Trovadoras

In my own words

The interview as a journalistic genre, an eternal debt to my teacher, Professor Miriam Rodríguez, has always been close to my heart. Besides being the ideal vehicle for first-hand information in research, it is a special way of carrying ideas straight from their source. For this book I had the good fortune of interviewing several of the leading women of Cuban trova. Some through electronic means. Others, like Sara González, Liuba María Hevia, Marta Campos, Niuska Miniet and Teresita Fernández, face to face. The interviews with the wise and good Lino Betancourt and with the brilliant Isabel Moya were, just as much, great gifts and great lessons.

On those occasions an interview almost always leaves behind (even when it goes badly, which did not happen here) more spiritual and human gain, more knowledge and depth, than what is finally published, however hard one tries to put every nuance into the written portrait. In any case, Trovadoras was a book that brought me closer to gender theory, a field still undervalued but very useful, and to the work of Cuban women troubadours. That door remains ajar, and could one day be a valuable source for new studies and research.

It was also a book of mixed feelings. On one side, it brought the joy of an offer to publish, a story I tell further on, in my own words on another of my titles. It also brought some editorial and professional anguish, which is part of the apprenticeship this journey of writing demands. And it left precious memories. Like the first copy, which reached my hands carried by a loving messenger. Like the chance to bring together, in the same creative act, the cover illustration by Ramón Eduardo Haití and the photographs by Alain Gutiérrez Almeida, two friends who are brothers to me in all but blood.

A curious detail, for biographers or plain gossips. A copy of this book lies among the many offerings, payments and gifts that reach the altar of the Patroness of Cuba, the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, in Santiago de Cuba. A trip to the Pepe Sánchez Trova Festival led the author to leave his work there, which I think is the best offering a writer can make, and to ask, while he was at it, for blessings for himself and for the two friends who left their valuable help and their talent in that volume.

ALS

Press

• Interviews and reviews in the Cuban press of the time; the links are being traced and will be added here.