Close to the Edge Read Free Page A

historic Plaza de la Revolución. We descended a series of marble stairs to the entrance, where we paid—yet again—five pesos each and then made our way into the club. Like most other venues struggling to survive the economic crisis, Café Cantante had to reorient itself toward a tourist market. Evening concerts that showcased top Cuban bands such as NG La Banda and Irakere cost upward of $25 per ticket, almost twice the monthly salary of a Cuban. The afternoons were when young Cubans had a chance to use the space, for rap or rock concerts.
    â€œRespect! All crew, all massive, everywhere in the world / You practice the art of hip hop / This goes out to every boy and every girl.” Ariel Fernández, aka DJ Asho, was spinning, and the cramped space vibrated with the booming voice of KRS-One. At a table by the front of the crowded room sat a tall stick-thin guy and a reticent young black woman with springy brass-colored hair. Pablo introduced them as Alexey Rodríguez and Magia López, a husband-wife rap duo known as Obsesión.
    â€œÂ¿Voy a cantar?” I asked Magia in my beginner's Spanish, misconjugating my verbs so that I was requesting to sing rather than asking if they would be singing, as I'd intended. “Si, un momento.” She conferred with someone at the back and then came back to announce that I had been added to the afternoon's lineup. Oh, shit! I tried to explain the mix-up but to no avail.
    On stage first was Instinto, the all-female trio extraordinaire. The women were dressed in low-cut and clingy outfits and high heels. As the salsa beat kicked in from the DJ booth, they gyrated their hips in a choreographed routine. The young men in the audience went wild. The divas onstage rapped in lyrical prose, spun on their heels, and sang in three-part harmony. This was the Cuban-streets-meet-high-brow-classical-training at Havana's Instituto Superior de Arte. There was no way I could match a performance like this. Was it too late to get out of it?
    Then the next act was being introduced, a Portuguese rapper from India. Heads, including my own, turned in anticipation of this exotic wonder until I realized they were talking about me. Too late. I smoothed down my blue jeans and hesitantly edged onto the stage. I had no slinky dress. I had no background beat. And, worst of all, I was performing solo. If there was an unspoken rule among Cuban rappers, it was that you always perform with one or more others—you never brave the stage alone. I could feel the collective gasp of shock as I came onto the stage—by myself.
    I decided to sing one of my new pieces, “Woman Find.” The fast and scatlike rhymes were inspired by the jazz-hip hop fusion style of the LA-based rap group Freestyle Fellowship. I realized I would be totally incomprehensible to a Cuban audience. The song was a militant tract about women breaking beyond stereo-types and finding a voice in society. As I sang the chorus, “We'll no more believe when they tell us we're free,” Alexey and some others added improvised timbals with a spoon on the side of a glass. There were a few cheers and some scattered clapping when I finished. I figured that somehow, despite the language barriers, maybe the song had resonated among some people. As I walked down off the stage and back to my seat, I felt hands on my arm. “Que linda.” “Que guapa.” I was being surrounded by young men who liked my pretty song.
    I sighed, deflated, and took my seat. “That was alright,” said Pablo, leaning over from his seat. “Maybe I can produce some music for you.”
    P ablo lived in Santos Suárez, a formerly middle-class area in the southern part of the city now occupied by working-class blacks. It wasn't until my next trip to Cuba, after spending a year and a half at grad school in Chicago, that I finally made it to Pablo's place. I was curious about how rap music graduated from barrios like Almendares