Havana Year Zero Playlist
It is the habit of author Karla Suárez, also a classical guitarist, to choose a collection of songs to accompany her novels. Havana Year Zero is no exception.
Below is the full song list, plus notes on particular passages or characters in the novel to which they pertain.
Playlist Notes
1.) Santiago Feliú - Mi mujer está muy sensible
p. 1: It all happened in 1993, Year Zero in Cuba. The year of interminable power cuts, when bicycles filled the streets of Havana and the shops were empty. There was nothing of anything. Zero transport. Zero meat. Zero hope. I was thirty and had thousands of problems. That’s why I got involved…
2.) Gerardo Alfonso - Sábanas Blancas
p. 22: … Euclid told me Meucci’s story and I learned that someone in Havana had the original document related to the true inventor of the telephone. It should be no surprise to you then that when I left, the world felt like a different place. As I said, nothing much had been going on in my life but, without warning, everything had changed. Absolutely everything. Get it?
3.) Silvio Rodríguez - Alma mía
(Ángel) p. 123: Ángel was very loving. We were sitting on the floor, him propped up against the wall and me leaning against him, feeling his body and hearing his voice softly crooning: ‘A soul that gazes at me unspeaking, says everything with its eyes.’
4.) Frank Delgado - Cuando se vaya la luz mi negra
(Leonardo) p. 166-7: When he returned, he extracted a book from beneath a pile of papers on the table, pressed the play button on the tape deck and sat down at my side. Frank Delgado began to sing very quietly. Leo opened the book, took out a sheet of paper and showed it to me, asking if I’d ever seen Antonio Meucci’s face.
5.) Pino Daniele - Resta Resta Cu’ Mme
(Bárbara) p. 18: Barbara Gattorno said ciao with a grin that wasn’t just ear to ear but stretched all around her head, taking in on its path her whole body, and perhaps, while it was at it, even managed to squeeze her boobs into her bra, because that was definitely at least one size too small. She’s an Italian friend, but speaks perfect Spanish…
6.) Extreme - More Than Words
(Dayani) p. 198: At the opening bars of the next song, she informed me that it was her favourite band, Extreme, her favourite song, ‘More Than Words’ and her favourite man, Nuno Bettencourt. What a pity there are no men like him in Cuba, she sighed: that was why she had to get away from the place.
7.) Roberto Carlos – Música suave
(Julia) p. 78: What the heck, our home was always like a henhouse. So whenever I wanted to work, I had to shut myself up in Mum’s bedroom. That day, I put on Roberto Carlos, one of my favourite singers, got a pencil and paper and began to analyse the elements at my disposal.
8.) Beny More - Como fue
p. 139: … the ‘pearl of the south’ he’d said they called it, and everything went on being weird until, standing there by the sea, he’d put his arms around her and crooned that song by Benny Moré in her ear: ‘How did it happen? I can’t tell you how it happened. I can’t explain how it happened, but I fell...’ and then she couldn’t bear it any longer.
9.) Ana Carolina - É Mágoa
p. 135: Haven’t you ever considered killing someone? I mean, haven’t you ever wanted to grab someone and wring their neck like a chicken. I’ve never done it, my stepfather took care of all that – with chickens, naturally. I think it’s hideous; I mean, when you come down to it, what harm have chickens ever done me? None, but people, certain people, have. That’s why I had the urge to kill. Just once.
10.) Omara Portuondo - Adiós Felicidad
p. 141: … the one that goes: ‘Goodbye happiness, I hardly knew you, you passed by casually, not thinking of my suffering, all my efforts were in vain...’ Maybe it had been my own efforts that had given colour to the city during that depressing year, and so that day everything returned to black and white.
11.) Counting Crows - Mr. Jones
p. 107: I looked them over. The thin one with long hair, dressed in black, was a geography graduate. Another, also hairy and not unlike Conan the Barbarian, was a biologist. The thin-legged, curly-haired, blue-eyed young woman in short shorts who had spoken to me had graduated in electronic engineering. According to Chichí, they were rockers, avant-gardists and all wanted to write. In that case, why the hell had they studied sciences? In this country people graduate in one thing and then work in something completely different – except for me, of course – but... there would have been no point in mentioning that.
12.) Polito Ibañez - Dudas en el espejo
p. 219: I was nude and Havana was empty. I gazed down over my beloved street. Everyone was sleeping: Ángel, Leonardo, the entire city. But I was awake with a Polito Ibáñez song sounding in my ears: And with apparent love in our eyes / without signals or witnesses / we offered up our bodies until the morning / when we learned of the mistake. Mistake? What mistake? When did the mistake begin? Who knew about it?
13.) Rachmaninov – Concerto No. 2 - Allegro scherzando 5
(Euclides) p. 183: Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which was the background music of one of the Russian cartoons we used to watch when we were young, the story of the greedy piggybank that bursts from trying to swallow a coin bigger than itself, while the cartoon characters gaze at a rainbow with Rachmaninov’s piano in the background. It’s a really lovely concerto. Do you know it? That was what CMBF was playing when I arrived, downhearted, at Euclid’s apartment the day after my conversation with Ángel.
14.) Carlos Varela - Habáname
p. 254: Even though I’ve never travelled anywhere, I’m certain that this is my favourite road in the whole world, with its trees, its streetlights and its shadows. Even in the dark, it’s beautiful. Always beautiful. It’s the main artery of the city. I like to go out onto the balcony at night to breathe the cool air and dream. Didn’t I say we’re all dreamers here?