But getting on the grid comes at a cost. Users must procure WiFi cards with a scratch-off PIN from the national telecom company, ETECSA, and like many staples in Cuba, scarcity is the rule, not the exception. Licensed sellers like hotels and state-run retailers often run out, so hustlers selling the Nauta cards, as they're called, hawk them day and night at Santiago's central plaza, one of the city's main hotspots.Cuba Has an Exciting Electronic Music Scene—Here Are 8 of Our Favorite Producers
Will "Quantic" Holland recording in a tiny Santiago studio with local singer Diógenes y su Changüí (Photo by Reeve Rixon)
"Internet is the necessary platform," Rodriguez tells me in his hometown of Santiago, where we met ahead of the inaugural Manana Festival. "And we're not really connected to the web."The worldwide proliferation of personal computers, software, and Internet access has led to the mass democratization of music production—there are kids in bedrooms all over the world making beats—but the same doesn't hold true for Cuba, where all of those ingredients are both in short supply and difficult to buy, given the average income in the country in 2015 was approximately $26 per month, according to Cuba's National Office of Statistics. The few who do try to make a career in electronic music, meanwhile, need patience and perseverance. As Paula Fernandez, one-half of the Havana duo Pauza, tells me in a fit of exasperation, "The whole world knows what Cuba has and doesn't have." She's sick of the pity party that comes with questions about life on the island, but recognizes that the answer is also her reality.The whole world knows what Cuba has and doesn't have.—Pauza's Paula Fernandez
Photo by Jude Goergen
Navigating Nauta
For one thing, if you're an electronic musician in Cuba, you forget about advertising parties online. In Havana's small but bustling dance music community, old-fashioned flyers and posters still hold currency and at best, an announcement will go out via mass text message. But most people rely on boca a boca—word of mouth. During Manana, Rodriguez's manager handed out pocket-sized flyers and sent out mass texts with encouragement to spread the word for an impromptu Guampara showcase pre-party.
But limited Internet access also hampers the creative process. The world's music library simply isn't at Cubans' fingertips. As Oliver Ortiz, one-half of the tech-house duo Rezak put it to me, "We're virgins in terms of information." His partner, Armando Qintana, elaborated, "The lack of information, that is the challenge." They are vaguely aware that Berlin is a hotbed of techno, for example, but staying up to date on the comings and goings of the dance music scene abroad is nigh impossible.We're virgins in terms of information.—Rezak's Armando Qintana
Warp recording artists Plaid in the studio with Santiago's Obbatuké during Manana, a Cuban electronic music festival that encouraged collaborations between local and international artists (Photo by Reeve Rixon)
DJ Jigüe in Santiago de Cuba (Photo by Jude Goergen)
Hardware Headaches
For musical training, however, Cuba has a serious pedigree of state-run conservatories and institutional support for traditional music ensembles. There's even a government-run hip-hop talent recruiter, the Agencia Cubana de Rap. Pauza's Fernandez and Zahira Sanchez were lucky to take advantage of the only public resource to support electronic music: the National Electroacoustic Laboratory (LNME in Spanish). Although founded in 1979 by avant-garde composer Juan Blanco to nurture electroacoustic composition among Cuba's classical musicians, in recent years the LNME has opened its doors to dancefloor-oriented electronic production; it even offers the country's first DJ course specifically for women, where Pauza cut their chops. They used that opportunity to hone their set as one of Cuba's few live electronic acts and produced their debut album in the laboratory's lone recording studio. Without the ability to stream YouTube instructional videos at home, learning the ropes of complex audio equipment—even getting access to it at all—is vital in order to make a career out of electronic music.But LNME's tiny booth doesn't offer the trial by fire of a packed crowd. Ultimately, Cuba's limited infrastructure translates into the one and only place locals can hear electronic music: the club. Sound-systems are patchy at best—Manana Festival brought in $30,000 worth of gear to shore up what was available in Santiago – and DJs lament that they must haul their own gear even to higher-end venues because clubs are set up not for DJs, but for the live bands that are Cuba's musical bread and butter.Casa Micaela, a popular restaurant-cum-nightclub in the Santiago historic district, was a case in point. After the kitchen closes, the basement space opens up, like it did for the Guampara showcase the day before Manana. It had all the trappings of a proper club—air conditioning, a fully stocked bar, security and a door person. But just hours before the gig, DJ Jigüe's manager told me they were still scouring Santiago for CDJs. Still, if there's one thing Cuba's electronic scene excels at, it's perseverance. After locating one CDJ from a friend of a friend that only read USB drives, not actual CDs, Jigüe switched gears and played directly off his laptop. By show time, the mojitos were flowing, the dancefloor was packed, and DJ Jigüe was spinning Guampara's tracks for one of Santiago's first foreign audiences, grinning from ear to ear.We haven't learned how to play with controllers because we don't have them. It's all Virtual DJ or Traktor; we've never gotten past the laptop.—Electro Palestina's Cesar Jimenez