My inbox is getting deluged with music, Livestreams, concerts, festivals – all online, of course. The volume, at least to me, is higher than it was before Covid-19 shut down live performances and mangled everyone’s schedule. I guess that is because artists can now Livestream every week, or every day in some cases, and they are alerting the world with their email lists, FB and Insta posts. To deal with the volume, I am doing two things.
First, I am publishing a Roundup Tuesday (or Monday night if everything works well) with the half dozen or so singles, EPs, albums, videos that jump out at me from the dozens I received the previous week. Check back here to see it.
Second, I am covering one major online event a week that I really want to point you to. When I say event, I am referring to special online music extravaganzas, festivals, multi-artist streams, or fundraisers. I wrote about one such event earlier, the One World Together at Home concert headed up by Lady Gaga. Many of the events I will highlight are fundraisers for organizations that support artists and music like Music Cares and the National Independent Music Association.
Which brings me to this week’s event, The Concert for Cuba, July 18 and 19, 5 pm PT/7 pm CT on www.twitch.tv/hothouseglobal. The two-day broadcast that will originate from Havana’s Instituto Cubano de la Música. Sponsored by the International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity, it will feature more than twenty of the world’s renown performers from the Afro-Cuban music tradition, broadcasting from Cuba, the Americas, and Europe. On the virtual stage will be the Alexander Abreu Y Su Timba All-Stars, Dionne Warwick, Ozomatli, Tom Morello, “Nachio” Herrera, and many more. Speakers will include Danny Glover, Ron Pearlman, Michael Moore.
The purpose of the concert is to honor Cuba’s contribution to slowing the Covid-19 pandemic by sending medical teams to 26 countries, including here in Mexico, who worked with sick patients even at the risk of their own lives – much as the thousands of doctors, nurses and front line workers did here in the US (and who should get their own music festival!).
The idea came from Marguerite Horberg, whose Chicago-based cultural-mecca HotHouse, developed HotHouseGlobal as an online streaming initiative to serve the NGO, small business, and cultural industries adversely affected during this health and economic crisis.
Horberg, says about her inspiration for the festival, “Not only is this an amazing gathering of talent– it is an important affirmation of hope. If we’ve learned nothing else these last months, we’ve learned how connected we all are. In the same spirit that Cuba, one of the world’s smallest nations, sent medical teams to more than 26 nations during the pandemic …it is a time to heal.”
If you wonder why I am writing about a Livestream concert from Cuba instead of the US or Europe, there are a number of reasons. As Horberg stated, Cuba sent medical teams to 26 nations, one of them the one I live in, and they had a big impact. This is a big deal for a very tiny nation. Second, I visited Cuba and the Instituto Cubano de la Música when I was there three years ago and was blown away by the Cuban music community. Third, how often do we get an opportunity to see a Livestream from Cuba? It is a unique event that I know it will be a lot of fun – although probably somewhat political, looking at the speaker lineup.
But at the end of the day (or in the afternoon, as the case may be given time zones) it seems that one impact of the Covid-19 lockdown has been to increase the amount of music available, not reduce it. Sure, we can’t go to SXSW or Coachella this year, but we can get a concert from Cuba right in our living rooms.
Patrick O’Heffernan
