Africa is much more than a part of the slavery history to Cuba . We have the continent in our skin, and though we do not know exactly where our own grandparents were born, we know more than that: we know the wealth of the diverse cultures that fed us. The hundred of thousand people that came with hands and feet tied up, planted in our camps not only their sweat but also their millenarian history.

We are united by the sea, the night and the crying, as well as the blood and the greenness of the mountain. The torment could not stop hope and though the chains made bounds, the strength of life made us an endless river of mixed feelings. Our mothers were raped but their breast fed the youngling seeding flowers over ignominy. We grew, loved and triumphed. Some lighter than others but all from the same birthing. Bitterness was left behind, there was no rancor for children, everybody was taught the same singings, they built together the drums, listened to other's singings and loved them too, learned words, changed poems, all to make a new, own and real life.

And after many decades those mulatto descendants went back to that continent to protect the sacred roots, to conquer peace for their parents and grandparents, and to honor not only son-and-daughter love, but also knowledge, welfare and justice.

We want to receive again, in this land, that diverse Africa, brave lap of our memory, but this time with good fortune singings, joy hymns and hugs of sunflowers, to think together how to continue building thousand of bridges to cross the sea, full of hope and protection for our culture and people, bridges of light so nobody will have to hide their faces neither feel strange or foreigner, nor recur to mountain as inhospitable home but as a beautiful brother of a common nature.

We want and we are able to build our own history and tell it again with our words. Springs' music in a Cuba full of truth, that is what we want to share with you and the whole world in order to raise high our necessary singings against injustice or triviality. Singings about our stories, guitars that play our folk songs, forms that left during centuries the testimony of the voices that weave our mantles, drums that remind the man's longing for happiness.

One of our great folklorists wrote in the prologue of an African poets' book: With revolutionary modesty, conscious that during decades “we were deceived”, let Africa be the one that reveals for us (…) its avatars. Only in this way we will understand its profound and varied cultural legacy. Now that it is raised again, offering its most generous blood to build a better life, we are the ones who need the most, to know and understand it, because our future is decided also in those immense lands.

All brothers, there will be always motives to celebrate our meeting, today more than ever, men need a hug of faith to reconquer each day of our history in order not to permit falseness disperses us. It is culture the one that united us and make us brothers, the one that will always protect us, as free men, to love and build. That is why we want to celebrate in the year 2008, to almost 500 years of the African presence in Cuba , the meeting between our cultures and the wealth of our identity.

And it is Cubadisco, the annual party of our music, the event that will dedicate its XII edition to the African continent. Meeting of artists, spaces for theoretical activities to meditate about our musical culture and study the influences left in our whole continent, editing of discs, books, documentary series, bout of negotiations, joint productions, all in terms of learning more about ourselves.

Cary Diez

Vice president of the Cubadisco International Fair