Music

Cubanismo in Portland

By Noah Bruce

According to Michael Wingfield, for a conga player, going to Cuba is “analogous to a person in Islam doing the Haj, going to Mecca.”

This past month, Wingfield, a Portland resident who plays congas and other percussion instruments in the band Cabíldo, made his pilgrimage and he took his eight millimeter camera with him. He plans to edit the two and a half hours of film he shot down to a “sumptuous 45 minute presentation,”parts of which will be shown this week at the Portland Public Library.

Wingfield chose December to make the trip so he could attend the Havana Jazz Festival hosted by Grammy winner Chucho Valdés. As part of the festival, Wingfield caught an Afro-Cuban Jazz show at the American Ambassador’s house, learned to dance a little salsa, and sat in on a rumba performance at a Cuban school.

“I was in the audience and they had this hip-hop rhythm going and some of the percussionists weren’t familiar with the rhythm,” he says. “So I was invited onstage and it was cool . . . It was jumping.”

In order to get to Havana, Wingfield flew out of Montreal to avoid the red-tape involved in securing a Cuban visa. The US currently has a trade embargo against Cuba and discourages citizens from visiting the country.

Wingfield was struck by the economic contrasts apparent in Havana “caused in part by the embargo.”

“You can be walking through Havana and see fantastic rehabilitated buildings next to hovels where squatters live,” he says.

He found the Cuban people “intense, friendly, and curious to know what is happening beyond their borders,” and did not feel the Cubans held animosity towards him because he was a “Norteamericano.”

Wingfield was almost able to put Fidel Castro in his movie.

“One night we were driving down the Malacon, a road that hugs the seashore, and there is a stone wall with waves crashing against it on tempestuous days,” says Wingfield. “I was filming the waves crashing, and just then a motorcade passes us. There were two motorcycle cops and two Mercedes Benzes, and so I knew it was Castro. I told the driver to speed up so I could film him. Instead the driver started slowing down. He said if you point that thing at him, the response will be very negative. I knew what that meant.”