In one verse, Yotuel slams the regime for hyping the “paradise” of Cuban beach resorts - while Cuban “mothers cry for their children” who’ve had to flee the island. “Patria y Vida” is a plaintive but hopeful Latin pop song that tells the Cuban regime: "ya se acabó."
Influenced by the hip hop tradition of authenticity and "keeping it real," Yotuel was once again advancing a Latin American musical form: the urban protest anthem. The title - meaning "Homeland and Life" - is a poke at the grim regime slogan “Patria o Muerte,” or “Homeland or Death.”
#Bailando song key cracked
Last year Yotuel watched from Miami as those Cuban activists protested the government’s restrictions on freedom of expression - which, to no one's surprise, the regime cracked down on.īut San Isidro's unusual, social media-fueled dynamism helped inspire Yotuel and half a dozen other Cuban recording artists to release “Patria y Vida” earlier this year. In 2018, Cuban artists founded a pro-democracy movement called Movimiento San Isidro. "Music should also move people's consciences." "Music isn't just Spotify and Youtube numbers," he said. It helped confirm for Yotuel that artists have a responsibility to make their voices heard on those matters, something he reflected on during a Billboard panel on music and social justice this past September. Those early songs may have felt more party than politics - but a few years ago, Yotuel, now in his 40s, returned to spend time in Cuba and saw how its economic and human rights misery had only gotten worse since he left. Over the past two decades, Orishas collected eight Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations. READ MORE: Do Cubans Use Social Media Better Than Their Regime Controls It? It Looks Like It
The song “ Represent” from that album samples music from the famous Cuban band La Sonora Matancera, which had made Celia Cruz a household name a generation earlier. It was a pioneering effort in a Latin American urban music movement that blended genres like salsa with hip-hop. In a few years the ensemble, which now called itself Orishas (after the Afro-Cuban Santeria spirits) released a hit album, “A Lo Cubano.” So at age 19, Yotuel (as he's known today) fled the island with them for Paris. It wasn't easy to make it as a rapper in communist Cuba in the 1990s, but that was the dream of Yotuel Romero and his buddies in a Cuban group called Amenaza (Threat).
The success of "Patria y Vida" reflects a fresh and potent synergy between popular music and protest marches from Cuba to Colombia - where reggaeton star Feid's music accompanied anti-government demonstrations this year - and from Santiago to San Juan, where singers recently helped bring down a Puerto Rico governor. Or as jailed Cuban protester Daniela Rojo told us: “The song gave us our courage, and the protests made the song more popular.” “Patria y Vida” helped fuel those protests - and the protests made “Patria y Vida" more famous internationally. Or that, in the same week, the Cuban regime is blocking a new round of anti-government protests that dissidents had planned on the island as a follow-up to the unprecedented unrest that took place there in July. If you needed any reminder, consider the protest hit “ Patria y Vida,” written and performed by several Cuban singers, is up for Song of the Year at Thursday night’s Latin Grammy Awards. And that same phenomenon is playing out again across Latin America and the Caribbean. The music helped galvanize protests the protests seemed to bring out the best in the music. It’s been half a century since the golden age of protest music in the Americas - songs like Creedence Clearwater Revival's “ Fortunate Son” that took on the Vietnam War Caetano Veloso's " Alegria Alegria," a subtle jab at Brazil's military dictatorship or Bob Marley's " Get Up Stand Up," an indictment of Caribbean poverty.
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