Las Tunas.- A new edition of the Jornada Cucalambeana brings joy to the Balcón de Oriente these days. As usual, the event began with a parade from the Provincial Council of Plastic Arts to Plaza Martiana, in the historic center of the city. This time we were lucky to be accompanied by the Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso and prestigious followers of traditions from different places.
Guayaberas, hats, blue and red ribbons, among other elements, punctuated the journey, spiced up by the melodies of the Provincial Concert Band and the presence of a stilt walker, riders mounted on brimming horses, Flores de Birama in cars decorated with flowers, the Raíces de San José community cultural project and the highest authorities of the province.
On June 28, after the parade, the Plaza Martiana hosted the opening ceremony, with performances by the Punto Cubano Duo, the tonadista Anadelis Martínez and the improvised poets Dimitri Tamayo and Sindy Manuel Torres, who honored Celina González, the queen of country music, and the bard Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo (El Cucalambé), on the occasion of his 195th birthday.
For her part, Juana Yamilka Viñals Suárez, president of the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power, spoke the central words, in which she recognized the importance of the defense of identity for this eastern land and some of the most representative spaces of the Guateque Mayor de Cuba.
On this first day of the program, the visual arts were in delight, with the inauguration of several exhibitions, including the Landscape, Décima Ilustrada and Artesanía rooms, which house the Casa del Joven Creador and the Fayad Jamís gallery, respectively.
The tunero Pedro Jesus Avila Arias, author of Landscape with palm, triumphed in that first category; In the second, the decimista Maikel Delgado Corrales, from the municipality of Colombia, together with the illustrator Ángel López González, were winners with their work Under the shelter of the shadow. And the crafts section saw Iván Castillo Guerrero, from Camagüey, win for Tropical fantasymade using the terracotta technique.
The personal exhibition also stands out Cuban landscapes, by Carlos Gutiérrez, which exhibits the Las Tunas headquarters of the Nicolás Guillén Foundation (FNG); and three plastic artists from Santiago de Cuba contribute their particular reflections of the landscape in the collective exhibition Consequenceswhich occupies the Uneac gallery. Victor Manuel Jardines Garcia, Jorge Felix Gonzalez Cespedes and Dennis Jardines Guerra join together with a colorful visual representation of the Cuban countryside and the city.
Likewise, the theoretical event Diversity, Essence and Identity shared interesting research and the documentary was presented Echoes and island traditions in Cabaiguánby musicologist Sonia Margarita Pérez Cassola, Cubadisco 2024 Award for best music producer.
The value of intangible heritage and traditions in the different aspects of popular culture was one of the most debated topics in the theoretical event Diversity, Essence and Identity, which takes place within the Jornada Cucalambeana 2024. Academics from the University of Las Tunas, art instructors, methodologists from cultural houses and other experts agreed that synergy between the different actors that influence cultural processes is urgent. They must be articulated, they said, from the educational system, the houses of culture, the media and political and government decision-makers. Everything so that the preservation and reproduction of Cuban cultural traditions is possible, even from a territorial point of view.
Likewise, the German artist Hans Urlich Meller presented the audiovisual at the FNG Memories of the Cucalambeanain which he compiled numerous snapshots notable for their beauty, mastery of photographic technique and honor of country traditions.
Meanwhile, the Recital of Decimist Women, held in that same institution, became a hymn to idiosyncrasy. Under the direction of Odalys Leyva, president of the Writers Branch of the Provincial Committee of the Uneac, writers such as Maritza Batista, Nuria Bárbara Fernández, Xiomara Maura Rodríguez, Lucy Maestre, Marina Lourdes Jacobo and Yuslenis Molina met there. As a singularity, the hostess presented the space, and each one of the participants, nothing more and nothing less than in octosyllable rhyme.
Verses like these nuanced the quote: “Greetings to those present./ This women’s party/ carries lights in its being/ and crosses walls and bridges./ The eloquent women/ with the tenth as a guide/ offer the light of day,/ their arpeggio of spring,/ like the first rain/ that germinates with poetry.”
The event was attended by singers such as Marisol Guillama, Taymara Portillo, Antonio La Villa, Anadelis Martínez and Yaniuska Hernández, as well as improvisational poets Rainer Nodal, Dimitri Tamayo and Guillermo Castillo Vega.
Thus, with these and other proposals, the Supreme Festival of the Cuban Peasantry began, which this time has the presence of notable figures of the idiosyncrasy such as Luis Paz (Papillo), director of the Ibero-American Center of the Décima and the Improvised Verse; Pedro Péglez, president of the national group Ala Décima; in addition to other equally valuable figures such as José Antonio Iznaga (El Jilguerito de Cienfuegos), María Victoria Rodríguez and Marisol Guillama. Tradition is celebrating.
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