Popular! reviewed by Peter Watrous - Critic for the New York Times

Review by Peter Watrous

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David Calzado Y Su Charanga Habanera
Popular! DVD

Directed by Jennifer Paz
released 2006 (JenPaz Films)
75 minutes. Additional 14 min. bonus material

Finally, a well-shot, mostly well thought-out documentary on Cuban music, the sort of work that can be used to explain what all the fuss is about. Using the hugely popular, and hugely controversial, and hugely talented Charanga Habanera, as a guide, the documentary takes on some of the biggest themes in Cuban music and in popular culture and music, going in and nosing around subjects that are often overlooked, politically risky for us from the left.

The film follows the band around, moving to Japan for a show, then catching them at fancy concerts, and at workers parties, government gigs for workers — in this case construction workers in the foreigner only resort area of Varadero. The music is often stunning; Jennifer Paz, the director, has shot the band professionally (though the sound isn’t always up to the visuals), and all the band’s routines are clearly delineated, the rhythm and blues dance moves, the intro routines, the breaks where the band draws big women up and makes them shake their, well, you know.

The audience is shot lovingly as well, with pans across acres of young woman fans who are clearly turning to jelly over the lead singers the band uses with the aplomb of any boy band; and by the way, Charanga Habanera owes a bunch to American boy bands, despite how deadly their funk can be.

A select group of people are interviewed, from people in the street to musicians Juan De Marcos and Chucho Valdes, both of whom might as well be delivering prewritten speeches. The film makers follow the band to their rehearsal space in an area of deep poverty, shacks on the outskirts of Havana — Calzado, an immensely intelligent, and for Cuba, well-traveled man, calls the neighborhood the Cuban version of the Bronx; remember, Rudy Calzado was a relative of his.

And the filmmakers use a few conceits to form a narrative backbone in the documentary. For one, they use the song Soy Cubano, Soy Popular as a key to open the door on the Cuban debate. The film records the band singing the song several times in different places, with the lead singer El Boni — who leaves the band half way through the documentary — singing about being broke but popular. It seems like everyone on the island knows the song, its works, and their coded meanings.

Now, money and being broke are political subjects in Cuba, and like many of Charanga’s songs, which deal with street realities, i.e. sex, money, foreigners, and the ball that bounces ferociously between the three, Soy Cubano, Soy Popular brings up the issue of loyalty to the communist cause, and decides that being popular is ok, maybe. One shot has El Boni talking, in front of the audience, about his credit cards; he whips one out, even though it’s illegal to have one.

Money is a big deal in Cuba, it means power and illegality. And Charanga has all the trappings, wandering through the streets in, for the place, fancy cars, with women all over the musicians, and access to foreign culture and foreigners. Finally though, all of this gets them only so far, and the film returns to the idea that their popularity is what allows them pride. It’s an interesting, not totally convincing observation, given the band’s fixation with moolah.

And popular the musicians are; you can see the crowds mouthing the lyrics to the songs, and girls scream about which of the lead singers they like the most. Calzado, interviewed regularly, talks about all the street terms he uses in the songs, from temba to others. He’s letting us in on the relationship music in Cuba has with the street, the language that goes along with the space in Cuba which is the most free, where prostitution, and drugs and ecstasy all work together to create a sort of freedom that is rarely found in the society. The documentary also touches on the government’s ban of the band for various reasons, one of the constant attempts to shut down music as a place of abandon.

But the documentary works ultimately as a music show, and Charanga comes off pretty damn well, at times a bit boy band-ish. At shows where the musicians aren’t all dressed up, in front of an understanding audience, the band produces dance music at it’s communicative, absolving, best. Dance music can be a dismissive term, but the documentary lets us know that in Cuba, it’s a term that is so complicated, so intertwined with culture and politics, that one poor documentary — as good as this one is — can only cover a chip of the immense mountain that is music in Cuba.