I have always liked music, and it has been an important part of my life. Since I was in ninth grade, I started to create choreographies and thus, my passion for music and its rhythm began to increase.
I was born in a small neighborhood called Lawton in Havana, Cuba. My family is from Cuba, though I have heard that some of my ancestors were from Spain. When I was a child, there were two different types of music that I remember hearing: music played at my house, and music played at my grandparents’ house. In my house, my parents listened to the music of Jose Jose, Roberto Carlos, the Rolling Stones, ABBA, Los Mustang, etc. On the other hand, my grandparents listened to the music of Barbarito Diez, Orquesta Aragon, and Radio Enciclopedia (a station devoted to classical music).
When I was around eight years old, I went to the piano lessons offered at my school. However, I do not remember how much time I spent at the lessons or why I stopped going to them. I do know I would like to be able to play piano.
When I was in ninth grade, I started a small rap group called “O positivo,” named in honor to the blood type O+ that, as far as I know, is one of the most useful and requested blood type because it can be used in any patient as a transfusion. The other members of “O positivo” were a friend from my classroom and my brother, who is two years older than me. In the group, we did not compose music using instruments; instead, we created music backgrounds using computers before we added lyrics to it. Although I have never been called a good singer, I mostly was the one who rapped. The lyrics praised students that were engaged with school and criticized the ones that were doing the contrary. In addition, in our presentations we included gymnastic and juggling on bicycles.
My musical tastes have changed over time. When I was in high school, the music that I liked was mostly songs I could dance to. During this time, I designed choreographies and continued with the group “O positivo,” but this time our group did not sing. Instead, we only danced. That is the reason why disco and sala were my favorite types of music. For example, I liked the Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, and the Cuban groups called Van Van and Charanga Habanera.
However, all of those songs have something in common: their lyrics are not well elaborated in the sense that they are created merely to entertain and dance. That is the reason why I started listening to music such as Buena Fe, Ricardo Arjona, Silvio Rodriguez. Although I am aware that there are many classifications for music, by that time I decided to separate the music I liked into two categories: music for dancing and music for listening. The category for dancing is merely any music that I can enjoy dancing to, but such music does necessarily have to contain elaborated lyrics - in fact, it can go without them. The music for listening is either instrumental or has lyrics with a philosophical content.
Nowadays, I prefer the music that I classify as “for listening” but with profound lyrics because I enjoy to spend time analyzing and relating them with my routines and experiences. My favorite group is a Cuban band called Buena Fe. The band’s music is a mix of trova and pop, and their lyrics are deep thoughts about love, politics, culture, and so on.
It is difficult for me to define what distinguishes good music from bad music. I would say that I distinguish good music from bad music by their lyrics in addition to the moods and satisfaction they evoke in me. For example, I do not like reggaeton because their lyrics are vulgar most of the time. Similarly, I like the band called Buena Fe because their songs’ lyrics are profound and worthy of analysis and debate. Between Beethoven’s compositions and John Cage’s compositions, I would say that Beethoven created good music and the compositions of Cage are bad music. Beethoven’s music can make me feel sad or happy and simply change my mood in general, while Cage’s music does not inspire me or make me feel satisfied. Nevertheless, since my knowledge of music is very limited, I know I could be underestimating the works of John Cage.
Music is a frustrated passion that I have. I am the type of person that enjoys singing in the shower even though I am not very talented; the type of person that likes to dance but has no rhythm; that would like to play an instrument but does not have a clue on how to do it. I am not sure if I could someday learn to sing, but I know that eventually I will learn to play piano and possibly even the cello. I hope that through this class I can enter the world of music.