaloian Santos Cabrera.

(May. 08) The possible, talked-over and many times established dichotomies between journalism and literature are swept away with a flash-light by Kaloian Santos Cabrera in his exhibit “50 times Cuba”.

Forged the way of the daily newspaper Juventud Rebelde, he has known how to look for the short-lived in what is relevant, and the transcendent in everyday life.Kaloian comes to be that sort of rare avis's in journalism, since his words have also the graphic support, with a master complicity who makes sure an image is worth a thousand words.

The ones doing journalism, including those of the audiovisual world, can hardly notice the borders and the lack of visual perspective, while making the news. But Kaloian finds the significance in what the visible, in what is evident, but tinged in an aesthetic way.

Cuban flags play the lead role in different circumstances found by this photographer-journalist, with a prominence that surpasses lances, parades or crowded concentrations.

It is not common to find symbolism associated to a flag attenuated by ideology or history. Cuban idiosincracy emerges in the shape of banners, hanged from the necks of elementary-school students, in taxi bikes, in a simple chipped wall or linked to that so remote sea and protector.

Thousands of words would be able to enclose, perhaps, the intention to define those colors that stay in our idiosyncrasy, but fifty pictures go father, to the nourishing nation's confluence, where Cubans took shelter for the sake of the ones we loved.

The flag Cuban, despite epoch or country, has its own history. And backing all of us, we may not see it sometimes, but it will never slip by unnoticed. It has such an important history not to be seen and its simplicity is a true transparency translated in an obliged reverence.

Kaloian achieves his purpose highlighting one more time that essential things exist.

50 Times Cuba in May Pilgrimage

Written by Lydia Esther Ochoa / Wednesday, 06 May 2009 / lydiaesther@radioangulo.icrt.cu

Photos: Amauris Betancourt.

Kaloian Santos Cabrera.

(May 06) Among the photo exhibitions during the May Pilgrimage in Holguín, "50 times Cuba" by Kaloian Santos Cabrera stands out.

The exhibit is on disposal to the audience at the UNEAC building, about which Santos Cabrera said that "The idea of organizing an exhibition on the theme came out spontaneously".

“One day while organizing my files I met several pictures from different times where the Cuban flag was the main character. Then the idea of having a photo-essay on our national symbol emerged," added Kaloian.
He explained that "50 times Cuba" is a homage to the fifty years of the Cuban Revolution and that he chose each of the pictures from his archive though the missing ones were made shortly after his decision to expose. Fortunately I found them all but it became kind of an obsession till the last printing moment for the exhibition’s opening day when more photos with the Cuban flags continued to appear," asserted the lens artist.

He took into account similar exhibitions on the topic in the early days of the Cuban Revolution, in the 70’s and in the 80’s, and realized the zeal was challenging. His view as a young artist of these times would be the new thing for the exhibition to be added.
Kaloian’s photos do not only pay homage to the Cuban flag, but also expresses his cultural identity as a young man. That is why, you could see a picture of a child drawing our flag on the street or very big flags in a young people’s parade. He does not forget Cuban flags hanging out the balconies; those ones waving next to Jose Marti’s busts in the country’s schools, neither those present in people’s daily life, in cultural and sport events, where it has a more precise meaning of identity.

Leandro Estupiñan, young journalist and writer, presented the exhibit.

Kaloian Santos Cabrera graduated recently from journalism and has become a peculiar photo reporter. When writing he keeps in mind the look of the artist lens that burbles inside him and when taking a picture then it reins in him the ideas of a journalist.

May Pilgrimage, Holguín 2009

By Amauris Betancourt.

This yearly cutural event headed by the Ministry of Culture in Holguín and sponsored by the Saíz Brothers Association (AHS), brings togehther musicians, theater actors and actresses, investigators, dancers, writers, painters, and cultural promoters from all over the world, to Holguín streets to celebrate a Festival of Tradition and Modernity in the third capital of the Island.

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