• Submitted by: admin
• national
• Personalities
• 05 / 19 / 2010

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"If we don't change, they are going to change us," Mr. Rodriguez wrote in response to written questions from the Associated Press, "and that's not what I want to happen to my country." (Associated Press)

 HAVANA | Three decades after he last played New York, Cuban legend Silvio Rodriguez is headed to Carnegie Hall, at a moment when he and other celebrated island folk singers are raising unusually open questions about their country's system.

Mr. Rodriguez, now 63, has been a sort of folk-song poet laureate of Fidel Castro's revolution in recent years, performing at important official events and even serving in Cuba's parliament for a time, though many admire him most for his poignant lyrics and haunting melodies.

Mr. Rodriguez is still firmly on the side of the socialist system Mr. Castro built, but his latest album suggests there need to be adjustments if it is going to survive.

"Against disenchantment, offer hope," he sings on the album "Segunda Cita," or "Second Date," which was released in March. "Overcome the 'r' in revolution," the song goes — alluding to the uprising that took Mr. Castro to power on New Year's Day 1959, and to almost everything in Cuba that has happened since.

"If we don't change, they are going to change us," Mr. Rodriguez wrote in response to written questions from the Associated Press, "and that's not what I want to happen to my country."

He added that, "I hope evolution takes us, as the angel in the song says, right up to the crossroads where we made the wrong decision and we rectify that."

It's light criticism by any measure — and Mr. Rodriguez has been coy when asked to shed light on what he meant.

He also read a statement defending the Cuban government — but did not sing — during a recent "Concert for the Homeland" in Havana.

And he plunged into an unusual, public debate with one of the Castro government's fiercest critics, Carlos Alberto Montaner — that nonetheless raised eyebrows in Cuba and abroad for the mere fact that Mr. Rodriguez would reply to the dissident.

Cuba's official media describes Mr. Montaner as a CIA agent.

By Anne-Marie Garcia and Will Weissert ASSOCIATED PRESS

Source: www.washingtontimes.com/