21 Dec, 2009
Finally, Cuba celebrates with Kool and the Gang
Posted by: admin In: Around Beijing| News
HAVANA – No record store here has ever sold their music, and before Sunday, no one in the country had ever seen the band live. Yet for 40 years Cubans have loved Kool and the Gang, seemingly unconditionally.
Cuba filmmaker Gloria Rolando said the band’s funky sound provided the soundtrack for her generation’s coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s. And even though there was a brief period in the 1960s when the government banned American music, Rolando remembers K&G’s music “playing everywhere.”
“It was a period of time that we didn’t listen openly, in public, but the people never stopped listening to good American music. There were always underground ways.”
She recalls exercising at home to K&G and dancing to the music at teen parties. “The music made you happy when you were down, told you to celebrate life,” Rolando said.
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