Official “Boya Vista Social Club” A little more than six years ago. But if the watch started when the Cuban group music leaked for the first time in his soul, he would have wrapped it for decades. Like many Cuban and American Cuban, the silk spelling of the band member Ibrahim Ferrir and the incomparable rhythm from “Candela”, was through the living room of his grandparents and in his adolescent ears. For him, the album was a bond not only for Cuba, but to each other: “My grandfather is a lot of musicians as I was,” says Ramirez. “We have been linked in the same way that two teenagers will make, open epic notes and say:” Look at these words, look at these things. “
The new musician, the electrical, started in an open race at the Shunfield Theater in Broadway on March 19, and followed the origins of the Cuban Music Collection, which rose to international fame after their success called. Grammy Award 1997 album And 1999 WIM WENDERS Documentary Film Of the same name. The creative exhibition team is proud of equal proportions with the same band, including the Tony nominated director Salim AliTwo times, Tony’s winner Justin Beck ( (“” “Illinois“” “Carosil) And the co -designer Patricia Deljado The Tony Orn Wolf Prize Prize producer (“Visit the band,” “Once”).
The show is revealed through the schedule, and the exhibition follows the Cuban musicians in the Golden Age as they move in the separate social scene of the Wavana at the beginning of the Cuban revolution, and after 40 years during the twilight years while they were heading towards the Carnegie Hall concert in the documentary. While all songs are carried out in the original Spanish language, the dialogue is completely in English.
“Now, you and I am a thousand miles away, talking completely different tongues, on a very A different island, “explains the character Juan de Marcos, inspired by His real counterpart. “But a voice like this?
Like musicians “Buena Vista”, Ramirez continued his dream thousands of miles away from the home, and his artistic endeavors carrying the son of Cuban immigrants from the first generation of his hometown to New York, where he studied writing at New York University and Jeldard. Before he was able to accept a master’s degree from the latter, he was again, this time to Los Angeles, where he joined the awards of the award -winning TV series, including “Sons of Chaos” and “Orange is the new black”. Recently, he held the position of presentation on “Dardevil” and “La Máquina”, and based on the multiple projects that he has contracted from the discussion, he discouraged his position as one of the most Hollywood tests in demand.
Currently, though, I and Ramirez are thousands of miles away from Los Angeles in a completely different city: New York City, where we cut the bread in MargonCounter Count Cuban, two buildings from the theater of the show on Street 45. Our conversation lasted only 15 minutes before Ramirez was called to the stage for a creative discussion at the last minute about his appearance in Broadway. Therefore, like “Buena Vista” members, we also took our display on the road, via Times Square, finally ended in a nearby bar. After all, a conversation like this, only a few days before the opening night? He tends to travel.
I grew up with this music. What does this music mean to you now?
I think it is totally related to honoring what happened before us and also – we live in a world fascinated by what is new and what is young. Music is the only place where they really respect the age of the machine. When the laptops ranged, it is thrown away. But in the world of music, it resembles, “This violin is 100 years old. This piano is 200 years old.” Age is seen as a sign of quality because it endured.
Marco Ramirez speaks with the Times at Lunch in Margon, New York City.
(Nicholas Ducity, Los Angeles Times)
I am Cuban. You are Kobe. We grew up with this music. When I started working in this show, did you feel any concern or nervousness about hunting a cloak – I don’t know – our entire Cuban identity?
I felt responsible for music. When a child was born and grew up in Miami – Cuba was a place from which music came. That was my first real relationship with the island and that culture.
So I felt as a fool of music throughout this process. … I felt a little like Indiana Jones running through a temple where a lot of things are thrown on you and you are just trying to save the beautiful thing because you love, “This belongs to a museum.” This is me. I really feel this music with enthusiasm.
Can you take us during the first days? How I felt when I heard for the first time [the project]?
Yes, it was immediate. It was as if I were on a “family hostility” and asked the question and I was like, MotherOn the bell. A commercial product named Orine Wolf He approached me, and made a called called “Visit the band” In Broadway, which was very successful, very beautiful and very influential. He said, “I love this music. I am not talking to Spanish, but I think there is a theatrical project here. Can we start talking about it?” My response was “yes” in all hats. From that point onwards, we were in Lockstep and we were walking together on this trip. We went to Cuba several times. we He met a lot of musicians. We went to Mexico to meet some of the families of the musicians who lived there. We were a kind of overcoming the globe and really felt protection from this music. We did it together.
Marco Ramirez speaks with the Los Angeles Times correspondent Nicholas Ducity and his friend Franky J. Alvarez is outside the Gerald Shongfield theater in New York City
(Nicholas Ducity, Los Angeles Times)
One of the lines that jumped in my face is when YOung Haydee tells her sister Amara [Portuondo]Basically, “We have this possible deal with Capitol records, and we need to leave the island. There is this whole future in front of us if we jump and say yes to this.” when –
(Laughs) This is actually better than the line.
