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One very sunny day last year, in March (2007), a small party from Ireland descended on Havana laden with radio mics, cameras, sound people, leather, felt and wire. Cameras, leather, felt and wire, I can hear you ask, brow, naturally, a little furrowed?
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Having furrowed your brow, you may well now be racking your brains trying to remember where on earth you've seen someone with something to do with Havana and pianos blazoned all over the front, or back, of their t-shirts, and what you may be remembering is SAPTH - Send a Piano to Havana. This early 1990`s project was initiated by the Herculean effort of larger-than-life American piano tuner, Ben Treuhaft. He collected old pianos from all over the US, shipped them to Cuba, and then travelled there with a gang of other specialists - in blatant contravention of the US blockade - in order to tune and fix them up. But why Cuba? Since the 1970s - mainly for lack of public resources, and then because most ordinary people don't have the extra cash to have their pianos seen to - there have, sadly, been almost no piano tuners trained in Cuba. This music-soaked island of over eleven million people have relied on about 8 well-experienced tuners - most of them getting well on in years - to look after their country's instruments. Add to this some serious heat, high humidity, very hungry termites and a severe shortage of piano-repairing materials, and it's easy to see why the deteriorating stock of instruments is, as Cubans say, en candela! (on fire, in a bad way). So, in 2005, and inspired by SAPTH, one of the Irish tuners, Ciaran Ryan, decided to travel to Cuba and take a look around for himself. There, he met Treuhaft and a couple of other trainers, and they worked on pianos in two or three of Havana's music schools alongside a small group of Cubans who'd picked up bits and pieces of technical knowledge from previous visits. He had what he well remembers as '' ...a fantastic and inspiring two weeks??, and returned, excitedly, to Irleland to plan his next trip. The idea was to round up a few tuner colleagues, organise some money-raising concerts and then return for a longer period to work more closely with the young Cuban tuners. The money-raising would be a fairly modest effort, he thought. But he was wrong. Although Ciaran wasn't surprised by the willingness of Irish people to get involved, he wasn't at all prepared for the level of support he found in his home country. There is a strong historical and political affinity between the two islands of Cuba and Ireland but the sheer level of help and enthusiasm that developed for the project was, in Ciaran's words, ";... quite overwhelming". Ben Treufalt was also on hand to help out and was no doubt accompanied, in spirit, by his famous mother - none other than the writer and political activist, the late Jessica Mitford. Unsurprisingly, this connection with the Guiness family in Ireland meant even more publicity, and so a Dublin concert was broadcast, with much aplomb, and with an already very full purse raised from other concerts, on New Years day of 2006. Meantime, there was a flurry of communication between Dublin and Havana about the pianos to be worked on and the young Cubans selected to work on them. What to bring, which pianos to teach on, how many students would be best? The Irish contingency took all the necessary aforementioned felt, leather, piano wire, glues and tools, and spent the best part of a month working alongside six young Cubans in a workshop at the ENA (Havana`s pre-academy level arts and music school). There, they finished work on the pianos ``...but, more importantly``, added Ciaran ``we finished feeling pretty confident that the students had learnt a lot more about their chosen trade''. The aim is now to work together with Cuban institutions and set up a new and independent exchange project. Ciaran believes that the young Cubans need much more time working with experienced tuners and with good resources, so whats planned is a six-month training course for the Cubans students in Ireland and an equal time for young, Irish musicians to study in Cuba. As yet, nothing has been confirmed, but communication is ongoing and both sides are optimistic that sometime in the Spring of 2008 the first of these exchanges will take place. ``Then, hopefully``, added Ciaran, as we listened to yet another hopelessly out of tune piano being bravely battled with in an uptown hotel lobby, ``... these young Cubans will become the next generation of teachers, and a trade that is now dying out in Cuba will really start to be revived''. At the end of the group's time in Havana there was a final treat in store. Those of you with Buena Vista Social Club CD will remember the beautiful bolero, Dos Gardenias, and others might know one of Cuba?s most famous Cha Cha Cha?s - La Engañadora. Ciaran and his colleagues were able to visit two old grands - the first belonging to the late, celebrated singer, Isolina Carrilo and on which she composed Dos Gardenias, and the second which had been cared for by one of cuba's finest tuners - band leader Enrique Jorrin - the composer of La Engañadora. Havana's pianos may be very well out of tune but many have a great story to tell. For more information about the Irish piano tuners project or the radio and documentary programmes being made about them, please contact Ciaron Ryan at ciaranryan1a@eircom.net |
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