We've heard you sing in The Conflict of Language anboto.org. A cover card is not bad on the tour you are doing in Euskal Herria.

A friend I have in Havana – I think Euskaldun, Martín, de Abadiño – wanted me to learn a song in Basque. Before I had played a song by Ruper [Ordorika], by Fermin Muguruza… but there was no way to sing it in Basque. Because I don't know Euskera, I couldn't internalize any words, and it seemed to me that it wasn't going to be real. So I invented El son de Abadiño. It's just a joke. My friend Martin really liked it, and here too many liked it.

The situation of the Basque Country is difficult in our environment, we want and cannot live, and, in that pesadillo, to make you laugh at us, it is also beautiful!

That's the goal of Korrika, right? Support the Basque Country. I've made a joke doing El son de Abadiño, but in general, I like to turn the situation around, at least on stage. Another thing is to sit around a table and start working on a topic. But humor itself is a very serious thing, and I try to get all things out of the juice of humor. I like to make jokes about that. Even the most dramatic issue is capable of sparks. I've been working on it since I was very young. My two grandparents are repentists, and for example, they met Chanito Isidrón, the famous Cuban repentist, very closely. Chanito’s own son, a great humorist… I grew up in that mood environment and stuck with me, to such an extent that I can’t rule it out. What's more, I'm fascinated by humor, flirtatious with everything. Also with politics! Even more so with politics!

Even more so in Cuba!

Even more so in Cuba! Ja, ja…

Can you play with politics in Cuba?

Yes, it has always been done. Matamoro, Sindo Garay, nico Saquito, Pedro Luis Ferrer, does Fran Delgado himself... Of course, this also has ups and downs, it does not tell you on the radio, it does not show you your image on television, that the media deceive you. That is what I have had to endure, for example. However, they are now more permissive.

What happens when the listener doesn't understand the joke?

Sometimes the work itself is misinterpreted. In my case, I have often been misinterpreted. I have a song called "The Worm Run." Some take it wrong, like you can't play with the revolution, or laugh at the heroes of the revolution. I do not agree. I think we should not devote ourselves to anyone, and if it has been divinized, our task is to descend from the altar. I believe that a joke can be made at the expense of everyone, with the greatest respect. President Mao, for example, could not be appointed. Stalin and all the other triggers. Be leaders, not leaders, everyone is as human as we are!

Tell me about "The Bold."

The bold one! Ha, ha, ha. Grandpa was the guitar of Quintín Moya. There he hung over the wall. I couldn’t play the guitar, the sacred thing… until one day, very small, I picked it up. I started to get angry. I almost completely destroyed it, with the mistreatment I had done to it. When she saw what I was doing, my grandfather took the guitar out of my hands, but then bought me the Soviet guitar and started with it. What a bad guitar! Every touch was challenging, but it did last a long time. This guitar would take out the cosmos, put it into orbit and keep playing!

Did my grandfather teach you the lesson?

“Don’t play with what you don’t know!” or something like that. Of course, I didn't understand what I was saying, and I didn't like it. Eventually I found out.

What else did you learn from your grandfather Quintín?

Well, I learned more from the other grandfather than from the sudden Quintín. It was Armando Fernandez, The Cruise Guajiro, and it influenced me more. I remember going out with him, very young, in a guarandinga [a small interurban bus], and everybody was greeting him. Every time the bus stopped, every time someone got on the bus, the car itself: "You, Armando! Tell us something!” And my grandfather was starting to make tithes, to improvise. My father, for his part, taught me the structure of the dozen, and I was able to share it with my grandfather. I later learned that my grandfather Armando spent a whole year talking for ten, intending to practice. It has to be broken! Both Armando and Quintín were a little illiterate, but had a rich oral culture. People of great genius, very talented.

The language conflict is in the Internet version, but you gave it the name of El son de Abadiño. When you're singing, it seems that in some passage you're in, but it's not a doubt, is it an improvisation?

Yes, yes, an improvisation! I recorded it in Havana before I came here. I didn't have enough time, that's how it went. The people of Abadiño liked it very much. I was improvising, the way I sang. But look where, so many doors! I improvise with effort, and the musician against me, because what we rehearse many times doesn't work, I go on stage and change the song, improvising. “Izorra hadi!”, right? Many improvise, we even try, but as soon as I drink, I wake up to the muse and then it runs out.

