BLONDIE
HAVANA AFFAIR
IN 2019, BLONDIE PLAYED AN HISTORIC SET OF GIGS IN COMMUNIST CUBA, SHORTLY BEFORE A GLOBAL LOCKDOWN PUT LIVE MUSIC ON HOLD INDEFINITELY. THE POP MILESTONE WAS CAPTURED IN A THRILLING NEW LIVE EP AND SHORT FILM, VIVIR EN LA HABANA – AND THERE IS A NEW STUDIO ALBUM ON THE WAY, TOO. DRUMMER CLEM BURKE AND FILM DIRECTOR ROB ROTH REVEAL ALL…
FELIX ROWE
Debbie Harry is still pushing boundaries – including taking Blondie to Havana for a set of historic live shows
You may recall from school history lessons that brief moment in 1962 when the world was balanced on a knife-edge as two nuclear superpowers – the United States and Soviet Russia – sat poised with fingers on buttons in a game of call my bluff. As The Four Seasons’ Sherry rocketed up the charts, a small island off the coast of America became the centre of a Cold War battle of ideology – possibly the closest we’ve ever got to full-scale Armageddon: the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“It was interesting to note, it’s not known by that in Cuba; it’s known as the American Missile Crisis,” explains Blondie’s drummer Clem Burke, in a heavy NYC drawl. “You see what I mean?”
Sixty years on from that international maelstrom, relations between the US and Cuba are still clambering out of the long shadow it cast. Longstanding trade embargoes have imposed heavy restrictions on activities between the two nations, while the US Embassy in capital Havana sits directly – and provocatively – opposite a large public event space built in 2000 for promoting anti-imperialist ideology.
“It was not really allowed for US citizens to visit Cuba,” continues Clem, a contender for understatement of the year.
“If you did, people would go via Canada, and it was always a bit contentious when you arrived back in the States, because of the politics.”
When Jay-Z and Beyoncé visited on vacation as recently as 2013, the ensuing diplomatic fallout required a lengthy report from the US Treasury Department just to sort the mess out. An appreciation of this taboo is necessary just to get a vague sense of quite how big a deal it is for a US act to perform in Cuba. Not many have done it, but those who have
include Audioslave, The High Strung, The Dead Daisies and now Blondie.
Essentially, if you’re looking for examples of pop music transcending insurmountable boundaries, Blondie’s 2019 cultural exchange visit to Havana has got to be up there. But how exactly did it come about?