Angelita had recommended that I speak to her neighbor, Heidi, because she was in Havana during the era of the Beatles. I knew Heidi already, as two of my friends, Lucy and Eva, had lived with her while we all were studying in Vedado last winter. Lucy has actually been in and out of Havana the past few months, working, and had just arrived the night before. I went over that afternoon and was greeted warmly by both her and Heidi.<\/p>\n
Heidi explained that she was very, very young at the time of the Revolution\u2019s success. It was her mother that I needed to talk to. As I caught up with Lucy, Heidi\u2019s mom emerged tentatively from the house with a smile. After giving my little project speech, she effortlessly began giving me details. \u201cI don\u2019t know if the youth today really like the Beatles now,\u201d she began. \u201cThey like reggaet\u00f3n,\u201d I replied. But the Beatles were certainly popular with the youth back then. Unlike the Submarino director, she claims the band was<\/em> prohibited, but it wasn\u2019t impossible to listen to them. Like the woman at the Institute said, people regularly played Beatles music in their homes, and \u201cNo one would knock on your door.\u201d You just couldn\u2019t necessarily enjoy the Beatles on the radio or TV, nor could you buy the records in Cuba. At one point, the government even went on a crusade to burn the records. It didn\u2019t really matter; she enjoyed listening to them whenever. \u201cTrataba copiar la letra,\u201d she said. \u201cI tried to write down the lyrics.\u201d Her mother actually owned a piano and she would try her best to play it while singing the words she could remember. The emotion of the music is what she liked best, her favorite songs being \u201cAnna\u201d and \u201cI Wanna Hold Your Hand.\u201d<\/p>\n Like the woman at the Institute, she also talked about the role of the Beatles on her quincea\u00f1era. She explained that when a girl turns 15, she has a big party in which she dances to various songs of typical Cuban style with her father. While she did dance to some traditional songs, she eventually danced to the Beatles. Somewhat a \u201crebelde,\u201d she also liked wearing her hair with a Beatles bowl cut. Still, she professed that she was not nearly as influenced by the Beatles as the older kids at that time. \u201cI was an adolescent, 11 or 12 years old [during the rise of the Beatles]. Those who really enjoyed them were several years older.\u201d Nonetheless, she seemed to have appreciated the Beatles just the same.<\/p>\n Fun fact: Heidi secretly has WiFi in her house (internet connection is largely controlled by the government), and its name is \u201cRingo.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Angelita had recommended that I speak to her neighbor, Heidi, because she was in Havana during the era of the Beatles. I knew Heidi already, as two of my friends, Lucy and Eva, had lived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beatles"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":848,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions\/848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}