You have to tell Daymé Arocena, draw her and, above all, listen to her carefully. And I would also say freely, because his career is a consequence of his free expression as a human being and as an artist. Free to experiment and break down barriers between musical genres and stereotypes that go beyond the staff.
Daymé carries the good rush of life, the ones that whisper virtuosic improvisations that then escape down her throat. The contemporary art scene in Cuba cannot do without this woman. First for her music, which is brave like her. And then because of what it means to be a woman, black, short and stuttering.
WORLDS COLLECT
Music has always been the bridge to all my things. I fell in love with the drum at 17 but I was crowned at 22, it took me five years to be a practitioner [of the Yoruba religion]. In fact, the coronation was what came last. I fell in love with folk music before. I met my husband singing. Music has always been the answer to all my things. Just as I fell in love with the drum, I was in love with choral music, which is what I studied. I started combining them. I loved writing music for choirs and when I discovered the batá drum, it was the clash between my two worlds. Afro-Cuban music and classical music. He is the space where these two things make sense and settle. Jazz brings together these two expressions that can be so different. That’s what my music means.
Multiple musical collaborations, three albums, a band of jazz girls and a review of the world afterwards; Daymé fuses nine years of strict study of classical choral music with Cuban music. But the sounds of life are also heard, of his house “of the many” and the broken windows of so many keys: “There is the populace of my land, of my blacks playing rumba.”
When I say that I come from the house of the many, it is because the many sang and played rumba every time the power went out in the house. I was born in ’92, that is, the light rather came, it didn’t go away. That’s how I grew up. However, in my house there was no crying. The light went out and automatically: bambambam… bambam… LET’S GO. So, to sing. And they sang and played with spoons, at the door, at the windows. The furniture was broken from so much touching. I am all that and jazz, which is literally freedom of expression. I would be very inconsistent calling myself a jazz player and not being free to express myself.
Precisely her opinion on social networks has led her to what I call a resounding and sincere mini-biography, in which she clarifies points of view, dialogues and stands up, as she says: «A long time ago I decided not to keep quiet anymore… to say what I feel, what affects me. And as a result of what happened on November 26 with the San Isidro Movement, I made a publication.
He spoke of sensations and dialogue. He began by saying: «The word of the Apostle belongs to all…». The reactions were diverse, they spoke to him of his courage, and he tells me that “it should not be considered a brave act to say that the word of the Apostle belongs to everyone”. The reactions to her statement made her feel defamed, insulted and supported at the same time: «I could not understand some comments based on such an honest criterion, such a healthy criterion. I said it because I felt it. I did not understand those various reactions… If there were a real dialogue, we would reach the conclusion that the whole world wants a better Cuba».
But that’s how social media works. We are exposed, Daymé knows it. Even so, he ran into old lies and certain blackmail again: «I had to read a lot about that hackneyed idea that “a black Cuban girl, poor and stuttering, would never have been an artist in any other nation in the world”. I had to read it over and over again. And he told me: what a society this is to be misinformed!». For this reason, she calls herself arrogant when she does so, but she does not fail to mention that she has traveled to more than twenty countries and reaffirms: «Don’t come to teach me. I have looked at different societies with my own eyes. Stop saying that in another country I would not have had access to musical training. That is denying the history even of world music. It’s exclusionary, it’s unfair, it’s racist. That thought is racist with all its letters. Stop repeating that ugly thing. That’s why I made a post talking about who I am, about the house where I was born. I have spoken up front, with all the freedom that I carry in my soul».
THE HEARTBREAK OF YOUR PEOPLE
Being different is not a bed of roses. Building self-esteem following the approach of stereotypes is already difficult. So if you don’t fit a mold, your life can be a real obstacle course.
«I can tell you that he did not value me, I did not love myself, I felt ugly. Those who know me know that I am very short and I am chubby. I have the same weight and height since I was 12 years old. I had breasts that were too big for my age. They had to make me a reduction, it was tremendous … ». Probably the music, again, saved her: «It was a girl who saw a group of boys on the corner and crossed the street. I felt so ugly, so bad, that I ran away from people. I hidded. I was brutally afraid. In fact, singing was my shield. People saw me differently and that’s how I broke down barriers.”
Daymé is not yet 30 years old, but she reviews her adolescence with distance and loneliness, evoking how her self-esteem lost the battle over and over again: «I had a boyfriend for seven years because of how insecure I was of myself. It’s not that he was a bad boy, but I felt long before that I didn’t want to continue, and at the same time I said: who is going to carry me? Go figure. It is the truth, I say it with all the sincerity and transparency in the world and with all the conviction that it is important to talk about these things, because there are many girls who feel as I did. Because people didn’t talk to them or don’t talk to them about their life experiences. And because mothers do not raise boys a little more consistent with what they feel. Because I met someone who felt things for me, but didn’t get close because he cared what people thought. I walk with her? No way! I lived with all that for nineteen years.
At 20 years old, she did not understand why she was invited to dance in a nightclub in Canada: «Is this real? They are making fun of me? But I gave the watercress… my dad told me that I was living a late adolescence. It’s just that I started to feel beautiful at that age.” She was the exotic Cuban singer that everyone wanted to meet. “Everyone wanted to go out with the singer…” But the most important thing about this journey has not been how others see her, but how she sees herself, how she loves herself. Daymé Arocena’s testimony of heartbreak could be that of so many other young women in the world.
