• Submitted by: manso
• Arts and Culture
• 06 / 01 / 2011

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Olivia Bendres. A couple of frontline singer-songwriters, an Oscar-winning actor and assorted other hangers-on, a Havana hotel room. Oh, and a bottle of rum.

That was the scene one mid-'90s evening when Jackson Browne met his Cuban counterpart, Carlos Varela, sparking a mutual-admiration society that has grown through the years, bringing about a North American concert tour this month by Varela, presented by and, most likely, featuring some guest appearances by Browne.

The Californian was in Cuba back then, tagging along with a delegation of US politicians -- Democrats and Republicans -- on what is officially termed a fact-finding mission. Bonnie Raitt and Browne's longtime bass player Kevin McCormick had met Varela on trips before and told Browne to find Varela, who in the 1980s came under the wing of Silvio Rodriguez, a key figure in Cuba's politically progressive nueva trova music movement. Varela, now 48, brought the style into a new era with an approach more personal and cultural than overtly political.

"They told me to look him up -- 'If you go to Cuba, you've got to meet Carlos Varela,'" Browne tells Spinner. "And he heard I was coming and scheduled a party that his band would play at. But it had to be postponed because Fidel Castro suddenly decided to give a speech in that part of town and no one could get there."

So Varela scrambled and put something together for the next night, but the night of the original plans Browne hosted his counterpart in his hotel room. It turned into quite the scene.

"I bought a bottle of rum, we sat down in my room and began singing each other's songs," he says. "The room started to spill over with people from a film festival that was there. I'm sitting there and Benicio del Toro is translating my songs to Carlos! And all these others who know Carlos were telling things about his music and why a particular image has resonance."

Images such as those in 'Guillermo Tell,' one of Varela's most popular songs among Cuban fans, both those on the island and those in the US. Browne is well-versed in the politics of Cuba and among Cuban exiles here, as well as the politics of US policy toward Cuba, a distinct situation of embargoes and restrictions that, as collateral damage, inhibits cultural exchange. But the nuances of Varela's music are not really about politics.

For Browne, bringing Varela to the US this year -- he was here in 2009 for a couple of shows, as well as a musical testimony to a congressional committe is just an extension of the exchange they had in that hotel room. The hope is that it will dispel any notion that apart from the relations of the two governments there is no deep-seated adversarial relationship between the Cuban and US citizens.

Source: www.spinner.com/2011/05/31/carlos-varela-jackson-browne-tour/