The award would be an excellent reason to feel proud and satisfied; however, in front of the cameras and microphones of the press, what first emerges is an infinite passion for the process: the experiences, the people, the real Cuba that he discovers in each investigation:

“I am an ethnologist, a field researcher. I do my work in the field of visual ethnomusicology, which is a relatively young discipline. I work primarily in ethnovisual film. Through my field research, I arrived in Santiago de Cuba to document everything that was not visible. While researching Jorge Lefevre, one of the leading dancers and choreographers of this country, who went on to become director of the Royal Ballet of Wallonia in Belgium from Santiago de Cuba, he created a work in Santiago de Cuba called Erzilí. This piece draws on the similarity to the goddess Oshun, the goddess of sweetness and love in the Franco-Haitian pantheon, and his star dancers from the Belgian classical ballet company shared the experience with the principal dancers from the Eastern Folkloric Ballet, from Cotumba, from the Guillemón Moncada Ballet, along with a group of very talented amateurs, created a masterful work that still lives in the hearts of the people of Santiago.

“It’s something truly beautiful. I invite you to visit.” My YouTube channel is called Afrokuba, and that work is called Erzilí en Lefevre. So, through the research and interviews with the people who were the protagonists of this magnificent work, I met Berta Armiñán. But then, on another trip to Santiago de Cuba, invited by the University of Oriente and the Casa del Caribe, I asked if they could please take me to where Berta Miñán was.”

From that meeting came promises fulfilled: “I always go with my camera in hand, and we had a three-hour conversation. We fell in love, we swore eternal love to each other, and at the end I asked her, ‘What do you still want to do?’ Because she was a founder of the Folclórico de Oriente, of Cotumba, and one of the iconic figures of Franco-Haitian folklore in Cuba. She told me, ‘I still need to make an album.’ I said, ‘I’m not a music producer, but well, I’ll give it a try.’

“And so I set about those tasks. I took some sound engineer friends from EGREM, José Raúl and Daelsis Pena, and we went there, to Santiago de Cuba, on our 18-hour bus ride. There we found a private studio, with a recording engineer also from Santiago, and Ramón Márquez, a legendary musician, an icon of Santiago de Cuba, who has worked for many years as director of the Cotumba percussion ensemble, organized the entire musical arrangement. When we arrived in Santiago de Cuba for the second time, everything was already set up. We had previously sent another team from Santiago de Cuba to make a kind of demo of the album, so I could hear everything she wanted to sing on her album, because that was her album, at 83 years old, imagine that.”

Bringing to light those fragments of our culture that are essential to completing the puzzle of national identity, giving a voice to those who so often remain anonymous, has been an important part of her professional commitment:

“I am someone who has been fortunate enough to live alongside some iconic generations of Cuban culture. I have worked primarily with the music and dance of those Afro-Cubans who have been forgotten. If we're going to talk about Eduardo Rivero, Jorge Lefevre, Andrés Williams, Katherine Suaznábar, Julio Arozarena, these are people who have traveled the world and raised the bar for Cuban culture in places that people don't know about. Even documentaries I made, for example, about Julio Arozarena, which were shown at ISA (Higher Institute of Art), in the art schools of Santiago de Cuba, Camagüey, and Guantánamo, and the students don't know about them. It's as if we don't have a history in dance and ballet. It's not just Alicia Alonso, or is it?” It's also Alicia Alonso because Jorge Lefevre created a classic called Oedipus Rex, and Alicia played Jocasta, a fact that's never known, even though ICAIC filmed it.

“We have to tell the story, because otherwise we'll lose it. That's why ethnological cinema is so important to me. When I go to lectures at Cuban universities and talk to young people, I tell them, 'Go to your grandmothers, to that old man sitting in a corner who seems to have no history. Sit down, talk to him, interview him, with your cell phone camera—it doesn't matter if it's high quality, the point is that the testimony remains, because we're going to leave this land and we're going to lose all that testimony, and that's basically the essence of my Afrokuba ethnovisual project.'”

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff