The Beatles that we didn't get to hear in Cuba

February 9, 2014

The Beatles that we didn't get to hear in Cuba
Silvio Canto, Jr.

The world is celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Beatles landing at
JFK Airport and appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show.
It was one of those events that changed music, radio playlists and the
length of our hair. My mom used to call them "los bitles" or her "Cuban
accented" pronunciation. It was also her disapproval of the hair or my
desire to look like that.
However, I did not know a thing about Beatlemania until our family got
here. 50 years ago we were in Cuba but The Beatles in New York, or Ed
Sullivan, was nothing we knew a thing about.
The Castro dictatorship censored The Beatles and their music was not
heard on local radio. The "ban" came from the to the top:
"Fidel Castro's government frowned on Western music as a 'decadent'
influence in the decades after his 1959 Cuban Revolution. Many Cubans
recall being harassed for wearing long hair or listening to rock and pop
music from Europe or the United States."
Eventually, the Castro regime liberalized rules so Cubans finally got
their taste of The Beatles It was 40 years late.
We arrived in the US in September '64 and all of those Cuban kids in
Miami were singing their songs. I remember "A Hard Day's Night" movie
signs everywhere.
In a few days, I heard that it was a British group and a girl showed me
her copy of "Meet the Beatles." It was the first time that I had seen a
picture of the group or heard their music.
A few years ago, I spoke with a 50-something Cuban who left the island
recently. We spoke about the repression, censorship of the press and
the food shortages.
Then he said this: "You know one more thing I hate the Castro
dictatorship....they denied me The Beatles"....I never got to enjoy it
like you did in the US"
Thank God for freedom was all I could say! All of a sudden I realized
that freedom is "a free press" and my copy of "Abbey Road."

Source: Blog: The Beatles that we didn't get to hear in Cuba -
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/02/the_beatles_that_we_didnt_get_to_hear_in_cuba.html