By Angus MacSwan
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - Cuban salsa star Issac Delgado thrilled an audience packed into a Miami Beach club Tuesday night with a concert that dramatically demonstrated changing attitudes in Miami's highly charged political world.
"Tonight we are making history,'' Cuban-American filmmaker Hugo Cancio, who brought Delgado over from Havana, told the crowd from the stage of the Club Onyx.
Delgado was the biggest star from the communist-ruled island ever to play in Miami, where a large Cuban exile community reviles President Fidel Castro and has strongly opposed the rare performances Cuban artists have put on in the past.
"Good evening Miami, good evening Cuba,'' shouted Delgado to cries of delight before kicking into a set of dynamic Latin dance music.
The audience, predominantly young, super-stylish Cuban-Americans, sang along to most of the songs and danced in whatever space they could find.
The occasion came full circle when the great Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba joined the band on stage.
Barely two years ago, an angry mob spat at and scuffled with concert-goers in ugly scenes outside a performance by Rubalcaba in Miami that was was itself groundbreaking.
Delgado, who made his name with the popular Cuban group NG La Banda, and Rubalcaba are both allowed by Cuban authorities to perform abroad.
Although Washington maintains a 36-year-old economic embargo on Cuba, artists from the island can perform in the United States if the shows are presented as cultural exchanges, not commercial ventures.
But most have stayed away from Miami, center of the Cuban diaspora. Hard-line exiles bitterly opposed to contacts with Cuba have hounded any artist who has not denounced Castro.
Shortly after the near-riot at Rubalcaba's concert, a restaurant featuring a Cuban singer was firebombed.
Local political pressures also prevented Cuban artists from appearing at last September's MIDEM Latin American Music Market, a huge international trade fair. That ignited a debate over freedom of speech in which critics accused the exiles of behaving just like the repressive forces they oppose.
But no protest took place Tuesday night, and the only commotion outside the club was the crush of people trying to get in.
A number of factors seem to have contributed to the changing attitudes.
Manning Salazar, 33, a Cuban-American music promoter, said a younger generation had found its voice in the MIDEM debate. And the death last November of Jorge Mas Canosa, a powerful hard-line leader, had demoralized the older exiles and robbed them of their most influential voice.
A string of corruption scandals involving Cuban-American politicians and officials also has discredited political leaders close to the traditional exile camp, he said.
And Pope John Paul II, in a historic visit to the island in January, had delivered a powerful message that reconciliation, not confrontation, was the way forward.
"All these things add up -- plus the fact that people are going crazy for Cuban music everywhere else in the world,'' Salazar said. "This is good for Cuba, and it's good for Miami. People are talking to each other.''
There is also a new generation of Cuban-Americans and immigrants, born either in the United States or in Cuba after the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power, who are less driven by hatred and who want to be in touch with modern Cuban culture, he added.
The crowd at the Delgado show was notable for the number of black Cubans, whereas the traditional exile society is mainly white.
This was second event in a week in which Cancio has helped break down the barriers. Last Thursday, he premiered his film ''Zafiros, Locura Azul'' in downtown Miami.
The movie, about a beloved Cuban doo-wop group of the 1960s, was shot in Cuba with Cuban actors.
Several dozen protesters heckled outside the theater. But inside, several hundred people, mostly Cuban-American, young and old, gave an ovation to the director and the cast who had traveled from Havana for the event.
Reuters/Variety
^REUTERS
13:39 04-22-98