Cuban Culture Week to Host First Havana Lives Festival

The first Havana Lives festival will be held in Havana to gather the best of Cuban music in a single event, announced one of its organizers Jorge Luis Robaina, leader of the group Karamba.

The meeting scheduled for the Cuban culture day on Oct 20 also celebrates the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Havana San Cristobal Village.

Aiming to gather different musical genres, five main stages will host rock, salsa, son, jazz and trova concerts offered by the main exponents of these sounds on the island.

'In this way Havana will be distributed in areas characterized by different tastes, allowing interaction with different audiences but also enabling exchange with other musicians', Robaina said.

'This is the most ambitious project we have ever considered - from an organizing point of view - because we intend to join the most internationally recognized Cuban groups belonging to the Music Recording and Editions Company EGREM catalogue to celebrate its 55th anniversary', the singer added.

The Artemisa Mixed Music Festival will also be held this year on August 8-11 and a group of musicians will return to the alternative Havana project, an initiative born in 2012 under which several concerts were held in the country.

The project, made up of the Karamba group, Moneda Dura, the musician David Blanco and Adrian Berazain, will extend to all Cuban provinces and will conclude with an international tour around European countries such as France and Spain.

The Havana Lives Festival was preceded in 2018 by the project of the same name created by Robaina, which consisted of three thematic nights in dinner-concert format where groups and artists such as Charanga Latina and Alain Daniel, Pedro Calvo, Waldo Mendoza, Buena Fe, Adrian Berazain, Karamba, among many others, performed.