Ha, thanks. When you are in the first university stage, before you reserve a single professional job as a writer, what did you see your future? What do you hope to reveal?
Broadway was not anywhere in the picture, but I thought, “I want to write plays. I want to produce or produce them myself,” which we did. For strange and arbitrary reasons, I told myself, “When I am 40 years old, I can write the TV.” It was like a strange base. He loves, “[writing for television] It is something that 40 -year -old people do. ”But at the age of 18 and 19, all that I was trying to do is get two of my plays that I would do.
What did you leave to do? I think this means that it has ended for you.
I really hope that next year will be traded to Miami Heat.
Early of the play, when Juan de Marcus tries to get it [legendary Cuban singer] architecture [Portuondo] To record the album, this very amazing monologue delivers: “This record, the record I did after that, and the other after that … they changed my life. They are the reason I went to the music institute. They are why I got a doctorate.” Who was for you Amra Burtondu?
Somehow, I am talking to [“Buena Vista Social Club”] Register, to the legacy of this record. For me, this record was the high watermark of what music could do … and to prove that Cuban compositions belong next to Beethoven. In some aspects, this has become a kind of crowd of the crowd from the entire piece: We just want to struggle for some space and some respect …. Like, when did the Mount of Rashmour suddenly become Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Rashmannov – all other names that we know? Who says that there are no other people from other places, from other continents who deserve to be considered legally among the best music that has been done at all? … I really really feel this way about some of these structures. They are all. All the tunes there are with the most beautiful melodies that were made at all.
The writer “Buena Vista Social Club” Marco Ramirez speaks with the leader of the true Cuban Life Squad Juan de Marcos in the first show revenue.
(Andy Henderson / Buena Vista Social Club on Broadway)
Near the end of the play, like compay [Segundo]She writes: “These songs that you love a lot. They are everything about sorrow, about longing … but it is not beautiful because we wrote it this way … it’s beautiful … because we lived it.” As an American Cuban from Miami myself, as you, there is a distance, both geography and time, between the life in which I lived, was born and brought up in Miami, the life they lived in, and they were born in Cuba. How did you close this distance?
I think the first step was the recognition of my privilege, but also that my living experience was never the experience of a person born, raised and lived in Cuba. I get to know the Cuban America, and get to know a Cuban culturally, but I have no living experience as people who lived both joys and sorrows.
Part of that is what made the visit [Cuba] So, very insisting. Just there and interact with many people who did not leave the island. But in fact, it is just an attempt to live the point of view of these artists who were born, grew up and died there and what it should feel for them, in order for the outside world to look at their music and say, “Oh my God, it is very beautiful. Everything is full of strange flavor and is very romantic.” But in order not to fully understand the level of suffering that entered into writing songs, and the level of suffering that entered into the performance, even just suffering the practice to be able to play like Liu [Reyna]Pianoist, or Renicito [Avich]Our king Teaching The player – the hours he spent alone in a room with a tool to be able to single in a huge way and like Jimi Hendrix of Teaching. This is a lot of work heart pain and sacrifice. There were many parties that these men did not go until today the party.
Marco Ramirez offers with his grandfather Felix Delgado
(Marco Ramirez)
In that memo, sadness and hardship now unfortunately became an integral part of the Cuban condition, but the offer is also funny. Many laughter comes out of some of the sudden moments of the show. Was that intended?
I don’t think it was an active option. I don’t think I was able to do this without comedy. I think my experience in Cuban culture was largely the experience of Cuban comedy. Whether this is the tradition of telling stories in my uncle tells a joke on the table, my aunt, my mother, or my grandmother says a joke. Especially, I think, when the songs are very heavy and go away from sorrow. Not all of them, but many of them are very heavy and about sorrow. It seems as if they were either a sorrow or they are about sex. It was about a budget.
What drives you to write?
Oh, my God. I am not good in anything else, Nick. I am not sure that I am good at this … What is the question? “What drives you to write?” I do not know … I mainly believe in the power of telling stories and stories, whether it is theater, films, books, or not. It is a way to understand the world, and I believe in this as an artistic form. Just as he believes in Santa Claus.
How does it finally seem to reach this point where you cannot touch it anymore? It is outside your hands and this is the scenario that will go in black and white forever?
A lot of treatment and a lot of meditation will help me reach next week. … I really hope people would love it. I am proud of that. More importantly, it was a lot of fun.
Thank you for your time. My father comes to see him tonight for the second time. Thank you for restoring old spirits.
Thank you for the chicken dignity Margon. They were delicious.
