Les Voix Humaines Festival, an Embrace of Culture

The magical event is a peace proposal and a call to care for the planet

Written by Ortelio Rodríguez Alba

Voices of the World, Les Voix humaines, has been a memorable presentation for Cuban culture. Not only have we had the opportunity to enjoy first-hand, excellent voices consecrated in the arts. We also attended a festival where art has been the highest bastion and the audience the absolute winner.

Indeed, the Les Voix humaines Festival, a new production of the office of Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, takes its title from the program maestro Jordi Savall has taken around the world. On this occasion, we witnessed in Havana an event rich in diversity and inclusive of alternative concepts for the inclusion of trends and genres. And there converged equidistant aesthetics: classical, contemporary, jazz, flamenco, pop, fusion, among so many mixtures making classification impossible.

However, a common axis seems to invole all: the voices of interpreters, sometimes deployed in unexplainable tessituras while in others by the unique sound of amazing musical instruments. With such support has been woven a web of symbols, stories and actions that sum up the spirit of the country their makers belong to, and always leave a half-open door for the universal echo.

We have witnessed with admiration dream interpreters like Dulce Pontes, the voice of Portugal, who through her powerful voice and stunning records delighted lovers of Portuguese fado and folklore. Besides her, tributes paid by home artists to global voices, like Sinatra and Benny penetrated deep into the public. In this regard, the concert by Augusto Enriquez that many could enjoy through Cuban television was uplifting.

But Les Voix humaines has had a greater benefit, in my opinion. It is the discovery of a world that seems known and often tends to surprise us with unexpected findings. Musicians from Senegal with Mexican performers, occasional duets like UK tenor John Potter, with Ariel Abramovich, lutenist from Argentina, offered clues about a universe of musical references where encounters between cultures do nothing but reveal the underground unity of art, regardless of geographies, philosophies and faiths. This fact seems all the more remarkable in events of this nature.

I would like very much to talk about the amazing and delicious moments shared with guests at a festival like Las Voces Humanas. There would be so many people to thank for it, that I prefer to lock these memories on a plural man who synthesizes the Cuban essence, intellectual commitment and loyalty: Leo Brouwer.

Thank you Maestro for this adventure: uniting the voices and the echoes of music and humanity in eternity.