A few months ago my good friend Simón Bravo told me about the incarceration of one of Cuba's greatest punk rock musicians, Gorki Águila, in 2003 on trumped up drug charges, another victim of the reactionary Cuban regime. Simón had insisted on how brilliant his band Porno Para Ricardo is, but their albums are difficult to find outside Cuba so I didn't have a chance to listen to them.
It turns out Gorki Águila was conditionally released from prison last spring. I was able to watch his band's video for the single "El Cake" tonight at Simón apartment and I was impressed by how good they sound. The video is a brilliant low-budget affair, filmed in a Havana apartment with scantily clad friends and the band carousing for the cameras.
Last August, Miami's El Nuevo Herald published the following article on Águila: "El rock que desafina con Castro."
Simón has recently been in touch with Águila over e-mail and conducted an interview with him: "Gorki Águila: Entre el placer y la felicidad," which El Nuevo Cojo Ilustrado has published in its latest issue. The interview is in Spanish but I translate the following excerpt:
"Just because I hate communism doesn't mean I defend capitalism. I believe the latter is more of the same shit, only with less plague. No matter how much I understand what it is, I will always prefer capitalism. If I were a revolutionary in any system it would be within capitalism. If there's something to be done it's to improve it, not to build communism. For me the left is never an alternative."
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