Making music in Havana
[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 3.24.99]
By Richard Eldredge
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
Some-grown talent is in abundance this week in Havana as something named Music Bridge Around the World gets under way. The idea behind the weeklong jam is to bring together dozens of American and European pop musicians with Cuban drummers, singers and guitarists for six days of songwriting sessions that will culminate in a weekend concert. Gladys Knight, the Indigo Girls, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and Atlanta twin songwriting siblings Evan and Jaron Lowenstein are among the collaborators. While the visiting musicians are being kept from the press so they can "concentrate" on jamming with their Cuban counterparts, Buzz managed to sneak a phone call to Evan Lowenstein.
"It's absolutely surreal," Lowenstein told us Tuesday afternoon from his hotel room as Cuban musicians were arriving to write. "Burt Bacharach is staying across the hall, and [actor] Woody Harrelson is next door."
According to Lowenstein, some of the Cuban musicians haven't quite gotten used to seeing double. "Some guys are coming up and high-fiving me, thinking I'm Jaron, and I don't even know them!"
On Monday, all the participants gathered to be paired up via names in a hat. Among the odd songwriting couplings thus far: Bonnie Raitt and Harrelson and -- coincidence run amok -- Indigo gals Amy Ray and Emily Saliers (the twosome's songs are usually written by one or the other). Each instant musical marriage has to come up with a song for Sunday's concert. James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett are due in Cuba on Friday.
Alan Roy Scott, founder of the Music Bridge Around the World program, said the reason for the exchange on the Communist island was purely artistic, not political. "I'm just here to make music," he said.
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