Uneasy Lies Latin Music’s Crown

Miami is a town that takes things too personally.

Its residents went through a painful song and dance this week after Latin Grammy officials suddenly pulled the plug on their second annual awards show, which was to be held at Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena. Producers decided that planned protests by anti-Castro Cubans would pose a security threat to artists and guests, so they moved the Sept. 11 event to Los Angeles, which hosted the inaugural Latin Grammys at Staples Center and will now accommodate this year’s show at the Forum in Inglewood.

Miamians were so upset you’d have thought they were Romans being told that the pope was moving back home to Poland, and taking the Sistine Chapel with him.

So what’s so special about Miami?

In the hype over capturing the nationally televised Latin Grammy show, a single refrain was heard time and again, like the chorus of a catchy salsa song. Miami is the capital of Latin music, chimed civic boosters such as producer Emilio Estefan and his South Florida allies. The Latin Grammys belong there, they argued, like the auto industry belongs in Detroit and the Grand Ole Opry belongs in Nashville.

The only difference is that Detroit actually makes cars and Nashville is actually the headquarters for country artists. You can’t say the same for Miami, a city that has yielded a mere handful of major Latin performers in the 40 years since it became the mecca for Cuban exiles. Even worse, for all its cultural posturing and self-promotion, Miami has not produced in that period a single Latin artist of any artistic importance or lasting significance.

L.A. at least has Los Lobos.

What does Miami have to offer? The mostly forgettable salsa-pop confections of Emilio’s wife, Gloria Estefan, and the trivial crooning of Enrique Iglesias and Jon Secada (remember him?). If it had not been for Albita’s defection from Cuba, Miami’s musical contributions would rate barely a footnote in Latino cultural anthologies.

True, Miami may be the corporate capital of the Latin music industry, since so many multinational record companies are based there. And its location is convenient for artists coming from far-flung Latin American countries and Spain. Many of them, such as Puerto Rico’s Ricky Martin and Colombia’s Shakira, are certainly lured by Estefan’s Midas touch in the studio.

But Latin performers are also comfortable coming to L.A., which can reasonably brag about being the capital of Latin music consumption, with more Spanish media, live concerts and record sales than any other U.S. city. As a Latin music market, Miami doesn’t come close.

The truth is, however, that there is no capital of Latin music in the United States, creatively speaking. Just look at the list of major nominees for this year’s Latin Grammy Awards. They come from Madrid, Medellin and Mexico City--not Miami or Los Angeles.

Nowadays, Miami’s not even on the map when it comes to great salsa music. The town should be tops in Caribbean rhythms, considering its tropical roots and capitalist resources.

Yet Grammy guests looking for parties next month are more likely to find good local salsa bands in L.A. than they would have found in Miami.

When looking for the best in modern salsa, in-the-know fans from around the globe head straight to Havana, a crumbling capital that can’t even keep the lights on reliably. This musical reality flies in the face of the exile community’s long-held contention that all the best musicians have fled Castro’s Cuba. One favorite exile refrain literally claims that el son se fue de Cuba, which means the son, the seminal salsa rhythm, has left the island.

That’s like saying that Castro’s rise to power marked the day the music died. But the truth has been just the opposite. Cuba has remained a musical powerhouse through a half-century of political ups and downs, whether isolated from the United States or stranded by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The island’s artists are admired around the world for their top-notch work, from the exciting rhythmic experimentation of Los Van Van to the unparalleled piano stylings of Irakere’s Chucho Valdes, nominated this year for best Latin jazz album for “Solo: Live in New York.”

It’s not always easy to explain why music flourishes in one place and withers in another. But most observers agree that Cubans owe their chops, at least in part, to the socialist educational system, which cultivates artists from a young age.

The bible of Cuban anti-Communism, on the other hand, holds that nothing good can come out of Cuba. And if it ever did, nothing truly good would ever want to go back.

This worldview helps explain why some Cubans were so adamant about holding on to Elian Gonzalez, the innocent survivor of a doomed voyage of exiles. To true believers, it’s inconceivable that a decent father would want to take his child back to live in an evil system, especially after rejecting repeated chances to stay here with extended family.

Cuba’s traveling musicians present the same galling paradox. How can they tour the land of the free, then freely choose to return to a land of misery? They must be performers in the service of Fidel, critics argue. Thus, they must never be allowed to commandeer a world stage--particularly not one erected in the heart of Miami--without the most vigorous attempt to expose their charade.

From this radical point of view, it makes total sense to sacrifice the Grammy gala to deprive Castro any public relations points. Of course, moderate Miami Cubans are realizing this strategy has backfired. Americans don’t like to see politics come between a father and his son--or between musicians and their fans.

The irony about this Grammy debacle is that most Cubans in Miami had already learned to coexist with their musical cousins from the island. Except for the violent and highly publicized demonstration against the 1999 show by Los Van Van, top Cuban acts have been performing regularly in South Florida, almost entirely without incident.

This Grammy battle was not really about music, it was about who controlled the spotlight. Now that the lights are out in Miami, all that’s left are regrets and recriminations. Some die-hard demonstrators vowed to hound the Latin Grammys all the way to Inglewood. But that act doesn’t play well in this town.

As one Miami exile leader said about the chances of coming West with the musical protests: “Los Angeles is not the center of the exile community. It’s another world.”