Like a slowly dissipating fog, melancholy strings and piano particles hover at the outset of Carlos José Alvarez’s score for the 2012 documentary Cubamerican. From the fog there emerges a lone trumpet voice, sad and noble. Sad with the film’s self-exiled Cuban “diaspora,” whose families fled Fidel Castro’s dictatorship to come to the United States and who still feel a deep pang for the relatives and remnants of themselves they left behind. Noble because they are people who never shed their inherent Cuban-ness, and who have provided American culture with uniquely talented athletes, intellectuals, and artists.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download