Cuba libre
Jane Bunnett is being paged over the intercom at the Camagüey airport. We've already flustered the security guard by going back outside to the patio where she, her husband, Larry Cramer, and I are drinking Havana rum and freezing our butts off. A frente frío—a cold front—has moved in, but until our flight leaves we're passing time at the pokey little bar, bending the rules. Now what? Is it possible to fit another adventure into this two-week trip? We've been lost on back roads under starry skies, had an altercation over ice cream with a conga band, and witnessed the grief of a trombone player whose 21-year-old daughter was murdered by her jealous husband. The Canadian jazz diva has even jammed on the beach with a local playing a shovel, tapping out rhythms with his pocket knife and belting boleros.
Bunnett rushes to the information counter to find a brother and sister in their twenties—strangers but friends of a Cuban friend in Toronto—who are members of the same family to whom she hand-delivered bedsheets and DVDs just two weeks ago. They have a favour to ask.
Everyone needs a favour in Cuba. I recall the nice man holding up a "Bonnet" sign when we arrived—I thought he was a taxi driver—and the rushed transaction that occurred on the sidewalk before we boarded the bus to our base camp, a no-frills resort we'd booked in Santa Lucía, from which we planned to escape by car. Now these two are hoping Bunnett will transport a ring and other mementoes back to family in Toronto. Of course, she will; she's got a generous heart.
Where fact and fiction collide, and truth is elusive
Bunnett tries on the ring, but it's too big for her fingers—on hands too small, she was told as a kid, for a serious career as a pianist. She appeals to her husband—her 31-year life partner, trumpet player, producer, all-round co-conspirator—who takes charge, stuffing the gifts into his carry-on. That done, there's kissing and hugging and then the duo slip into the night, leaving unanswered questions in their wake. How they found Bunnett and this precise flight and persuaded a bureaucrat to make a public announcement is a mystery. But then everything is mysterious in Cuba, where fact and fiction collide and truth is elusive. Invention is an act of necessity, and everyone must be inventive in order to survive on this Communist island where the diet is bland yet the people are anything but.
What's all this got to do with jazz? And with multi-Juno award winner and Grammy nominee Jane Bunnett, 53—three years older than Castro's revolution—the soprano saxophone and flute player and Spirits of Havana bandleader known for her pulsating Afro-Cuban music? Well, everything, actually, because in Cuba life and art intersect like roads at a punto de control (checkpoint). Surreal encounters are just an extension of all that jazz we've been experiencing since our arrival.
