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From: C-ap@clari.net (AP / ROBERT JABLON, Associated Press Writer)
Newsgroups: clari.world.americas.caribbean,clari.local.california.los_angeles
Subject: U.S. Musicians To Work With Cubans
Keywords: U.S. news and features
Organization: Copyright 1999 by The Associated Press (via ClariNet)
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Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 18:32:07 PST
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	LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Dozens of Americans will travel to Cuba next  
month on a once-forbidden mission: to create music. 
	As many as 35 jazz, rock and country artists, ranging from Jimmy  
Buffett to Joan Osborne and the Indigo Girls, will work for a week 
to compose new songs in collaboration with Cuban artists. 
	U.S. performers have toured Cuba before, but under the  
40-year-old U.S. trade embargo they could not collaborate on new 
works, said attorney Bill Martinez, who sought U.S. permission for 
the cultural exchange. The license was granted last week. 
	``One of the sticking points was that, under the embargo ... you  
could not create new works, new material here,'' he said in a 
telephone interview Monday from Havana. ``This is historic.'' 
	The project, dubbed ``Music Bridges ... Over Troubled Waters,''  
will culminate with a free concert on March 28, planned for 
Havana's 5,000-seat Karl Marx theater. 
	The event follows a thaw between the two countries in recent  
years and the Clinton administration's January decision to ease 
some cultural exchange restrictions of the embargo. 
	The event is the latest cultural effort by Alan Roy Scott, a San  
Fernando Valley songwriter and music producer whose nonprofit Music 
Bridges has masterminded similar projects in the former Soviet 
Union, Indonesia, Romania and Ireland. 
	Scott also was in Havana Monday, busily arranging the details  
and trying to avoid the inevitable politics surrounding relations 
with the communist island nation. 
	``I have no goal other than the fact that we're here, we do  
this, and the world can judge for itself what it means,'' he said. 
``I only know when songs get written by people that are on the same 
wavelength, it transcends all those subjects.'' 
	Music Bridges is working with the Cuban Music Institute to  
organize the event. Among the Cuban artists scheduled to take part 
are Chucho Valdes, a jazz pianist who heads the group Irakere and 
members of the popular groups Los Van, Maraca and Sierra Maestra. 
	Martinez said he had to assuage concerns from both governments.  
U.S. officials wanted to make sure that the project wouldn't 
violate the embargo by giving the Cuban government a financial 
benefit, such as payments to the artists, while ``the Cubans had to 
know that this is a legitimate exchange where they weren't going to 
be exploited.'' 
	None of the American or Cuban performers will be paid, Martinez  
said. 
-=-=-	 
                           AP NEWS
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             Copyright 1998 by The Associated Press
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