HOW GOOD YOU DANCE

Interviewing Faisel Iglesias in relations to his newly published book "How good you dance".

By: Luis G. Montoro

In your stories, as in the past, the fundamental literary recourse is the poetic image. Why than do you write prose?

I write stories because i am a poet. When a writer has a story, when you have to invent a great lie to say a small truth, without any other recourse but, like the parabolas of Christ, prove it with the same words, undoubtedly is necessary the poetic illumination.

The protagonist of How good you dance are Benny Moré and the key, But it seems to me a pretext for an end, talking about the cuban music...

The fundamental contribution of Cuba to the universal culture, according to how i see it, is in the music. But, not even those who copy it and who rob it - because unfortunatedly it also has to do with this - I do not understand what has to do with the phenomenon of the cuban music.

I consider it a result of a long process of transliterature.

Yes. During the process of formation of the cuban nation two process occured of important transculture. First, Cuba was the first producer of sugar in the world, when sugar was for the world market what is today petroleum. So as the owners of the sugar plantations in Cuba where more richer than the rich of the metropolis. This would permit them in buying slaves selected from different tribes of Africa. So that in any flat land of Cuba you could find a cross of races and african cultures. They brought, with their chains, the memory of the culture, of their music. And in the large huts they would meet with other slaves who came from other tribes. There than would occure another reality and would evolve into a new african intruments... Which where instruments from the music which evolved from Cuba. The other process of transcendent transculture was produced when those negroes where stationed at the ports of Habana in the slave galley, wonderers, and indians from the new world and people of all classes, essentialy from the south of Spain, which is one of the most riches in the world in the musical field. In the moments of recreation, when the drums of the negroes where starting to rumble, the whites of the ports would find it annoying and tried to stop it by hidding it in the palms at first, and later, with the pegs - the screws which where used to hold together the wood of the ship - which after a paciently carved it to become the key of the cuban music, which borded the rhythm and leave a space to embrace the melodies.

What i understand is that the cuban music has a rhythmic melody and surprising medody.

This is the tricky part of the cuban music. Hide the time, embrace the melody. Utilize the instruments of percussion to adorn . The melodious intruments to make the rumble beat. - to be continued -