But heartbreak crossed over into romantic love: it was not easy to enter the artistic enterprise in Cuba, and without it she could not perform with her group of friends. Together they founded Alami, one of the few jazz groups made up of women in Cuba. Three times they attended the auditions to belong to the company, and three times they said “no” to the same group that shortly after would become the jazz collective Maqueque.
“We started working thanks to a type of temporary authorization. It cost me a whole vacation crying the happy document to be able to work. From there we began to make presentations and opportunities appeared for me outside of Cuba». So, as she says, Daymé began to fight the world.
WHY ALAMI AND WHY WOMEN?
He fought to create the Alami group since he graduated. This name directly related to Yemayá, orisha of the Yoruba pantheon, had been chosen by the grandmother for a granddaughter who was to be born in the family. But a man came. So the name Daymé kept for his band. «At that time I was not a santera, but all this mythology was very beautiful. Alami was referring to the stones at the bottom of the sea, stones that made sounds, siren songs… I liked it so much!».
By then, around 2012, there were not enough women on the jazz circuit inside and outside Cuba, especially instrumentalists. There are not any yet. Daymé wondered “why they were always men. Where are the female performers of this genre, what’s up? And so I got it into my head to make a group of jazz women. Representation is still not equitable. Today I can talk about a movement that is a little better than before. But it’s not egalitarian.”
MACHO MUSICAL GENRE OR SELF-CENSORED WOMEN?
“It’s a bit of everything. I have a theory: women try to always stay on safe ground. Men go through life with more freedom. And jazz, which has part of its essence in improvisation, makes you be in uncertain territory. You get up to play, to open your heart and let go of whatever comes out. But you don’t know for sure what is going to happen. Improvisation in a general sense occurred more in the way of seeing life for men than for women».
To reach maturity in improvisation, Daymé says that she had to break the personal barrier and say: «I don’t know how to do it well, but I’ll see what comes out. It occurs when trying many times. And that’s the beauty of jazz, that no concert is the same… you can do the same program a thousand times and concerts will never be the same».
From Alami to the jazz collective Maqueque and immediately to his first solo album Nueva Era, one of the best 50 albums of 2015 according to the National Public Radio of the United States (NPR). It was followed by One Takes (2016) and Cubafonía in 2017, an explosion of character. Cuba in the world and vice versa. Sonocardiogram is one of his most recent works, from 2019; according to her, the most sincere album she has made so far.
They are all musical productions of a tireless machinery of creativity. Daymé has learned with all of them the obligation of the artist to respect the other. The decency of not appropriating what belongs to others: «Alami never needed a Jane Bunnet. If we needed collaboration with international figures, it was because of islanders, third-worlders, Cubans, because of isolation. There I feel a globalized social injustice, because Cuba has music to distribute to the world. However, if a person from another country does not come to legitimize what one has been doing, nobody sees it.
Woman, artist, Cuban, Yoruba, jazz player. One inside the other. He cannot isolate himself from what he considers transcendental. This moment that generates an active debate on gender equality motivates her: «I think it is a discussion that is in full swing. You have to know how to carry it well; we have to keep talking and fighting. I will always be at the side of just causes. Of course, we must give watercress and open more spaces for women. It is a time of great discussions and I hope it will give great results. I am the same one who thinks about San Isidro, or who sings in Mexico in favor of abortion.
His saint is Yamayá Mayelewó: “he lives in the center of the sea. Not at the bottom, not at the edges. From there he sees everything. From there he looks at the world and can distribute fairly. What I say, I already looked at it and analyzed it. Nothing I say in public is to follow any fashion.
ALWAYS BAREFOOT
When he began to play and sing, they told him: «Dress in black; get on heels; you have to straighten your hair.”
«I remember that I went up to sing and trembled with those shoes. I was more focused on that than on singing. Heel, Daymé? I suffered a lot. They burned me with that. Until one day I got pissed off and took off my shoes and that day I was very happy. If I wore flat shoes the same thing, so I decided: well now I’m always going to sing barefoot. Now they’re going to have to put up with me.”
The ghost of stereotypes in the art market is no different than other pre-established molds. They all go in the same shaker: machismo, power, self-esteem, violence all. But this Cuban has fought with everyone, she has looked them in the eye.
«I don’t have to invent a speech, that if the connection with the land… No, the connection with the land is always there. In other words, I have the connection with the earth by being consistent with who I am. The connection with the earth is when you are connected with your spirit. What happens is that what I can’t do is sing uncomfortable. Now you have to put up with me like this, because there are no more comfortable shoes than your own feet.
In less than a decade Daymé Arocena has experienced the freedom to express herself, to create and to love herself. She looks for answers in the people who go to her concerts, and also in the ones who invade her on social networks. He understands dialogues and sincere faith. Trust the music that always answers your questions.
Why do I have to be thinking about clothes and shoes, if the important thing is music? I, even if I present myself naked, I’m going to offer you my soul when I sing. Yeah, stay with it. When I die tomorrow, may my spirit rise with the peace of mind that I was consistent with what I felt.
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