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My Profile Top News Reuters top ten news stories delivered to your inbox each day. Subscribe You are here: Home > News > Entertainment > Article Home Business & Finance News U.S. Politics International Technology Entertainment Film Music People Television Arts Industry Sports Lifestyle Oddly Enough Health Science Special Coverage Video Pictures Your View The Great Debate Blogs Weather Reader Feedback Do More With Reuters RSS Widgets Mobile Podcasts Newsletters Your View Make Reuters My Homepage Partner Services CareerBuilder Affiliate Network Professional Products Support (Customer Zone) Reuters Media Financial Products About Thomson Reuters U.S. policy changes spark hope for Cuban musicians Fri May 15, 2009 8:45pm EDT Email | Print | Share | Reprints | Single Page [-] Text [+] By Judy Cantor-Navas NEW YORK (Billboard) - As the annual Cuban music trade fair Cubadisco kicks off Saturday (May 16) in Havana, promoters in the United States are hoping that a thaw in relations with Cuba could revive interest in the island's music. Encouraged by President Barack Obama's remarks in April that he's seeking a "new day" in relations with Cuba, U.S. promoters have quietly begun planning stateside concerts by Cuban artists for as early as June, pending their ability to secure permission from the U.S. Department of State to perform in this country. Washington hasn't authorized such visits since 2003. The a cappella group Vocal Sampling, an international festival favorite, and the Grammy Award-nominated ensemble Septeto Nacional, which performs the tradition son style of music, has applied for U.S. visas. Los Van Van, the pioneering Castro-era dance group often referred to as the island's Rolling Stones, hopes to launch an extensive summer tour in the States. International Music Network, the Gloucester, Massachusetts, booking agency that handled the Buena Vista Social Club's U.S. tour in the late '90s, is exploring the possibility of booking fall tour dates for some of the group's surviving members. Fuego Entertainment president Hugo Cancio, a Cuban-American promoter and label owner who presented some 80 concerts by various Cuban artists in the late '90s and early '00s, is awaiting a decision on the security clearances for Vocal Sampling's summer tour, which he plans to promote. "I don't know if people here have forgotten about Cuban music," Cancio says. "I also don't know if with this economy we will be able to put together the 17- or 18-gig tours the way we did before. I do know that the Cubans are continuing to make some of the best music in the world and that this is a natural market for those artists." EAGER FOR 'NEW DAY' The Obama administration hasn't yet made drastic shifts in U.S. policy toward Cuba, lifting restrictions on the ability of Cuban-Americans to travel and send money to Cuba but keeping in place the decades-old U.S. trade embargo. Still, the conciliatory tone emanating from Washington has raised hopes of a further thaw. "We hope that the 'new day' Obama talked about will be here soon," says San Francisco-based immigration attorney Bill Martinez, who is working to secure travel visas on behalf of iconic singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez and other Cuban artists. Rodriguez had hoped to perform with Pete Seeger at his 90th-birthday celebration May 3 at New York's Madison Square Garden, but he didn't obtain a visa in time for the show. Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Seeger's grandson (and no relation to Silvio Rodriguez), says he hopes the Cuban singer will be able to perform at the Clearwater Festival June 20-21 in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., an annual event benefiting Seeger's nonprofit environmental organization Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. "It would be a shame to waste this opportunity," Rodriguez-Seeger says. Cuban music enjoyed a boom in popularity in the United States after Washington exempted Cuban recordings and other "informational material" from the trade embargo in 1988 and later allowed Cuban artists to perform stateside, although under the condition that they receive no more than per-diem payments. By 2000, hundreds of musicians from the island had performed in the States, most prominently the Buena Vista Social Club, whose 1997 Ry Cooder-produced album went on to sell more than 1.8 million U.S. copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. MARKET SATURATION The George W. Bush administration subsequently reduced the number of Cuban artists allowed to perform stateside and stopped issuing such visas altogether after 2003. Still, promoters say politics wasn't the only reason for Cuban music's failure to live up to its commercial promise in the U.S. market. "The unfortunate side of Buena Vista Social Club and all of its spin-offs was that they saturated the market so heavily it got to a point that nobody wanted Cuban at all," IMG Artists managing director Elizabeth Sobol-Gomez says. Meanwhile, younger artists who perform the fast-paced dance rhythms of timba and other contemporary Cuban styles have had difficulty translating their popularity among Cuban emigres and committed Cubaphiles into broader commercial success. Even Los Van Van, Cuba's most popular band of the last four decades, has failed to gain more than a cult following in the States. Its latest album, "Arrasando" (Sony International), has sold only 1,000 U.S. copies since its release in January, according to SoundScan. "Contemporary Cuban music is very virtuosic and interesting, but not well known by the non-Cuban public," says Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, the Cuban producer who brought the Buena Vista Social Club artists together in the studio for the sessions with Cooder. "In general, for a lot of people the music is unintelligible and too explosive." Continued... View article on single page Share: Del.icio.us Digg Mixx Yahoo! Facebook LinkedIn Next Article: Blink-182 announces summer tour Also On Reuters Commentary: Miles O'Brien on Flight 3407 Next hot tourist destination: Afghanistan? Blog: Is your neighborhood GM dealership closing? More Entertainment News Coldplay releases live album as free download No Doubt puts touring before studio work Political jitters put damper on China's concert biz Scorsese touts film preservation at Cannes Stakes are high in TV deals, even if money is down More Entertainment News... Editor's Choice Slideshow A selection of our best photos from the past 24 hours. Slideshow Most Popular on Reuters Articles Video Man tried to hire prostitute for his son, 14 California budget woes may force government overhaul Hackers launch phishing attack on Facebook users Was Google Hacked? 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