We've known about you in Havana, but you haven't been born there.

No, I was born in Las Villas-Baez, a small town that doesn't even appear on the map, in rural lands, right in the center of the island. It has a small hill, a store, a church and a bar. It's smaller than Abadiño! Ha, ha, ha. They took me to Havana at 3 years old, but it was summer in Baez, on holiday, between grandparents and grandmothers.

She studied cooking.

Yes, I graduated from Seville.

At the University of Seville?

No! At the Hotel Sevilla de La Habana, ha, ha, ha. The School of Gastronomy and Tourism is called Hotel Sevilla. I did five courses and graduated as a cooking chef in 1989. I started working in the good restaurants. 1830, Quinta 16, Diplojoya and in the courtyard of the cathedral. Once I burned the chickens, and it's over.

Did you burn your chickens?

Yes. My job was to roast chickens and meat. He smoked a hundred chickens a day, twenty-five each. He heated the oven and smoked chickens. As they asked me, I would give them a new warm -- two minutes -- and take them out. As I smoked, I would leave the kitchen in the living room, dressed as a cook, completely clean, with the maracas in my hand and singing. He was very scenic, you know, cook singing. Until that damn day, they went out to sing and, in the meantime, the chickens burned! Dismissal. I was kicked out of the “Gran Sala de Chefs de Cuba”, leaving me without any honor, ha, ha. I was fascinated. So I went to the Havana Malecon. It was 1995.

What about the malecon?

I started working in a worker's dining room, but I went down to the side every single time, in the evening, until late hours. From there, every day, I had to go to the workers' dining room to prepare my breakfasts. More than once, in the morning, when my wife Lenia cooked, I would get to sleep. I lay in rice bags and slept. Thanks to Lenia I got rid of the trance many times! I started the malecon to make a living, and there I gathered my stories. Several people sang for me. Most of them were autochthonous. Few tourists were there then. They silenced me solemnly and in the lobe they loudly applauded me. I took the guitar and left. “Do you want me to sing a song?” “How much?” “No, no, give whatever you want.” And I would sing black tears, or El Puma, and then ... “Do you want me to sing my song?” He sang and sometimes said: “It was a shit. Don’t sing anymore!” So, ha, ha. Or vice versa: “I don’t sing anything else. Sing yours.” So I told him I knew everything there, the honey of success and the vinegar of failure.

There are still works of life in Havana…

Yes, of course! In Havana and in the Malecon. And there's a lot of talent. Often, what is taught on television is worse, worse, worse, worse. There are great trovators in the malecon, very good, waiting for an opportunity. But you know, you have to be a godfather to baptize! Not in vain, Mikhail Gorbachev said that the talents must be supported because the mediocres come by themselves.

Great trovators in the malecon, you too are trovator.

I consider myself the heir to the traditional old trova. A Sindo Garay, for example. He had three children: he left two at home his wife, took the other one by the hand and said to the woman: “Take care of my two children, I go to Cueto.” For twenty years he traveled to Cuba from one side to the other, either by train, or by boat, seeking to earn a living. That is to be a trovator, singing coast and coast! When the new trova arrived, the thing was chosen. It was also a pose. Both political and ideological content were modified. The song took the form of an algorithm, it was completely structured, it was a lyricism. This hurt her without hesitation.

Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés…

This is not the case with Silvio, Pablo or Santiago Feliú. They were up to date. Others, though talented, had been wrong. To say “The moon is green…”, the newspaper told you, a longer string than the cow! I don't like anything like it, I like bread and wine, but I also have songs of great lyricism. Joseph's son, for example, I did it thinking about José Lezama Lima, and Lezama Lima has that language. Or The absent, by Eugenio Flori, is a poem that I've dedicated to my friend Martin, or Blues to Gastón Vaquero, a great poet made to the journalist and writer of La Marina. In them, I've gone down the path of lyricism, I use a more cultured language, I like it, but I'm not an expert in it. Mine is humor, deception!

Are things changing in Cuba? Sounds are heard: If the United States is going to suspend the blockade, and this and that.

I haven't seen any changes yet, but I don't think it's a makeup either, although some say that. We'll see what's coming. Surely, the blockade will not be an excuse, nobody will be able to consider the blockade as a pay, but it is over, it will always be a blockade. We will not be able to blame the blockade here. People are agreed!