- Tweeter
republish
After the kings of Spain, the Cuban capital receives from this Friday and throughout the weekend many personalities and heads of state. And on this anniversary of Havana, impossible not to talk about music and a particular singer, Gerardo Alfonso. He is the songwriter of what is today considered the hymn of Havana, and he will be performing Friday night and Saturday on the Malecon for the 500 years of his city.
With our correspondent in Havana, Domitille Piron
"Sabanas blancas" is the white linen, a symbol that Gerardo Alfonso chose in this song, written some twenty years ago, as a tribute to his hometown.
White sheets that are found drying and floating in the wind on the balconies of buildings with colonial facades.
This cliché of old Havana, one could almost say that Gerardo Alfonso saved it: " There was a decree-law, decree 27, which punished people who put their sheets to dry on the balconies, or who hung up clothes. pots of flowers above the porches or painted facades of a different color, but when I made this song she was so adopted by popular culture that putting her sheets on the balcony was released from punishment. "
→ Read also: The King of Spain returns to Cuba for the 500th anniversary of Havana
In this song, Gerardo Alfonso manages to tell 500 years of history of Havana: this city where the vestiges of the colonial era are mixed with modernism; and where patriotism rubs shoulders with the candidates at the start, who will then know the heartbreak of being removed from this unique city in the world.
" Havana has given me a lot of reasons to write songs," he says. Here there is a religious culture, artistic, architectural and these are aspects to which I identify. And it is also an eclectic city of a social point. "