"Throughout my childhood and teenage years growing up in 80s Cuba, Fidel Castro's presence, and the overt influence of politics, was everywhere on posters, on walls, in speeches that could last four hours at a stretch. The sense of being hemmed in, politically and personally, was hard to escape. I had been raised to believe in communism, and for a long time I did."
"When I was 13, my first girlfriend's father, a sailor, brought back LPs from abroad. Through those records, I discovered rock'n'roll. In Cuba at the time, that was no small thing. Western music arrived years late, passed hand to hand through a black market of cassette tapes copied and recopied. It wasn't without risk: I know people who went to jail just for listening to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones"
"By the time I reached my fourth year of secondary school, music had become an obsession. Four or five of us made an unspoken pact to seek it out wherever we could. We held listening sessions in each other's homes and gathered at an arts centre every Saturday night, where local bands played or taped rock blared from speakers. It wasn't without risk: I know people who went to jail just for listening to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones."
Fidel Castro's pervasive political presence in 1980s Cuba created an atmosphere of confinement that shaped daily life and behavior. The narrator was raised to believe in communism, applied twice to join the Young Communist League, and was rejected for not being combative enough, a euphemism for not informing on others. Friends were expelled or jailed for speaking freely, and family ties to the military and police required caution. Smuggled LPs introduced rock'n'roll at age 13, and Western music circulated via a black-market cassette network. By secondary school, a small group of friends obsessively sought out music through secret listening sessions and arts-centre gatherings despite real risk.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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