• Submitted by: manso
• Arts and Culture
• 09 / 28 / 2010

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The Ibero-American Center of Decima and the Improvised Verse celebrates, this September, its first decade of history. That institution constitutes now the house of all poet-repentista, lute players, tres-guitar players, writers, tonada singers, and other artists whose connecting bridge is the oral and written decimal.
 
Founded on September 20, 2000 the Center has contributed to the study, investigation, and promotion of that way of poetic expression in Cuba, as part of the large spectrum that integrate the Spanish-speaking countries of America and Europe.   
 
The Ibero-American Center of Decima and the Improvised Verse has attained excellent results in the motivating children in the art of the written and oral poetry in ten rhymed verses, through the project of Specialized Workshops of Children Repentismo. These workshops were created by the institution and are now spread throughout the whole country. The boys and girls practice and learn how to improvise verses. The classes are delivered by repentista poets. The children develop linguistic, memory, and poetic skills, while they are also educated in the knowledge of an important manifestation of the traditional popular culture.  
 
These new generations of Cuban repentismo demonstrate in croons, jam sessions, and other activities that the art of improvisation can be learned. These workshops were born from the methodology created by the well-known improviser poet, and writer Alexis Diaz-Pimienta, presented at the Cathedra of the Higher Institute of Art, in year 2000, the genesis of the Decima Center.   

Another of the institution’s lines of work has been the Strings Project (lute, tres-guitar, and guitar) "Raul Lima". This is how children and young have been trained in the difficult art of the accompaniment in the Punto Cubano, in which those instruments are essential.    

The Ibero-American Center of Decima and the Improvised Verse has also complied in these 10 years of history a significant documentation center that includes a sound archive with great controversies of all times; unpublished documents, pictures, and audiovisual materials.   

Among the Center’s objectives also appears to systematize the exchange among farmers and scholars of the Decima and the improvised verse, while encouraging encounters, festivals, seminars, editions of publications, and disks on that important expression of poetry.   

Hence in Cubadisco 2009 it received the Great Prize, in the category country music, the CD "Soy la Decima Guajira", an EGREM project with this institution. Together with “Colibri” record house they created a multimedia on the project of the Children Workshops.  

Celebrating the Center’s tenth anniversary, all the Thursdays of September, until September 23rd have been organized lectures and exhibitions of documentary films, at the House of Cultural Dawn, on Linea Street, in Vedado.  Also, through the month have been held encounters in the Decima Houses of Pinar del Rio, Guines, Limonar, and Las Tunas. There, students from Specialized Workshops of Repentismo and Strings have demonstrated their skills.

Finally, for Thursday September 30, at 3:00 p.m. at the headquarters of the Center, in 608 A Street, Vedado, a "Patio de los Poetas" very special is scheduled, with collaborators, poets, and repentista children from Guines, Madruga, and San Jose, in Havana province; Havana City; as well as in Consolacion del Sur.    
 
Decimal has been present in the written work of the best Cuban poets; in turn it has been very used by troubadours and music composers. The decimal is another expression of our cultural identity and the rich tradition of popular culture. For its preservation and diffusion works the Ibero-American Center of Decima and the Improvised Verse that after its ten years of having been created, is still in the search of what’s popular to find roots of the Cuban identity.
 
By: Maria del Carmen Vasallo

Cubasi Translation Staff